We all know the impact of the cost of living crisis in London. But there’s another capital city in the UK that is a minefield for tenants trying to find somewhere suitable to rent in right now – Cardiff.
The cost of rent in the capital that no-one seems to be talking about is astronomical. Based on a sample of 87,103 households from Rents Officers Wales, out of 228,600 households in the private rental market, the average rent in Wales in February 2023 was £614 per month. Cardiff had the highest average rent across local authorities (£819), according to the Welsh Government report, whereas Blaenau Gwent had the lowest (£453).
If you’re living alone, and are looking for a one-bed flat to rent, you’re looking at paying up to £1,000 a month with bills in the Welsh capital – and those are some of the most basic studios. If you’re a student or on a lower wage, that leaves you with just a few hundred pounds leftover to get you through the rest of the month for food, potentially travel costs and then whatever else you can afford.
Read more: The state of Cardiff's rental market with landlords selling up and 100 people fighting for every property
But add to that the demand for rented properties that's coming alongside these prices, and things get complicated. You can get more Cardiff news and other story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
It’s a bleak reality for many. For me, I thought I was lucky enough to be able to look for a place with a friend recently and move out of a SpareRoom house share in Cardiff. House shares are great but after you’ve done a few, the thought of not having to get to know a whole new group of strangers again sounds appealing.
But I was naïve to think that being able to move in with someone I already knew would make the process easier. The market is crazy right now.
Understandably, with the current renting climate, it was easy enough to find someone to fill my room in my former house share on August 30. This was a few months ago, and I thought there was plenty of time for me to find somewhere else with my friend, so I promised the new person the room was hers.
One of the first places I called up brought me to an automated message informing me that I was ‘number 79’ for a viewing, and my heart sank. I definitely hadn't realised how competitive the renting climate was.
Most of the time, I was told by estate agents that they were fully booked for viewings and wouldn’t be able to schedule me in to see it anything at all – they were going like hot cakes. With my former room accounted for, it was now playing on my mind knowing I had to be out by a certain date.
My friend, who was living with her ex at this point, was also more than ready to find somewhere as soon as possible. The only viewings we were offered were right in the middle of the day, and with us both working full time this was just not feasible, so we resorted to virtual viewings – with estate agents Whatsapp-ing us video tours of properties left, right and centre.
Of course, you don’t get the same feel for it, (my worst fear was that we'd sign ourselves up for somewhere that was secretly full of mould). But at this point we were beginning to lose track of what we’d looked at, so we were pretty much offering our holding deposit out to anyone that would take it. And even then, it was the same story again and again.
We’d express interest, and hear nothing. Or we were told on several occasions that landlords had decided to proceed with another tenant.
It was understandable, considering how competitive these cheaper rental places seemed to be, yet maddening at the same time. When my friend and I finally managed to look around one place, we were the last people they could fit in that day.
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