The cost of renting has risen fastest in Nottingham, Leeds and Bristol in the last 12 months, according to a new survey.
Zoopla found tenants moving into a home in Nottingham in summer 2019 paid, on average, 5.4% more in rent than the same time in 2018.
Leeds and Bristol (both up 4.5%) were the other cities where rental prices rose faster than average wage growth across the UK.
Aberdeen recorded the biggest fall in rent prices in the same period, dropping 4.1% compared with last year.
Coventry and Middlesborough also saw renting become cheaper for tenants.
Although renting costs are going up in many places, renting is still more affordable today than the 10-year average, the survey found. Researchers attribute this shift to an increase in the number of first-time buyers, which relieves some pressure on the rental market.
Even with rental hikes slowing down, the Zoopla report found the typical tenant is spending nearly a third of their salary on rent (although, research in 2018 found those living in London spend nearly half their salary on it).
The rental sector is concentrated in London, with a third of rental properties in the country being found in the capital. It’s also where the typical rent per month is the most expensive.
Outside of London, tenants spent the highest proportion of earnings in Oxford, Brighton and Cambridge, with the lowest in Hull, Bradford and Stoke.
A government inquiry into rental conditions in the UK warned that leaving so many millennials in the rental market – unable to save money from their salary – could leave a generation homeless when they retire.
It found more than 630,000 millennials will be unable to afford their rent when they stop working. And the number of households in the private rented sector headed up by someone over the age of 64 will treble in the next three decades.