Rent calculator

There is no rent cap on a private tenancy in England, so the rent is what the market will pay for that home. The most reliable public starting point is the Office for National Statistics Price Index of Private Rents, which publishes the average monthly rent in every council, and separately for one, two and three-bedroom homes.

The calculator shows that figure for the council the property is in, with the region and England beside it, and how much the council average has moved on a year earlier. It is the same data set the Government uses, published under the Open Government Licence, and nothing in it is adjusted or modelled.

Two things matter when you read it. The ONS average covers new and existing tenancies, and tenancies that started years ago are often below today’s asking rents, so a new let in a busy area can sit above the council figure. ONS also advises reading council figures as longer-term trends, because they move from month to month. Before you set a rent, check the live adverts for homes like yours in the same streets.

Weekly and monthly rent do not convert by multiplying by four. A year has 52 weeks and 12 months, so a weekly rent becomes a calendar-month rent as weekly × 52 ÷ 12. A rent of £300 a week is £1,300 a month, not £1,200.

Once a tenancy is running, the rent can only be raised in England by agreement or by a Section 13 notice on Form 4A, at most once a year, and the tenant can ask the First-tier Tribunal to decide the market rent.