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[title]It was a happy home, but life in Mia and Rachel’s south London rental was about to be disrupted: their housemate was moving out. The usual next steps applied. Ask around, maybe post an Instagram story, then the inevitable: advertising the room online.
When Mia uploaded photos of the ‘cosy’ spare room in a ‘friendly all-girls flatshare’, she expected she’d get around 10 responses back. But, after just a few days, she’d had replies from more than 300 hopefuls. The messages ranged from the standard fare – 20-something girls who worked in marketing and enjoyed exercising – to those where the desperation was palpable. One girl messaged that she’d been looking for somewhere to live for six months.
‘I was so overwhelmed,’ Mia says. ‘You want to reply to everyone, but you physically can’t.’
Demand for rentals has surged across the country in recent years, but its effects are being felt more acutely in the capital. The 2021 census confirmed that London has a higher proportion of private renters (29 percent) compared to the rest of England (17 percent). According to the campaign group Renters Reform Coalition, an average of 25 people are competing for every available London dwelling – which makes finding a liveable room in a well-trodden location, all for a reasonable price, almost impossible.
The rise of speed-flatmating
After the huge demand for their room, Mia and Rachel thought that there had to be a better way of finding housemates than wading through endless DMs. They decided to incorporate a housemate-meeting ‘speed-dating’ event to the 14,800 strong community they run, The Girlies Guide, which hosts brunches and other events to help women make friends in the city.
‘We divide the room into which part of London people want to live in,’ Mia says. ‘We also allocate one of two coloured wristbands – one for those looking for a room, one for those with a room they want to fill.’ Rachel devises prompts and advice cards about renting in London, but for the most part, people are free to drift between groups.
An average of 25 people are competing for every available London dwelling
They’re clearly plugging some sort of gap. One hundred people showed up for the last housemate meet-up and the girls receive regular DMs on socials from girls who have met, made friends and moved in with people at their events. The phenomenon is gradually spreading across the capital via Facebook groups such as Matesplace, which tries to match up potential housemates through mutual connections, and other online communities like the London Lonely Girls club.
Of course, the concept depends on there actually being a handful of rooms available. ‘We struggle with keeping events balanced between people trying to find a room, and people offering a room,’ Rachel explains. ‘It’s usually 70/30 in favour of people looking to find the room.’
It’s why accommodation site SpareRoom, which spearheaded ‘speed-flatmating’ way back in 2004, suspended their events during the pandemic and haven’t yet brought them back – despite ‘speed-flatmating’ being a trademark they own.
These events show just how desperately London’s rental system needs to be overhauled
‘The market was so imbalanced there simply weren’t enough rooms available to make the events work — at one point [in 2022] there were nine times as many people looking for rooms as rooms available in London,’ says Matt Hutchinson, SpareRoom’s communication director. ‘[Landlords or tenants] with a room didn’t need to come to an event to find people willing to move in.’
For some, relying on these sorts of events to find housing you’re happy with just shows how desperately the private rental system in the capital needs to be overhauled. ‘Speed flatmating is yet another symptom of a completely broken system that fails renters,’ says Ben Twomey, chief executive of Generation Rent. ‘It shouldn’t be this stressful and difficult to find a home, which is why we need real action to address the renting crisis.’
From people turning to pet-sitting to save thousands each month, to living in disused buildings for a fraction of average rent, it seems like the extremes people will go to navigate London’s housing market are only increasing. After all, according to SpareRoom, the average price of a room in London in 2024 is £995 a month: a five percent hike compared to the start of 2023. Mia admitted half her annual salary is just spent on rent – and it’s a depressingly common state of affairs, with one in five tenants in the capital spending half their monthly paycheck on accommodation.
Sharing is caring
Another option that’s becoming more popular with house hunters is ‘homesharing’. Caroline Cooke set up London’s Share and Care Homeshare in 2006, which offers low-cost housing for people looking to act as an ‘au pair’ for the elderly or those struggling in their own home.
‘The average rent paid is £150, with maximum being £210, on top of a contribution to laundry and some groceries,’ says Caroline. She stresses that those looking to share are not in any way carers and she does not ‘speed-date’ those looking for a place to homeowners. Instead, she describes it as ‘jigsaw matching’, where the organisers look at shared hobbies and interests (as well as a full DBS check) before an introduction to see if they get on.
Sharers agree to stay for a year, before the contract is renewed. When a match has been agreed, a Homeshare Licence Agreement is drawn up between both parties which lays out the responsibilities and guidelines for both the householder and their sharer. The minimum age to be a Share and Care housemate is 25, with the average age of people on the scheme being people in their early thirties.
1 in 5 London tenants spend half their monthly paycheck on accommodation
‘We’ve seen real friendships fostered,’ Caroline says. ‘We matched one woman who was learning Italian with an elderly woman who’s fluent, which saw them bond. There was another person who would walk with her housemate down by the river every Saturday morning and get a coffee.
‘One woman had actually saved enough money to put a deposit down for her own place, but she enjoyed living with her housemate so much, she signed up for another year with Share and Care.’
With those partaking in Share and Care Homeshare saving as much as £845 a month on rent, it’s easy to see why this is such an attractive prospect for house hunters. It certainly worked for Ben Aitken, a writer who moved in with 85-year-old Wendy while on the scheme in 2020. He decided to try Share and Care after having been on numerous coach trips with pensioners while researching his book, The Gran Tour: Travels with my Elders.
There’s been a 50 percent rise in homesharing applications in the last year
‘I lived with Wendy for about a year,’ he says. ‘We divided things up nicely and she taught me so much. How to make marmalade. How to avoid Japanese knotweed. How important it is to get feelings off your chest. She made me better at caring, if I’m honest, at looking out for someone.’
Of course, this sort of arrangement isn’t suitable for everyone; people need to have regular scheduled working hours, be able to spend time with their homeowner and expect a quieter, slower pace of life (living with an elderly person means it’s unlikely there will be house parties or wild nights out).
However, Caroline says they’ve easily seen a 50 percent rise in applications in the last year as people look for cheaper housing. ‘There’s a massive lack of supply in housing,’ she says. ‘While Share and Care will work, it can’t be the only option for people who need a place to live.’
So what now? While the Renters (Reform) Bill was once a beacon of hope for those trapped in the increasingly expensive private rental system, strong opposition in parliament has meant some of its more promising suggestions have been watered down or scrapped entirely due to fears more regulations would be ‘burdensome’ on landlords. Ongoing amendments to the bill mean it could still take some time before we see any changes at all – and the situation is increasingly desperate now. For the meantime, many of us are stuck living in scenarios eerily similar to Big Brother – except, no one seems to be watching.