Cramped, crusty and £600 over the asking price: The reality of renting a flat in London

Three months ago, I moved into a nice flat. The rent is reasonable, I have enough storage space for all my possessions, it has a bath, a little balcony, and a living room large enough that I can have friends over for drinks. It has turned me into an anxious wreck.

At first, I thought there was something obviously wrong with it that I had missed. Maybe my neighbour was an axe murderer yet to be caught; maybe the building was about to be demolished. After a few weeks, I realised I was being stupid. The flat was just that – nice.

Instead, I decided to panic about my letting agents. Was I about to have to pay an extortionate service charge? Was I going to get kicked out after six months, as if it’d all been a prank? I reread the contract three times, line by line, to make sure I’d not missed anything.

This is, it turns out, how mad you become when you’ve been renting in London for too long. I earn a good wage, have a good credit rating and good references from previous landlords. I had also been proactively trying to move for around half a year, and had reasonable expectations.

Still, I had a housewarming the other week and friend after friend walked in, slack-jawed, and asked if I’d made a deal with the devil (and if they could have his number so they could beg for a similar arrangement). These are all, to be clear, people in their thirties with, in most cases, even higher salaries and better credit scores than me.

We are at the stage of life where we should be comparing our spare rooms, not marvel at the fact that I have a kitchen nearly (but not quite) big enough for a table. Hell, we should be comparing the flats we have bought, but let’s not ask for the moon quite yet.

Instead, what I have is a friend and his partner who recently tried to rent a flat in zone 3. Thinking they were being clever, they made an offer that was £350/pcm over the rent being advertised. They didn’t get the flat; someone had offered £600/pcm over the asking price instead. In case you’re wondering – yes, the concept of “asking price” for rentals is a new one in London.

Elsewhere, another gainfully employed friend in his thirties has had to leave his small one-bedroom flat and is now looking for a room in a flatshare again. His circumstances haven’t changed; the market has.

Another friend is currently considering his options, as his contract renewal has come up and his landlord has offered him a “generous” offer if he wants to stay for longer. The rent, in this case, would only be several hundred pounds higher than it currently is. For the avoidance of doubt, he doesn’t have a spare “several hundred pounds” to spend on rent every month.

I could go on, but you get my point. Renting in London has become inhuman. It is a process that strips people of their dignity, their quality of life, and their love for a city that should and deserves to be great. People end up living in cramped, mouldy spaces, where nothing works but everyone is too scared to speak to their landlord in case they hike up the rent out of spite, or decide to kick them out.

They stay in relationships they no longer want to be in, and they watch relationships that could have worked crumble because no couple should have to share a small room in a houseshare. They can’t afford to go out and meet their friends because they don’t have disposable income, and they can’t have those friends over for drinks because there isn’t enough space to host them.

It is an emergency, but it is being treated as a fact of life. Political parties care but… there’s always a but. Yes… but we can’t build here. But we can’t change the laws around renting. But it’s the market’s fault, not our own. But, but, but.

There are no immediate solutions – no policy quietly waiting on the shelf, which would solve everything in a day – but there should at least be a sense of urgency attached to the issue. Being a renter in London currently feels like living in a pocket universe, ignored by all even though we’re drowning.

More than anything, it is an unsustainable situation to be in. The capital was always going to be more expensive to live in than the rest of the country, but it shouldn’t become a city solely for the super-rich.

The economy would collapse, slowly but surely. That’s the problem, really; people may not care much for London and its citizens – fairly or unfairly – but the country can only thrive if the city is thriving as well. Politicians must fix London, or else they’ll find themselves with a broken Britain.