The June 2026 Snapshot
The Dwellio UK Rental Index for June 2026 puts the median asking rent at £2,050 a month in London, £1,285 in Manchester, £1,000 in Birmingham, and £845 in Sheffield. Across the 200 cities Dwellio tracks on six portals, median rents were broadly stable through the second quarter of 2026, echoing Office for National Statistics data showing annual rent growth has cooled to 3.5 per cent. London alone saw roughly 1,879 new rental listings in the week to 8 June 2026 — a reminder that supply is still moving fast even as price growth slows.
The Dwellio UK Rental Index is a monthly snapshot of what it actually costs to rent across the UK, built from the live listings Dwellio monitors across Rightmove, OpenRent, OnTheMarket, SpareRoom, PrimeLocation, and Leaders. This edition covers June 2026. It reports median asking rents by city, how many new listings appear each week, and where the market sits after a year of cooling rent growth.
What is the median rent in UK cities in June 2026?
In June 2026 the median asking rent ranges from £845 a month in Sheffield to £2,050 in London among the largest UK rental markets. The table below shows the fifteen cities with the most active listings in the Index, with the overall median alongside one- and two-bedroom medians, plus the number of new listings detected in the week to 8 June 2026.
| City | Median (pcm) | 1-bed | 2-bed | New listings (7 days) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| London | £2,050 | £1,750 | £2,450 | 1,879 |
| Manchester | £1,285 | £1,100 | £1,350 | 808 |
| Birmingham | £1,000 | £910 | £1,200 | 835 |
| Leeds | £990 | £825 | £1,100 | 632 |
| Bristol | £1,400 | £1,075 | £1,500 | 547 |
| Glasgow | £1,100 | £875 | £1,195 | 561 |
| Nottingham | £900 | £775 | £1,000 | 409 |
| Edinburgh | £1,425 | £1,100 | £1,400 | 466 |
| Sheffield | £845 | £775 | £996 | 491 |
| Liverpool | £875 | £800 | £1,000 | 409 |
| Cardiff | £1,100 | £900 | £1,200 | 414 |
| Leicester | £845 | £725 | £995 | 308 |
| Brighton | £1,495 | £1,100 | £1,650 | 376 |
| Reading | £1,295 | £1,075 | £1,500 | 321 |
| Derby | £760 | £695 | £900 | 255 |
London is the clear outlier, with a median asking rent more than twice that of the cheapest large northern cities. Sheffield, Leicester, and Derby anchor the affordable end of the major-city table, while Brighton, Edinburgh, and Bristol are the priciest markets outside the capital. The gap between a one-bedroom and a two-bedroom property is widest in London, at £700 a month, and narrowest in the northern cities where it sits closer to £200.
Are UK rents still rising in 2026?
Rents are still rising, but the pace has cooled sharply from the peaks of recent years. The Office for National Statistics recorded average UK private rent growth of 3.5 per cent in the year to April 2026, well above general inflation but a marked step down from the double-digit increases of 2022 and 2023.
Dwellio's own city-level data tells the same story. Across the major markets in the Index, median asking rents were broadly stable through the second quarter of 2026. The clearest upward move was in London, where the median edged from around £1,950 in March to £2,050 in June, and in several northern cities — Leeds, Liverpool, and Sheffield among them — where demand continues to outpace a thin supply of stock. Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, and Cardiff held flat across the quarter.
The takeaway is not that the market has fixed itself. It is that the era of runaway double-digit rent rises has given way to slower, more uneven growth. We set out the longer view in our guide to the UK rental market in 2026.
How many new rental listings appear each week?
Hundreds of new rental listings appear in every major UK city each week, which is why search speed still matters even in a cooling market. In the week to 8 June 2026, Dwellio detected roughly 1,879 new listings in London, 835 in Birmingham, 808 in Manchester, and 632 in Leeds across the six portals it monitors.
Two things follow from that volume. First, no single portal carries all of it — landlords and agents list across different sites, so a renter watching only one portal sees only part of the weekly flow. Second, the best-priced listings still attract enquiries within hours of going live, and since 1 May 2026 renters can no longer offer above the advertised rent to jump the queue. With the bidding ban in the Renters' Rights Act in force, being early is one of the few legal advantages left. Speed, not money, is now the lever.
Which UK cities are cheapest and most expensive?
The cheapest UK cities to rent in June 2026 are clustered in the north of England and along the coast: Hartlepool leads at a £575 monthly median, followed by Grimsby at £595 and Darlington at £625. The most expensive markets sit in London's commuter belt and the Oxford-Cambridge arc — Epsom at around £1,748, Maidenhead at £1,675, Oxford at £1,600, and Cambridge at £1,400 — with London itself far ahead of all of them.
Absolute rent only tells half the story; what matters is rent relative to local pay. We mapped the full affordability picture, including rent burden as a share of local salary, broadband, and energy efficiency, in our guide to the cheapest UK cities to rent in 2026.
What does June 2026 mean for renters?
For renters, June 2026 is a marginally easier market than a year ago, but only marginally. Rent growth has slowed, more stock is reaching the market in most cities, and the Renters' Rights Act has removed the pressure to bid above asking. Those are real improvements over the frenzy of 2022 to 2024.
What has not changed is the maths of competition. Demand still outstrips supply in every major city, the best listings still go quickly, and the renter who sees a property first and applies first wins more often than the one who waits for a portal's batched alert email. The market has cooled at the top line while staying intensely competitive at the level of any individual good listing.
Dwellio monitors all six major UK portals continuously and alerts you within minutes of a matching listing, rather than the hours a portal's own email digest can take. In a market where speed is the last legal advantage, that is the gap worth closing.
Methodology and Sources
- Rental data: Dwellio's continuous scrape of Rightmove, OpenRent, OnTheMarket, SpareRoom, PrimeLocation, and Leaders, covering 200 UK cities. Snapshot computed for June 2026.
- Median rents: the midpoint of advertised asking rents, normalised to a monthly (pcm) basis, for active listings in each city. Medians describe the middle of the captured sample and are robust to how completely each portal is scraped.
- Listing counts: the active and new-listing figures reflect the properties Dwellio tracks. In the very largest markets the live total exceeds what a single scrape pass captures, so counts should be read as a floor, not a complete census of the market.
- National comparison: Office for National Statistics, Private rent and house prices, UK, April 2026 release.
City-level detail, including suburb breakdowns and live listings, is browsable on Dwellio's per-city pages, for example London, Manchester, and Sheffield.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the median rent in the UK in June 2026?
There is no single UK rent figure, because rents vary enormously by city. The Office for National Statistics put the average UK private rent at £1,381 a month in April 2026. Dwellio's city-level data for June 2026 shows medians ranging from around £575 a month in Hartlepool to £2,050 in London, with Manchester at £1,285 and Birmingham at £1,000.
Which UK city has the most expensive rent in June 2026?
London has the highest median asking rent in the Dwellio UK Rental Index for June 2026, at £2,050 a month. Outside London, the most expensive markets are its commuter belt — Epsom at around £1,748 and Maidenhead at £1,675 — and university cities such as Oxford at £1,600 and Cambridge at £1,400.
Are UK rents going up or down in 2026?
Rents are still rising, but much more slowly than in recent years. The Office for National Statistics recorded average UK private rent growth of 3.5 per cent in the year to April 2026, down from the double-digit increases of 2022 and 2023. Across the major cities Dwellio tracks, median asking rents were broadly stable through the second quarter of 2026, with modest increases in London and several northern cities.
How often is the Dwellio UK Rental Index updated?
The Dwellio UK Rental Index is recomputed every month from continuous scraping of six UK rental portals: Rightmove, OpenRent, OnTheMarket, SpareRoom, PrimeLocation, and Leaders. The figures in this edition are the June 2026 snapshot, covering 200 UK cities.
How many new rental listings appear in London each week?
Dwellio detected roughly 1,879 new rental listings in London in the week to 8 June 2026, across the six portals it monitors. Manchester saw around 808, Birmingham 835, and Leeds 632. These counts reflect the listings Dwellio tracks and undercount the very largest markets, so treat them as a floor rather than a total.
Where does the Dwellio UK Rental Index data come from?
The Index is built from Dwellio's continuous scraping of six UK rental portals. Rents are medians of advertised asking rents, normalised to a monthly basis, for active listings in each city. Median rents describe the midpoint of captured listings and are robust to scrape coverage; listing counts undercount the biggest markets and should be read as a floor.
Track the Market in Real Time
The Index is a monthly snapshot, but the rental market moves every day. Dwellio watches Rightmove, OpenRent, OnTheMarket, SpareRoom, PrimeLocation, and Leaders continuously and sends an alert within minutes of a property matching your criteria — in any of the 200 cities in this report. The 14-day free trial does not require a card, and it is £9.99 a month after that if you choose to continue.
Set up your first alert and the market comes to you.