September 2026: median asking rent across the 218 UK towns and cities Dwellio tracks is £1,050 a month, from 629,602 live listings — London £2,400, Edinburgh and Bristol £1,500, Manchester £1,350, Birmingham and Cardiff £1,150, Leeds £1,075. Month on month, asking rents are flat in 153 of the 208 markets with 300+ listings. The ONS puts the average rent actually being paid at £1,393 for July 2026, up 3.7% on the year.
This is a monthly report built from what is advertised, not from surveys or lagged tenancy data: the live rental listings Dwellio monitors across Rightmove, OnTheMarket, OpenRent, SpareRoom, PrimeLocation and Leaders, deduplicated across portals and summarised per town. The June edition is here; the always-current table is the UK rental index. The full September dataset is downloadable further down this page.
Three things the September numbers say
1. Asking rents have stopped rising — almost everywhere
Of the 208 towns and cities with at least 300 live listings, 153 show exactly the same median asking rent as in August. Thirty are up, twenty-five are down, and the median month-on-month move is 0.0%. London (£2,400), Manchester (£1,350), Birmingham (£1,150), Leeds (£1,075), Glasgow (£1,195), Bristol and Edinburgh (£1,500), Liverpool (£950) and Sheffield (£935) are all unchanged on the month.
That is not a contradiction of the ONS's 3.7% annual growth. The ONS measures rents being paid across all tenancies, and contracted rents catch up with earlier asking-rent rises as tenancies renew — so the official series keeps climbing for months after the market stops asking for more. Asking rents are the leading indicator, and in September they are level.
2. Cuts are routine, and a few markets are moving down
Among the listings Dwellio tracks for its users' searches, 3,244 price reductions were recorded in the 30 days to 11 September. Most were small — an average of 4.8%, about £82 a month — but 1,223 (38%) were 5% or more and 169 were 10% or more.
At town level the largest falls with a meaningful sample were Belfast (−4.8%, £1,050 to £1,000, 1,883 listings), Hammersmith (−3.7%, £3,150 to £3,033), Aberystwyth (−3.2%), Ayr (−2.9%), Oxford (−2.7%, £1,850 to £1,800, 6,200 listings), Beverley (−2.6%), Warrington (−2.6%) and Hartlepool (−2.3%).
3. Where rents are still climbing: towns under £1,000
The month's risers are mostly Midlands and northern towns with medians under £1,000: Harrogate +3.6% (£1,206 to £1,250), Grantham +3.3%, Wigan +3.0% (£825 to £850), Kidderminster +2.9%, Walsall +2.8% (£900 to £925), Redditch +2.7%, Tamworth +2.5%. The only London borough moving up is Ealing, +2.4% to £2,100.
The pattern matches the ONS regional picture for July: the North East (+6.3%), North West (+5.7%) and Yorkshire (+5.0%) lead annual growth in rents paid, while London (+3.0%) and the South East (+2.9%) trail.
Median asking rent by region
Median of the town medians in each region (towns with 100+ listings), beside the ONS's regional average rent paid and its annual change for July 2026.
| Region | Asking rent, Sep 2026 (Dwellio) | Rent paid, Jul 2026 (ONS) | ONS annual change |
|---|---|---|---|
| London | £2,700 (19 boroughs) · £2,400 London-wide | £2,317 | +3.0% |
| South East | £1,350 | £1,419 | +2.9% |
| East of England | £1,200 | £1,285 | +3.7% |
| South West | £1,150 | £1,236 | +4.5% |
| West Midlands | £950 | £974 | +4.5% |
| East Midlands | £925 | £918 | +3.6% |
| Wales | £900 | £843 | +4.5% |
| North West | £895 | £965 | +5.7% |
| Scotland | £850 | £1,016 | +1.7% |
| Yorkshire and the Humber | £829 | £864 | +5.0% |
| North East | £712 | £783 | +6.3% |
| Northern Ireland | £1,000 (Belfast) | not published | — |
Two measures, two questions: the Dwellio column is what a renter searching this month will be quoted; the ONS column is what tenants across all tenancies are paying. Where asking is below paid — Scotland, the North West — new lets are being advertised under the stock average; where asking is above — Wales, the East Midlands — the next round of renewals has further to rise.
The 13 largest cities
| City | Median | 1-bed | 2-bed | 3-bed | Live listings | vs August |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| London | £2,400 | £1,850 | £2,500 | £3,000 | 58,009 | 0.0% |
| Edinburgh | £1,500 | £1,150 | £1,450 | £2,150 | 11,680 | 0.0% |
| Bristol | £1,500 | £1,100 | £1,550 | £1,800 | 13,290 | 0.0% |
| Manchester | £1,350 | £1,100 | £1,390 | £1,600 | 21,999 | 0.0% |
| Glasgow | £1,195 | £895 | £1,200 | £1,650 | 12,027 | 0.0% |
| Birmingham | £1,150 | £950 | £1,250 | £1,326 | 20,554 | 0.0% |
| Cardiff | £1,150 | £900 | £1,250 | £1,450 | 9,611 | 0.0% |
| Leeds | £1,075 | £850 | £1,100 | £1,300 | 15,197 | 0.0% |
| Newcastle | £1,050 | £826 | £925 | £1,182 | 1,436 | 0.0% |
| Belfast | £1,000 | £776 | £1,200 | £1,350 | 1,883 | −4.8% |
| Nottingham | £975 | £795 | £1,000 | £1,200 | 12,040 | −0.5% |
| Liverpool | £950 | £802 | £1,000 | £1,150 | 10,398 | 0.0% |
| Sheffield | £935 | £800 | £1,000 | £1,100 | 10,016 | 0.0% |
Most and least expensive
Highest medians are all London boroughs: Westminster £3,857, Camden £3,200, Fulham £3,100, Hammersmith £3,033, Islington £2,950, Wandsworth £2,925, Hackney and Southwark £2,850, Lambeth £2,750, Tower Hamlets £2,700. The cheapest way into the capital is Croydon at £1,650, then Bromley £1,800 and Lewisham £1,950.
Outside London, the top of the table is the commuter belt and the university cities: Epsom and Oxford £1,800, Maidenhead £1,701, Bath £1,645, Guildford £1,625, Cambridge and St Albans £1,600, Brighton £1,595, Watford and Woking £1,550.
Lowest medians (300+ listings): Hartlepool £625, Grimsby £650, Ayr and Darlington £675, Burnley £678, Perth and Redcar £695, Middlesbrough and Sunderland £700, Blackpool £710. For the longer list see the cheapest cities to rent in the UK.
Supply
Dwellio counted 629,602 live rental listings across the 218 towns and cities on 11 September, after removing the same property advertised on more than one portal, and 25,484 new listings in the previous seven days. That is the advertised market, not the whole one — a property let through an agent's own website or by word of mouth never appears on a portal — and it is why any "total number of rentals in the UK" figure built by adding the portals together is wrong, as we set out in how many UK rental properties are available. Month-to-month changes in the listing total are not reported here because Dwellio's coverage is still expanding; the per-town medians are comparable, the totals are not yet.
The data
The full September table — 218 towns and cities, median asking rent, 1-, 2- and 3-bed medians, live listings, month-on-month change, and a link to each town's page — is here:
Download uk-asking-rent-2026-09.csv
It is published under CC BY 4.0: use it in articles, research or your own tools, attribute it to the Dwellio UK Asking-Rent Index and link to dwellio.co.uk. Each town also has a live page with the same figures, the ONS series for its area, rents by postcode and the latest listings — for example average rent in Manchester.
How the numbers are built
- Source: live rental listings on Rightmove, OnTheMarket, OpenRent, SpareRoom, PrimeLocation and Leaders, checked continuously.
- Deduplication: the same property advertised on several portals is counted once (address, outcode, price and bedroom matching).
- Medians, not means: for each town, the median advertised rent of active whole-property listings, with weekly prices normalised to monthly and prices below a junk-listing floor excluded. Rooms are reported separately on each town's page and are not in the headline median.
- National figure: the median of the 218 town medians — a "typical town" number, not a listing-weighted one, so London's 58,009 listings do not dominate it.
- Month-on-month: the September median against the August snapshot for the same town. Because asking rents cluster on round numbers, a town can show 0.0% for several months and then step £25.
- ONS comparison: the Office for National Statistics Price Index of Private Rents, July 2026 release (published 19 August 2026), which measures rents paid across all private tenancies, including long-standing ones.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average rent in the UK in September 2026?
It depends which rent you mean. The median asking rent across the 218 UK towns and cities Dwellio tracks is £1,050 a month in September 2026, from 629,602 live listings. The Office for National Statistics puts the average rent actually being paid across all UK tenancies at £1,393 a month for July 2026, up 3.7 per cent on the year. Asking rents describe what is on the market today; the ONS figure includes long-standing tenancies at older rents.
Are UK rents going up or down in September 2026?
Asking rents are flat. Of the 208 towns and cities with at least 300 live listings, 153 show no change in median asking rent since August, 30 are up and 25 are down, and the median month-on-month move is 0.0 per cent. Rents being paid are still rising — the ONS recorded 3.7 per cent annual growth for July 2026 — because contracted rents catch up with earlier asking-rent increases at renewal.
Which UK city has the most expensive rent in September 2026?
London, with a median asking rent of £2,400 a month across 58,009 live listings. Within London, Westminster is highest at £3,857, then Camden at £3,200, Fulham at £3,100 and Hammersmith at £3,033. Outside London the most expensive markets are Epsom and Oxford, both at £1,800, followed by Maidenhead at £1,701 and Bath at £1,645.
Where is the cheapest place to rent in the UK in September 2026?
Hartlepool, with a median asking rent of £625 a month across 1,385 live listings. Grimsby is £650, Ayr and Darlington £675, Burnley £678, Perth and Redcar £695, and Middlesbrough and Sunderland £700. All are towns with at least 300 live listings, so the medians are not small-sample noise.
How many rental listings had a price cut in the last month?
Dwellio recorded 3,244 price reductions in the 30 days to 11 September 2026 on the listings it tracks for its users' searches. The typical cut was small — an average of 4.8 per cent, about £82 a month — but 1,223 of them were 5 per cent or more and 169 were 10 per cent or more.
How is the Dwellio UK asking-rent report calculated?
From the live rental listings Dwellio monitors across Rightmove, OnTheMarket, OpenRent, SpareRoom, PrimeLocation and Leaders. For each of 218 towns and cities it takes the median advertised rent of active whole-property listings, normalised to a monthly figure where weekly was advertised, after removing cross-portal duplicates and prices below a junk-listing floor. The national figure is the median of those city medians. It is an asking-rent measure, not a measure of rents being paid.
Can I reuse the data in this report?
Yes. The full city table is published as a CSV under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Use it in articles, research or your own tools; attribute it to the Dwellio UK Asking-Rent Index and link to dwellio.co.uk.
Get the listing before the price moves
A flat market is the one to be quick in: cuts arrive on properties that have sat unlet, and the good ones at the right price still go in days. Dwellio watches all six portals for the search you set and emails or pushes a match within minutes — start free, no card needed. The October report will be published in the second week of October.