Renting in Chelmsford
Median asking rent · all sizes · 512 live listings · October 2026
Rent in Chelmsford before the rush.
The median asking rent for homes of all sizes in Chelmsford is £1,400 a month, from 512 live listings on five property sites (Dwellio, October 2026).
| Size | Median asking rent |
|---|---|
| 1-bed | £1,150/moasking · 201 listings · Oct 2026 |
| 2-bed | £1,500/moasking · 197 listings · Oct 2026 |
| 3-bed | £1,750/moasking · 78 listings · Oct 2026 |
| 4+ bed | £2,550/moasking · 26 listings · Oct 2026 |
| Room in a shared house | £735/moasking · 54 listings · Oct 2026 |
Asking rents from live listings on Rightmove, OnTheMarket, OpenRent, PrimeLocation, SpareRoom and Leaders · Updated . Weekly prices normalised to monthly. Each figure counts the live listings behind it; rooms are per room.
Cite this: Dwellio, “Median asking rent in Chelmsford by size, October 2026”, dwellio.co.uk/rent/chelmsford, updated 28 October 2026.
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: credit Dwellio and link to this page. How we measure this
Free to sign up · no card needed · upgrade when you’re ready
Renting in Chelmsford
Chelmsford currently has 566 rental listings on the property sites we track, 512 of them whole homes rather than rooms in shared houses. The median asking rent for homes of all sizes in Chelmsford is £1,400 a month, from 512 live listings on five property sites (Dwellio, October 2026). 117 new homes appeared in the past week alone. Among the houses and flats listed, roughly 36% are houses and the rest are flats. How we measure this
Rents vary sharply by postcode. Median asking rents for homes of all sizes run from £650 a month in CM14 (3 live listings) to £1,470 in CM1 (184 live listings), the cheapest and priciest postcode districts we track in Chelmsford (Dwellio, October 2026). For a wider view of where the UK’s cheapest rents are, see our guide to the cheapest cities to rent in the UK.
Dwellio watches Rightmove, OnTheMarket, OpenRent, PrimeLocation, SpareRoom and Leaders for Chelmsford around the clock — so a new listing reaches your inbox before most renters have refreshed the app. Here’s how our rental alerts work. Looking further afield? You can browse rentals in every UK city.
Found one you like? Agents in Chelmsford shortlist from the first applicants who look ready to go, so have your documents to hand before you enquire — our free tenant CV and offer letter generator writes both from a few details.
Rent by property size
Median monthly asking rent for each property size in Chelmsford, October 2026. Every figure carries the number of live listings behind it.
The median asking rent for a 1-bed in Chelmsford is £1,150 a month, 18% below the median for homes of all sizes, from 201 live listings on five property sites (Dwellio, October 2026).
The median asking rent for a 2-bed in Chelmsford is £1,500 a month, 7% above the median for homes of all sizes, from 197 live listings on five property sites (Dwellio, October 2026).
The median asking rent for a 3-bed in Chelmsford is £1,750 a month, 25% above the median for homes of all sizes, from 78 live listings on five property sites (Dwellio, October 2026).
The median asking rent for a 4+ bed home in Chelmsford is £2,550 a month, 82% above the median for homes of all sizes, from 26 live listings on five property sites (Dwellio, October 2026).
The median asking rent for a room in a shared house in Chelmsford is £735 a month, from 54 live listings (Dwellio, October 2026).
Medians exclude prices that fail our junk-listing floor. Room rents are per room, not per property. Each size needs at least 10 live listings. Studio figures are hidden for now: listings whose bedroom count we couldn’t read were being counted as studios. How we measure this
Free monthly digest
One email a month: what the median rent did, which postcodes moved, and how much came to market. Built from live listings across six UK property sites. No card, no account, unsubscribe anytime.
We’ll email you once to confirm. See our privacy policy.
Rent trend · ONS PIPR
The ONS average rent paid in Chelmsford is £1,439 a month, up 1.6% on a year earlier, across private tenancies of all sizes (Office for National Statistics, September 2026). The Office for National Statistics’ Price Index of Private Rents is the official series for rents being paid, including long-running tenancies; Dwellio’s figures above are asking rents.
Annual
+1.6%
vs a year earlier
Total change
+33%
since 2021
Source: Office for National Statistics · Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR). Updated monthly with a ~2-month lag. ONS uses Broad Rental Market Areas in Scotland — figures may aggregate beyond the city itself. How we measure this
Affordability · ONS ASHE
Renters in Chelmsford spend an estimated 48% of the local median gross salary on rent — based on the ONS Price Index of Private Rents and ASHE Table 8 (2025).
Median pay
£35,791/yr
Median gross annual pay for residents · ONS ASHE 2025
Rent burden
48%
Stretched — above the 30% rent-burden threshold.
Sources: Office for National Statistics — Price Index of Private Rents (latest month) and Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings Table 8.7a (median annual gross pay, place of residence). The 30% line is the conventional rent-burden threshold above which housing costs are considered to crowd out other essentials. How we measure this
Property types
56% of listings
32% of listings
11% of listings
1% of listings
Property mix · houses
Terraced houses make up 40% of the 157 houses currently advertised in Chelmsford.
Rent by postcode
Median monthly asking rent for homes of all sizes, grouped by postcode district, across 387 live listings in 5 districts (October 2026). Districts with fewer than 3 listings are skipped to avoid skew from a single luxury rental; rooms in shared houses are left out.
Cite this: Dwellio, “Median asking rent by postcode district in Chelmsford, October 2026”, dwellio.co.uk/rent/chelmsford, updated 28 October 2026.
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: credit Dwellio and link to this page. How we measure this
Features · Chelmsford
Live signal across 566 Chelmsford rentals scraped from six UK portals. Coverage varies by portal — figures below show the share of listings whose advertiser surfaces the feature.
Garden
68%
of 128 Chelmsford listings advertise a garden, patio, or terrace.
Parking
83%
of 183 Chelmsford listings include parking, a driveway, or a garage.
Live from the portals
117 homes came onto the Chelmsford rental market in the last 7 days across Rightmove, OnTheMarket, OpenRent, PrimeLocation, SpareRoom and Leaders. The freshest are below.
1 bed house
Rectory Lane, Chelmsford, Essex, CM1
1 bed house
Rectory Lane, Chelmsford, Essex, CM1
1 bed property
Queen Street, Warley, Brentwood, Essex, CM14
1 bed property
Wheatfield Way, Chelmsford, CM1
1 bed property
The Willows, Elgin Avenue CM1
1 bed property
Parkway, Chelmsford CM2
1 bed property
Vermeer Ride, Chelmsford CM1
1 bed property
Rainsford Road, Chelmsford CM1
3 bed property
Meadgate Avenue, Great Baddow, Chelmsford, Essex CM2
2 bed flat/apartment
2 bed flat/apartment
1 bed flat/apartment
1 bed flat/apartment
2 bed flat/apartment
1 bed flat/apartment
1 bed flat/apartment
2 bed flat/apartment
1 bed flat/apartment
2 bed house
1 bed terraced house
1 Bed Terraced House, Vermeer Ride, CM1
5 bed room
5 bed room
Room in a Shared House, Cumberland Crescent Chelmsford Essex, CM1
1 bed flat/apartment
1 Bed Flat, Moulsham St, CM2
5 bed house
Listings refresh as our scraper picks up new properties for Chelmsford. Click through to the source portal to enquire.
How it works
Four steps between you and never missing a good one in Chelmsford.
Pop in your budget, bed count and favourite corners of Chelmsford. A minute, tops.
Six major sites, checked every couple of minutes. Yes, on Sundays too.
The moment a match appears, email arrives before most people open the app.
Council tax · VOA 2024
Most Chelmsford homes sit in Band C. The weighted average works out close to Band C–D across 80,990 properties on the council-tax list.
Modal band
C
most common band
Mean band
3.75
≈ Band C–D
Stock
81k
80,990 properties
Source: HM Valuation Office Agency — Council Tax Stock of Properties (CTSOP1.0), extract dated 31 March 2024. Covers England and Wales; Scotland and Northern Ireland use separate band schemes and aren't included.
Broadband · Ofcom Connected Nations
79% of Chelmsford premises can already get full-fibre and 87% can get gigabit speeds — Ofcom Connected Nations residential coverage, July 2025.
Full fibre
79%
FTTP-ready premises
Gigabit
87%
≥1Gbit/s available
Superfast
98%
≥30Mbit/s available
Mean speed
456 Mbit/s
bucket-weighted estimate
Source: Ofcom Connected Nations residential coverage by Local Authority (Chelmsford), July 2025, covering 81,627 premises. Mean download speed is estimated from Ofcom speed-bucket midpoints.
Energy efficiency · DESNZ EPC
51% of Chelmsford homes hold a current EPC in bands A–C — the bands that meet the proposed 2030 minimum energy-efficiency standard for rented stock.
Bands A–C
51%
good energy-efficiency stock
Bands D–G
49%
below the proposed 2030 floor
Certificates
64k
64,119 EPCs
Source: DESNZ Energy Performance of Buildings register (replacement for opendatacommunities.org), domestic certificates filed under Chelmsford. Covers England and Wales — Scottish EPCs are held in a separate Scottish register and aren't included.
Schools · GIAS · DfE
9 open state-funded schools sit within one mile of the Chelmsford centroid. The five closest:
The Cathedral Church of England Voluntary Aided Primary School, Chelmsford
Primary · Voluntary aided school · CM1 1PA
King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford
Secondary · Academy converter · CM1 3SX
Trinity Road Primary School
Primary · Community school · CM2 6HS
Chelmsford County High School for Girls
Secondary · Academy converter · CM1 1RW
Our Lady Immaculate Catholic Primary School
Primary · Academy converter · CM2 0RG
Source: DfE Get Information About Schools (state-funded extract). Distances are straight-line from each school's postcode to the Chelmsford centroid. Ofsted ratings were removed from GIAS in January 2025 and aren't available here.
Area safety
Based on the latest police data (October 2026), Chelmsford has a typical crime rate compared to other UK cities. Across 36 of 36 postcode districts analysed, the median was 113 reported crimes per area. The most common category in Chelmsford is Anti-social behaviour, accounting for 0% of all incidents.
Chelmsford’s figures sit in line with the national picture. Safety varies by street as much as by city — every Dwellio alert includes the area’s data to help.
Data from data.police.uk, updated monthly. Contains public-sector information licensed under OGL v3.0.
Area breakdown
Street-level crime counts from data.police.uk for August 2026, covering a ~1 mile radius around each suburb centre. Figures are normalised per 1,000 residents so you can compare neighbourhoods fairly.
Most common: Violent crime (70) · pop. ~13,000
Most common: Violent crime (18) · pop. ~6,000
Most common: Violent crime (19) · pop. ~6,000
Most common: Violent crime (171) · pop. ~15,000
Most common: Shoplifting (32) · pop. ~17,000
Suburbs shown are representative populated areas; figures reflect street-level incidents within ~1 mile of each centre. Data from data.police.uk. Contains public-sector information licensed under OGL v3.0.
Where we search
We watch 6 property sites for rentals in Chelmsford.
Start getting alerts
Free to sign up — no card needed. We’ll email the moment a matching rental goes live in Chelmsford.
Dwellio
Alerts that land before the rush.
Frequently asked
The median asking rent for homes of all sizes in Chelmsford is £1,400 a month, from 512 live listings on five property sites (Dwellio, October 2026).
The median asking rent for a 1-bed in Chelmsford is £1,150 a month, 18% below the median for homes of all sizes, from 201 live listings on five property sites (Dwellio, October 2026).
The median asking rent for a 2-bed in Chelmsford is £1,500 a month, 7% above the median for homes of all sizes, from 197 live listings on five property sites (Dwellio, October 2026).
The median asking rent for a 3-bed in Chelmsford is £1,750 a month, 25% above the median for homes of all sizes, from 78 live listings on five property sites (Dwellio, October 2026).
The median asking rent for a 4+ bed home in Chelmsford is £2,550 a month, 82% above the median for homes of all sizes, from 26 live listings on five property sites (Dwellio, October 2026).
The median asking rent for a room in a shared house in Chelmsford is £735 a month, from 54 live listings (Dwellio, October 2026).
There are currently 566 rental properties available in Chelmsford, with 117 new listings added in the last 7 days.
Chelmsford has a typical crime rate compared to other UK cities, with a median of 113 reported crimes per postcode area (October 2026). The most common category is Anti-social behaviour. Data from data.police.uk.
The most commonly reported crime category in Chelmsford is Anti-social behaviour, based on data.police.uk records for October 2026.
Across East of England
How Chelmsford compares with the other 20 places we track in East of England — median asking rent from live listings, updated October 2026.
Every city, every region, one table: the UK rental index.
Cite this: Dwellio, “Median asking rent across East of England, October 2026”, dwellio.co.uk/rent/chelmsford, updated 28 October 2026.
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: credit Dwellio and link to this page. How we measure this
Compare across the UK
See how Chelmsford compares with the UK’s largest rental markets — median rents, area data and live alerts for each.
Renting guides
Guides on covering every portal and reaching new Chelmsford listings first.
Best property alert tools in the UK
How the main rental-alert services compare on speed and portal coverage.
Read guideBest alternatives to Rightmove
The UK portals worth searching beyond Rightmove — and what each one adds.
Read guideRightmove vs Zoopla vs OnTheMarket
What each portal covers, where the gaps are, and how to stop missing listings.
Read guideFree to sign up. No card needed. Cancel anytime.
Start free