Preston and Lancaster 'among top 10 most affordable places to rent'

Data collated by OpenPropertyGroup.com looked at the average cost of rent versus the average wage in the area.

Durham in the North East was rated the most affordable city, followed by Liverpool in second and Lancaster third.

Preston was tenth on the list.

They found the average rental price in Lancaster was £555, meaning folk there spend 24 per cent of their gross salary on average on rent.

In Preston, the average rental price was £547, which the analysts reckon is 27 per cent of the average local salary, £24,380.

At the other end of the scale, Brighton and Bath have been crowned the most expensive cities to rent in. In both Brighton and Bath, renters will be expected to spend 52 per cent of your salary on rental payments.

It is closely followed by Oxford, where tenants will, on average, spend 51 per cent of their salary towards rent.

The researchers suggest that the data indicates rent is unaffordable in over half of the cities in England!

To maintain an adequate standard of living, experts advise that tenants shouldn’t spend more than 30 per cent of their gross income salary on rent.

Open Property Group managing director, Jason Harris-Cohen, said: “It is noteworthy that the North/South divide is highly evident, demonstrating the low rental values in all cities North of Warwick.

“I am quite surprised with the least affordable and I wouldn’t of expected Portsmouth to appear. Despite the sales market being challenging, the rental market has remained buoyant and constrained availability of stock. Hopefully we will continue to see wage growth over the coming years and assuming that the rental values remain static, we will find that the % of income spent on rent is more affordable.”