Bristol wins crown of UK’s best city for house-sharers

New research has revealed that Bristol is the best city for house shares – a way of renting which is particularly popular among students and young professionals.

The study, carried out by broadband and utilities provider Glide, aimed to identify the best house share hotspots across the UK by ranking cities across a number of metrics. This included the number of house shares opportunities on offer, the cost of renting, university rankings, broadband speeds, the number of jobs advertised and local amenities.

From this, a top 10 was created to help those studying or looking to start their careers to find an appropriate location.

Bristol scored highest in the rankings, although it only stole top spot from Nottingham by one point. The city, popular among students and young professionals, ranked fifth for the number of house shares available (945), and also boasted high university rankings, 229 jobs advertised per 10,000 people and excellent WiFi and broadband speeds. Despite rents being third highest in the list, its strong performance on the other measures outside of affordability allowed it to claim first place.

Nottingham was very narrowly behind it in second place, buoyed by its consistency across the rankings. It scored well on job opportunities, broadband speeds and university rankings (all scoring in the top ten), but was let down by its relatively high rental costs.

The top three was completed by Birmingham. The comparably low rents on offer in the UK’s Second City helped it to score well, but it was let down by having only 145 job opportunities per 10,000 people currently advertised.

The rest of the top 10 included Manchester, Liverpool, Derby, Southampton, Brighton and Hove, Leicester and Portsmouth.

London, despite not making the top 10, was the best place for the variety of house share opportunities, with more than 19,000 rooms available. However, an average monthly rent six times higher than the most affordable city to live in (£3,278 pcm in the capital, compared to £499 in Bradford) dragged London down to 17th place.

London, Edinburgh, Manchester were the top three cities for university rankings, with the cities all boasting institutions in the top ten of the UK University Rankings 2019.

Meanwhile, on the measure of available job opportunities, York, Coventry and Derby were the top three ranked cities, with 470, 408 and 382 jobs available per 10,000 people.

“With so many students and young professionals choosing to house share, we wanted to find the best cities across the UK to suit their needs,” James Villarreal, director at Glide, said.

“When looking for a new house share, there are some important considerations to think about before signing, including location compared to your university campus or workplace, transport links and monthly bills,” he added.