Proportion Of Income Spent Renting

CAN1976

you say it includes bills, so 40% wouldn't worry me too much.

princeofpounds

There used to be a rule of thumb that around 1/3rd of net was right.

However, that seems to have become very outdated. I know a lot of people in their late 20s in the south east. Every single one of them (barring the ones who had daddy buy a property) are shelling out 40-50% of net on rent. Life just became very expensive in the last decade. You can't buy, you have to compete with LHA claimants and their free money, and also in this part of the country the hard-working and sometimes not so hard-working immigrants from the EU and elsewhere (I don't hate them, but they do compete for housing).