The London Rent Review
Annual rent inflation by English region — year to August 2026
London’s year so far — annual inflation, each month of 2026
London rents rose 3.5% in the year to August 2026, up from 3.0% at the last print and the fastest rate since October 2025. That is another half a point in a single print, on top of the 0.8 the month before: London has added 1.3 points in two months. The ONS says the rise in the UK figure — 3.8%, its highest since December — was mainly London’s doing. Two editions ago London was the number holding the national rate down; it is now the number lifting it. It still sits below England’s 4.0%, and it is still the third-lowest of the nine English regions — but only just. The East of England, at 3.5%, is level with it, and the South East, at 3.0%, is the only region clearly below.
The boroughs moved up together. Camden has now risen every month since February and is +1.0% on the year, from +0.5%; at £2,819, its average rent is 7.8% above its January low. Tower Hamlets stepped up to 3.5%, from 3.0%, and for the second month running sits exactly on the London average. Greenwich firmed again, to 6.1%, and is still the only one of our four above 5%. Newham, the borough we named last month as the one that could prove us wrong, did not: it steadied at 2.9%, and its monthly reading turned back to positive, if only just. The gap between our fastest and slowest borough is unchanged at 5.1 points; three of the four simply moved up by about half a point, and Newham barely moved.
Whether London holds 3.5% from here is arithmetic, not sentiment. The annual rate compares each month with the same month a year earlier, and last autumn’s comparison months were still rising — September 2025 by 0.34%, October by 0.20%, November by 0.29%. London has to beat those just to stand still: had rents not moved at all after August, the rate would print 3.2% at the next release and about 2.7% on November’s data. The soft comparisons — last December’s fall and January’s −0.67% — do not drop out until the new year. The last two months cleared the bar comfortably, at +0.63% and +0.64%. That is what a renewal is priced against: not the headline, but the borough, the bedroom count and the direction the borough is travelling in.
The spread the average hides — annual change by borough, year to August 2026
| The boroughs we work | Average | Annual | 1 bed | 2 bed | 3 bed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Greenwich | £1,995 | +6.1% | £1,563 | £1,932 | £2,242 |
| Tower Hamlets | £2,453 | +3.5% | £1,992 | £2,418 | £2,750 |
| Newham | £1,928 | +2.9% | £1,630 | £1,993 | £2,212 |
| Camden | £2,819 | +1.0% | £2,054 | £2,621 | £3,055 |
If your property is in inner, prime London, the recovery is now a trend, not a bounce: Camden has risen for seven straight months and its average rent is back above where it stood a year ago. A renewal held flat through last winter’s correction now has room above it. If it’s in an outer regeneration borough, read the two east London boroughs separately: Greenwich, at 6.1%, is still the fastest market on our patch, while Newham has not moved since June — £1,928 then, £1,928 now. The market that was running at 9% a year ago has stopped. Across London the average one-bed is now £1,760 and the average two-bed £2,232, a gap of £472 a month, which is why the bedroom count decides a valuation as much as the postcode does. Bring us the address and we’ll price the property, not the region.
The ONS print
The official record, from settled tenancies. Authoritative, but roughly six weeks behind the street. Everything above comes from here.
Asking rents
Where new listings are being pitched today. Weeks ahead of the ONS, but a wish, not a deal. We read it as a direction, not a level.
Our own ledger
What our own applicants and lets are doing this week — time-to-let, offers against asking, demand per viewing. Ours alone. Read in at sign-off.
| Edition | The call | Result | Against the print |
|---|---|---|---|
| No. 03 · August 2026 release | London annual rent inflation prints in the 2.9–3.5% band at the 16 September print (August data). | HELD | Printed 3.5% — on the top line of our band, and only by rounding: before rounding the figure was 3.52%. We score it as held because the ONS publishes to one decimal place and the band was set to one; in hundredths it would be a miss, and we would rather say so than not. The falsifier we named — Newham’s cooling spreading across outer east London — did not fire: Newham steadied at 2.9% and Greenwich rose to 6.1%. Two prints running, the top of our band has been too low. The band moves up this month. |
| No. 02 · July 2026 release | London annual rent inflation prints in the 2.1–2.6% band at the 19 August print (July data), with the risk to the upside. | MISSED | Printed 3.0% — 0.4 points above the top of our band. We had the direction right and the range too tight: we flagged the risk as upside, and the upside is what happened. The falsifier we named did not fire — we said a Camden roll-over would prove us wrong, and Camden did the opposite, crossing back above zero. What beat us was pace, not direction. The band widens this month. |
| No. 01 · June 2026 release | London annual rent inflation holds in the 1.9–2.3% band at the 22 July print (June data). | HELD | Printed 2.2% — inside the band, at the top of it. The band held; our stated risk skew did not. We flagged the risk as being to the downside, from Camden’s fall spreading into neighbouring prime. Camden did the opposite and rebounded to −0.5%. |
Sources & method
- All figures: ONS Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR) — the successor to the Index of Private Housing Rental Prices, an official statistic since 20 May 2026.
- Release covered: 16 September 2026. Reference period: data to August 2026. Next release: 21 October 2026.
- Geography: national to local-authority level; borough figures are the ONS series for each named London borough.
- Method: ONS estimates rents by hedonic double-imputation across the private rental stock. We report its figures and add our reading; we do not compute an index of our own.
- Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
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Previous editions — each kept at its own permanent URL, unaltered after sign-off:
No. 03 · August 2026 release — data to July 2026
No. 02 · July 2026 release — data to June 2026
No. 01 · June 2026 release — data to May 2026
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A permanent, dated edition. It will not be altered after sign-off except by a logged correction.