Congratulations London, we're rent free for the year! Or we would be, if the way we paid for things was done in up-front blocks. A couple of months, Halifax (the bank, not the town) calculated the date (PDF) on which the average tenant in the UK would have earned enough to pay off their rent from their disposable income. A bit like Tax Freedom Day. For London, that day is 5 July.
Obviously this is just a bit of puffery gubbins, but what's most interesting is that for the rest of the country, the average Rental Freedom Day was 12 May; for the average renter in Northern Ireland it was 25 March. In fact, every other region paid off the rent long ago — the South East being the penultimate, on 19 May. Nearly seven weeks back. Welcome to the London rental market: hand over your wallet as you go.
Photo by David Abbs from the Londonist Flickr pool
