Recent data has shown that 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% of their gross income salary on rent.

Using average income salary and rental price data for cities, it can reveal that Durham is the most affordable city to rent in England, with just 23% of your monthly salary going towards rent.

The northern cities continue to top the charts with Lancaster and Liverpool only requiring you to spend 24% of your salary on rent.

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, you will be expected to spend 52% of your salary on rental payments. It is closely followed by Oxford, where you will, on average, spend 51% of your salary towards 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 in the least affordable section.

“Despite the sales market being challenging, the rental market has remained buoyant and constrained availability of stock, thus keeping prices strong.

“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.“