Budgeting for London housing now genuinely requires two separate calculations

A Second Bill That Rarely Gets Budgeted Alongside The First

By Lowri Griffiths. The Ofgem price cap for the period from July to September this year sets a ceiling of £1,663 annually for a typical household paying by direct debit, working out to roughly £139 a month, a figure that functions as a genuine second housing cost sitting quietly alongside rent in every realistic London budget, yet one that most rent-focused cost of living conversation, including, I will admit, some of my own previous columns, tends to treat as a secondary afterthought rather than a core figure.

Layer that £139 onto even a relatively modest London rent, and the actual monthly housing outlay climbs meaningfully higher than the headline rent figure alone suggests, a gap that matters considerably more for renters in older housing stock with weaker insulation, where actual usage frequently runs well above the notional typical household the price cap is calculated against.

Why EPC Ratings Deserve More Weight In Flat Hunting

Property guides increasingly flag energy performance certificate ratings as a genuinely important factor for prospective tenants specifically because of this compounding effect, with a poorly insulated flat capable of pushing actual energy costs well beyond the capped average, turning what looks like a competitively priced rental into a considerably less competitive total monthly outlay once heating costs are factored in properly.

A Personal Observation From Comparing Two Flats Directly

Comparing energy bills between my current flat and a previous, older property with a noticeably worse EPC rating, the actual monthly difference ran to nearly sixty pounds despite broadly comparable square footage, a gap that, projected across a full year, meaningfully changes which of two similarly priced rentals actually represents the better financial choice.

The Real Number Requires Adding, Not Just Comparing Rent

Anyone comparing London rental options purely on headline monthly rent, without factoring in the specific property’s likely energy performance, is working from an incomplete number, one that the current price cap environment makes considerably more consequential than it might have seemed in previous years. Several letting agents have reportedly begun including EPC ratings more prominently in listings specifically in response to growing tenant awareness of this compounding cost, a small but genuinely useful shift in how properties get marketed.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/