There is a good answer to this question and an honest limit to it, and most guides give you the first without the second. The good answer is that you can get close using official data for your own area, by property size, free. The honest limit is that no dataset — ours included — can tell you what your property will let for. Only a viewing does that. This page takes you as far as the data genuinely goes, then tells you plainly where it stops.
It is a benchmarking method. It shows you the official average rent for your local authority, broken down by bedroom count, and how to reason from that figure to a realistic asking rent for your property.
It is not a valuation of your property. We do not know your street, your condition, your kitchen, your parking, or what the flat two doors down actually achieved last month. Nobody can produce that from area statistics, and any tool that returns a confident number from a postcode alone is estimating, not measuring.
We say this at the top rather than the bottom because it changes how you should read everything below. The area figure is where you start. It is not the answer, and treating it as one is the most common way landlords misprice.
The Office for National Statistics publishes average private rent for every English local authority, monthly, in its Price Index of Private Rents. It is an official statistic built from actual rents being paid — not asking prices, not a survey of agents. It is the most reliable free starting point that exists, and it is the number to anchor on before you look at a single listing.
It will also differ from the rental figures quoted in the press, sometimes by a wide margin, because those are usually built from newly advertised lets rather than the whole rented stock. That gap is predictable rather than mysterious — why the rental indices disagree sets out what each one counts.
Take Derby as the worked example. The average private rent across all property sizes is £855 a month (June 2026), +1.8% over twelve months.
That figure only means something next to its neighbours:
Knowing your area sits below or above its region is the difference between pricing to your town and pricing to a national headline you read somewhere. National averages are the least useful number in this exercise.
We publish this for all 294 English local authorities — every one with the same breakdown, sourced and dated, free and without an account. Find yours before you go further, or see the full Derby page to know what you are looking at.
The all-sizes average hides the thing you actually need. Here is Derby broken down by bedroom count, June 2026:
That is a £690 spread between the smallest and largest categories — inside one local authority, in the same month, from the same official source. The all-sizes figure of £855 describes none of those properties particularly well.
This is the clearest demonstration of the boundary we opened with. If a single number cannot survive being split by bedroom count, it certainly cannot survive being applied to your specific property. Use the row that matches your property, not the headline.
The bedroom-level average is the middle of a real range. Your property sits somewhere in it. These are the things that move it, in roughly the order they tend to matter:
Exact location within the area. A local authority is not a neighbourhood. Two streets a mile apart can differ more than two towns. Catchment, transport links and the walk to a station do more work here than anything else on this list.
Condition and specification. A recently refitted kitchen and bathroom is the single most visible difference at a viewing. Tired but clean sits mid-range; dated fittings sit below it.
Energy efficiency. Running costs are part of what a tenant is agreeing to pay, and an EPC is on the listing. This one is also a compliance question, not only a pricing one — see the EPC section below.
Parking and outside space. Off-street parking is decisive in some areas and irrelevant in others. Know which yours is before you price for it.
Furnished or unfurnished. Furnished typically achieves more per month, but it is not free money: you are buying, insuring, maintaining and eventually replacing the contents, and you are narrowing your tenant pool.
Pets. Accepting pets widens your applicant pool. Whether it justifies a higher rent depends on your local market.
We are deliberately not giving you percentages for any of these. You will find guides that tell you a refitted kitchen adds a specific figure or that furnished commands a precise uplift. Those numbers are almost never sourced, because the data to source them at local level does not exist publicly. We would rather tell you the direction honestly than a number confidently.
This is the step the data cannot replace, and we have no reason to talk you out of it. Local letting agents do this every week, they know what actually achieved rather than what was advertised, and the appraisal is free. Get more than one.
The reason to get several is that an agent's valuation is also a pitch. An agent who wants your instruction has some incentive to be optimistic about what they can achieve, and an agent with a full book has some incentive to be conservative about the effort. Neither is dishonest; both are worth triangulating.
This is where your groundwork pays. Walk in already knowing the ONS figure for your area and bedroom count. Then the useful question is not “what will it let for?” but “you have said £X against an area average of £772 for this size — what specifically about this property justifies the difference?” A good agent will have a concrete answer: a street, a recent comparable let, a spec difference. An agent who cannot answer it has given you a number, not a valuation.
Ask what they have actually let, not listed, in the last three months within half a mile. Achieved rents are the evidence; asking prices are an opening position — a distinction GOV.UK itself draws when ranking evidence for a rent tribunal.
Gross rental yield is simple arithmetic on two numbers you already have:
gross yield % = (monthly rent × 12) ÷ property value × 100
You will read almost everywhere that 6–8% is the benchmark for a good yield. That figure is repeated without a source in guide after guide, and it does not describe English local authorities.
We publish gross yield for every English local authority. In the May 2026 edition, across 294 authorities, the median gross yield was 4.45%. Only 12 reached 6%. 0 reached 8%. The highest was Newcastle upon Tyne at 6.98%; the lowest, Derbyshire Dales at 2.82%.
The important caveat, because the correction is only useful with it: those are area averages — average rent over average house price for a whole local authority. An individual property can and does beat its area's average, sometimes substantially, by being cheaper to buy than the local mean or by letting for more than it. So 6–8% is not impossible for a specific property. What the data shows is that it is not the normal outcome of buying an average property in an average English area, which is how the rule of thumb is usually deployed.
Use yield as a sanity check on a purchase, not as a target to reverse-engineer a rent from. Setting rent above what the local market accepts to hit a yield number produces a void, not a yield — and an empty property yields nothing at all. See the full index →
Almost every “how much rent should I charge” guide online treats this as one question. Since 1 May 2026 in England, it is two, and the second one is governed.
Setting the rent on a new tenancy. You are free to ask what you like. The market decides whether you get it, and a void month costs more than most landlords save by holding out for the top of their range.
Raising the rent on an existing tenancy. This is now the Section 13 procedure and nothing else — rent review clauses in the agreement no longer provide a route around it. You can increase once in any twelve-month period, with at least two months’ notice, served on Form 4A, and the increase is capped at market rate. Your tenant can refer it to the First-tier Tribunal, and since that change the tribunal cannot set the rent higher than you proposed — only the same or lower.
That asymmetry should change how you price an increase. An over-reached figure has no upside: either it goes unchallenged and damages the tenancy, or it is referred and dragged back down while you collect the old rent throughout. A defensible number, served properly, is worth more than an ambitious one. How Section 13 and the tribunal work →
Two related duties worth knowing while you are setting terms: you can require at most one month’s rent in advance (or 28 days’ where the rental period is shorter), and every advertisement must state a proposed rent — inviting or accepting offers above the advertised figure is prohibited. What the Renters’ Rights Act requires →
And on energy: privately rented homes must reach EPC C or equivalent by 1 October 2030 under the government’s confirmed policy, with a dated route to compliance that closes on 1 October 2029. If you are budgeting a refurbishment to lift the rent, that is the deadline to spend against at the same time. What EPC C by 2030 costs →
Everything above gets you to a defensible range. It cannot get you to a figure, and here is precisely why.
It has never seen your property. ONS publishes an average across every private rental in the area. Yours is one of them, or will be, and it sits somewhere in a distribution the average deliberately flattens.
It is a lagging measure. Official statistics describe a period that has already closed. In a fast-moving local market the current asking level can sit ahead of the last published figure.
It cannot see demand this week. How many people are looking in your area, at your size, right now is not in any dataset we publish. It is in an agent's inbox.
So: use the data to know the ground you are standing on and to challenge a number that does not fit it. Use a viewing — yours or an agent's — to set the number itself. That division of labour is the whole method, and no calculator changes it.
1. Look up your own local authority. Find the figure for your bedroom count, not the all-sizes headline. All 294 English local authorities →
2. Check where the area sits against its region. It tells you whether local demand is running ahead of or behind the wider market.
3. Place your property honestly in the range. Condition, location within the area, parking, EPC. Be as unsentimental as a tenant comparing three listings will be.
4. Get two or three free agent valuations and ask each what specifically justifies their number against the published area figure.
5. Price for occupancy, not for the top of the range. One void month at £855 costs more than a modest discount does across a year.
Can you tell me what my property will rent for? No, and neither can any tool that only knows your postcode. We publish the official average for your local authority by bedroom count, which is the right starting point. The final figure comes from someone seeing the property.
Where does your rent data come from? The ONS Price Index of Private Rents, an official statistic covering actual private rents. Every figure on our area pages is named, dated and linked to the source.
Should I use the all-sizes average or the bedroom figure? The bedroom figure, always. In Derby the gap between the smallest and largest categories is £690 a month, so the all-sizes number describes almost nobody.
Is 6–8% really a good rental yield? As an area average it is unusual, not typical: across 294 English local authorities in May 2026 the median gross yield was 4.45%, 12 reached 6% and 0 reached 8%. An individual property can beat its area's average, so the figure is not impossible — but it is not the normal result of buying an average property in an average area.
How often can I put the rent up? Once in any twelve-month period, by Section 13 notice on Form 4A, with at least two months’ notice, capped at market rate. Rent review clauses no longer provide an alternative route.
Can the tribunal raise my rent above what I asked for? No. Since 1 May 2026 the determined rent may be lower than or the same as the figure in your notice, never higher.
Should I furnish the property to charge more? Furnished generally achieves a higher monthly rent, but you are buying, insuring, maintaining and replacing the contents, and narrowing your tenant pool. Treat it as a business decision with costs on both sides rather than a straightforward uplift.
How much rent in advance can I ask for? At most one month’s rent, or 28 days’ where the rental period is shorter than a month, once the tenancy agreement is signed and before it starts.
Start with the real figure for your own area.
Average private rent by local authority and bedroom count, with the 24-month trend and comparison to region and England — official ONS data, sourced and dated, for all 294 English local authorities.
Find your area →Free. No account needed.