Dundee is the most affordable city in Scotland to rent a room, a new survey has found.
The city came seventh in the UK overall with the typical room rent £300 per calendar month or 20% of residents’ average monthly income of £1500.
It was the only Scottish city to be named in the study carried out by the flat-sharing website Easyroommate.co.uk.
The cheapest place to rent a room is in Newport, South Wales, when compared with take-home pay.
At the other end of the scale Poole has beaten London to be named as the least affordable place to rent a room.
Across the UK, the typical room rent is £365 per calendar month, 21.9% of the average UK net monthly income of £1,665.
Typical rents in Newport stand at £280, £85 cheaper than the national average and costing just over 18% of take home pay.
Flat sharers in Poole, Dorset, face forking out £398 every month, representing 26.8% of their salaries, while Londoners pay an average of £520, or 26.2% of their net monthly income.
Blackpool in Lancashire came fourth on the ”least affordable” towns and cities list, with typical rents standing at £325, swallowing up a quarter of incomes.
Yorkshire could be considered the cheapest county for tenants, with cities including York, Leeds and Sheffield making the top 10.
Jonathan Moore, director of Easyroommate.co.uk, said: ”With the economy’s recovery looking sluggish at best, and the ongoing mortgage famine driving growing demand for limited rental space, rent increases will continue to outstrip salary growth for the foreseeable future.”
The survey, which used Office for National Statistics data and 15,000 room adverts listed on the Easyroommate website, found that flat share rents are rising at nearly 5% per year.
This compared with annual pay growth of 2.8%, meaning flat sharers face spending 22.9% of their take home wage on rents next year.
Renters could be forced to part with a third of their income by 2020 if current trends continue, the report found.