For a number of years you could rent out a spare room tax free for up to £4,250 pa or £81.73 pw. But it hasn’t change or kept up with rental inflation.
Average property rentals are much higher. So although the tax break is welcome is it enough to make people interested in sharing an under occupied home? My hunch is it isn’t sufficient to release the millions of spare bedrooms the UK has.
So how many spare bedrooms could be released in East Dulwich, Southwark and London?
I’ve received the following back from a Freedom of Information report of the Inland Revenue.
They estimate 110,000 homes people are lodging at out of the UK’s 25 million homes – or under 1/2%.
Environmentally it makes more sense for people to share homes. Often two can live for the price of one!