How much rent can your salary actually carry? See the maximum by the classic 30% rule, a 35% stretch, and the formula letting agents use to approve you — from your real take-home pay, 2026/27.
Does this apply to you? Tick the box only if you took a Postgraduate Loan for a Master's or PhD in England or Wales — it repays 6% above £21,000 on top of any plan above. Undergraduate-only? Leave it unticked.
The 30% rule is the budgeting classic: keep rent at or under 30% of your take-home pay and the rest of life — bills, food, transport, savings — stays manageable. At 35% things get tight; past 40% most budgets start to creak, especially in London where transport and council tax are heavy.
The letting agent's rule is a hard gate, not advice: most UK agents and referencing companies require gross annual income of at least 30× the monthly rent (some use 2.5× the annual rent — the same thing). On £35,000 that's a maximum rent of £1,167 a month regardless of your actual budget. If you're just under, a guarantor or a larger deposit sometimes bridges it.
Rent is only the start: add council tax (often £150–£250+ a month in London), energy, water and broadband before you judge a place affordable. What a salary leaves after tax in the first place is in our tax calculator.
Your take-home is about £2,393 a month, so the 30% rule gives roughly £718 a month, and 35% about £838. A letting agent using the standard 30× rule would approve you up to £1,167 a month — approval and affordability are not the same thing.
By the letting-agent 30× rule, a gross salary of £45,000. By the 30%-of-take-home budgeting rule you would want take-home of £5,000 a month — a salary of roughly £85,500 — which shows how far London rents have drifted from the classic rule.
The long-standing budgeting guideline that housing should cost no more than 30% of your take-home (net) pay. Some versions use gross pay; we use take-home because that is the money you actually have.
Referencing companies set affordability at an annual income of 30× the monthly rent (equivalently 2.5× the annual rent) as a standard default-risk screen. Falling short usually means a guarantor, rent in advance, or a smaller property.