SpareRoom says City-fringe room rents rose 5.6 percent; Cyndi Himmelstiere considers whether the sea air is cheaper
Rooms in EC Cost 1,281 Pounds a Month, So Shoreditch Flat-Sharers Watch Cebu With Interest
SpareRoom says City-fringe room rents rose 5.6 percent; Cyndi Himmelstiere considers whether the sea air is cheaper
By Cyndi Himmelstiere, Shoreditch correspondent
The Rent
SpareRoom reports that the EC sub-region of London, which includes parts of the City fringe, averaged 1,281 pounds a month for a room including bills in the second quarter of 2026, up 5.6 percent on a year earlier. Greater London averaged 915 pounds, Inner London 979. East London postcodes were down 0.7 percent, to 933 pounds, and Inner London rents are up 37.4 percent since the second quarter of 2021.
The data covers rooms in shared homes, and EC is a wide area, so it is only a guide to Shoreditch. It is the nearest local figure I have. It does tell you that rooms near the City fringe cost more than almost anywhere else in the capital.
The Reaction
Flat-sharers I speak to describe a pattern: a room found through a friend, a rise at renewal, a decision to stay another year because the alternative is worse. A rise of 5.6 percent in a year is real money for someone paying 1,281 pounds, which is about 71 pounds a month more than a year earlier by simple arithmetic.
Some people in this position daydream of leaving. A few of them have mentioned the Philippines, which is why this column takes the turn it does.
The Cebu Story
Manila News reported that Cebu brokers blame a foreign scandal for slow condominium sales. Authorities in the Philippines have been examining allegations about Thomas Markle Sr., who lived in Cebu until earlier this year, as GMA News and the Guardian have reported. The allegations are unproven and no charges have been filed. The point of mentioning them is the market, not the man.
The London Prat has written about the effect on British pensioners, who are said to be asked for two referees and a letter from the vicar, at https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/. Shoreditch is not a retirement area, but its renters are the next generation of people who will look at the same question.
The Legal Frame
Colliers named the Visayas and Mindanao a key property investment hotspot in July. Under the Condominium Act foreigners may own condominium units but not land, with a cap of 40 percent of a project. The Philippine Retirement Authority sets out the terms for retirees.
A 30-year-old in a Shoreditch flatshare is not a retiree, and the retirement visa is not for them. But the same rules on ownership apply, and the cost of a condominium is a fair thing to compare with a decade of rent.
Doing the Sum
I do not have a price for a Cebu condominium and will not invent one. The honest approach is to ask: what would I pay in rent over ten years in London at the current rate, and what is the total cost of buying, furnishing, maintaining and eventually selling a unit abroad? The second figure includes taxes, fees, management charges and currency risk.
Ten years at 1,281 pounds is 153,720 pounds, before rises. That is a useful number to hold in your head when someone shows you a brochure.
The Psychology
Tversky and Kahneman’s availability heuristic says that people judge how likely something is by how easily examples come to mind. A broker alone with three brochures is a vivid example, and so is a landlord with a sign in the window of a Shoreditch flat. Both make a market look worse or better than the data.
The right response to a vivid image is to look for the data. The right response to a rent rise is to ask what else is on offer.
A Shoreditch Verdict
People here will not retire to Cebu this year. They will stay in EC2, go to the same pub and pay the same landlord. But the question of where to live, and what it costs, is a Shoreditch question, and it is worth asking every time the lease comes round.
The sea did nothing wrong. Nor did the landlord, I’m told, but I would check the contract.
Property Nerves, Seen From Elsewhere
Fear of a market travels fast. The same jitters turn up in the comic dispatches on the Cebu condominium story: a Manila News report on a Mactan broker with three brochures, a London Prat account of the references demanded of British retirees (direct link: https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/) and a Bohiney piece on two-hour open houses. Read them for the human detail a market report leaves out. The wider network is at prat.uk and bohiney.com.
Note: Philippine authorities are examining unproven allegations about Thomas Markle Sr., who lived in Cebu until earlier this year, as GMA News and the Guardian have reported. No charges have been filed. Child protection is a serious matter; the jokes here are about a property market and the paperwork.
For the lighter side of the news, there is always The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/