FURNESS RESEARCH PACK — Q3 2026
Rent snapshot counted: 2026-09-02
Affordability source review: 2026-09-17
Interpretation notes revision: 2026-10-18

READ BEFORE QUOTING
Priced third-party adverts are not verified inventory, occupancy or letting outcomes.
No data here establishes Outstanding Property availability or portfolio size.
Benefit benchmarks do not establish an individual award or shortfall.
Corrective limitations below override any earlier geography wording preserved in source provenance.

RENT INDEX — LIMITATIONS
- One portal (SpareRoom) on one day. Counts describe priced adverts collected there, not a verified inventory of distinct rooms or properties. Other portals, agent websites and word of mouth are outside this count.
- Asking prices, not agreed rents. Nothing here says what a room let for, or whether it let at all.
- Town and room-type medians cover all priced adverts, whether or not bills are included. Bills status is reported separately; rents are not adjusted to a common bills-inclusive total.
- Dalton (n=5) and Ulverston (n=8) are too small to carry a town median. Quote them as counts and ranges; the medians are printed for completeness, not as rates.
- First edition. There is no time series yet, so no change-over-time claim can be drawn from this file.
- En-suite, bills-included and contractor wording are read from advert text, not verified by inspection. Room count in the property is the advertiser’s claim.
- Advert age is not a void proxy — SpareRoom re-dates re-listed adverts, so most adverts look new.
- No room size, condition, tenancy length or letting outcome is recorded.
- We are a landlord in this market. Any of our own adverts present in the public results would be included under the same counting rules; we do not exclude ourselves and we do not mark ourselves.

AFFORDABILITY INDEX — LIMITATIONS
- Geography correction, 18 October 2026: the preserved source-method record says all four postcode districts fall wholly within Barrow-in-Furness BRMA. This is too broad: the official LA12 partial-postcode lookup returns both Barrow-in-Furness and Kendal BRMAs. These rows use a common Barrow-in-Furness shared-rate benchmark for the named-town advert samples; they do not determine the applicable rate for an individual advert or home. Check the actual postcode through LHA-Direct.
- Advertised rents, not agreed rents, and one portal on one day. The rent side of every ratio here inherits every limitation of the Furness Room Rent Index — read them on that page and in its data file.
- Rent medians cover all priced adverts, whether or not bills are included. Rents are not adjusted to a common bills-inclusive total, so the rent/pay ratio and the LHA subtraction are not complete housing-cost budgets.
- The index chooses the Westmorland and Furness local-authority workplace pay figure as a common benchmark for all three town samples; it is not a separate pay estimate for each town. ONS also publishes ASHE workplace estimates by parliamentary constituency (Table 9), which this index does not use. No alternative geography estimate is substituted in this revision.
- ASHE median gross weekly pay is for full-time employees by place of work — what jobs in the area pay, not what residents earn. It is before tax, and it excludes the self-employed, part-time workers and anyone not in employment. It does not measure the incomes of room renters.
- The LHA shared accommodation rate is a published comparison benchmark here, not an individual benefit award or a cap on a landlord’s asking rent. Universal Credit usually applies the shared rate to eligible under-35s without a partner or children, with exceptions. Actual housing support depends on eligibility and circumstances; this subtraction does not calculate a claimant’s shortfall.
- The share of adverts at or below the LHA rate counts adverts, not rooms let, and ignores whether the landlord would accept a benefit claimant at all.
- First edition. There is no time series yet, so nothing here supports a change-over-time claim.
- We are a landlord in this market. Any of our own adverts present in the public results would be included in the rent side under the same counting rules. We do not exclude ourselves and we do not mark ourselves.

METHOD AND COLUMN DEFINITIONS
Furness Room Rent Index — Q3 2026
Monthly prices converted to weekly (× 12 ÷ 52) and rounded to the pound. Medians throughout, not means, so a handful of studios or box rooms do not move the figure. Adverts wanted (people looking for a room) are excluded, as are adverts with no price.
- town: Town the advert was listed under
- postcode_district: Postcode district from the advert (LA12–LA15)
- advertiser: agent, private landlord (live-out), live-in landlord (lodgings) or current flatmate — SpareRoom’s own label
- room_type: en-suite or standard (shared bathroom), taken from the advert wording
- bills_included: yes/no — advert states all bills included
- contractor_wording: yes/no — advert mentions contractors, BAE, NHS or “professional”
- rooms_in_property: Rooms in the whole property, as claimed by the advertiser
- available_now: yes/no — advertised as available immediately
- advertised_rate: The headline figure in the advert
- advertised_period: pw (per week) or pcm (per calendar month) — the period that figure was quoted in
- rent_pw: Rent per week, rounded to the pound (pcm × 12 ÷ 52)
- rent_pcm: Rent per calendar month, rounded to the pound (pw × 52 ÷ 12)
Furness Room-Rent Affordability Index — Q3 2026
Three published figures per town, and three ratios derived from them. Room rent is the median of every priced "room offered" advert for the town on the count day (Furness Room Rent Index, same build, same rows). Pay is the ONS ASHE median gross weekly pay for the local authority. The LHA figure is the shared accommodation rate for the Broad Rental Market Area. Rent as a share of pay is median rent ÷ median pay. The gap is median rent − LHA shared rate, weekly and × 52. The share at or below LHA counts each advert individually against the LHA rate.
- town: Town the room adverts were listed under
- adverts: Priced "room offered" adverts counted in that town on the count day
- median_room_rent_pw: Median advertised room rent, £ per week, bills as advertised (Furness Room Rent Index)
- median_gross_weekly_pay: ONS ASHE median gross weekly pay for the local authority, £ per week
- pay_area: Local authority the pay figure is for
- rent_share_of_pay_pct: Median advertised room rent as a percentage of median gross weekly pay
- lha_shared_rate_pw: Local Housing Allowance shared accommodation rate for the Broad Rental Market Area, £ per week
- lha_brma: Broad Rental Market Area the LHA rate is for
- gap_median_minus_lha_pw: Median advertised room rent minus the LHA shared accommodation rate, £ per week
- gap_median_minus_lha_py: The same gap over a year, £ (gap × 52)
- adverts_at_or_below_lha: Adverts advertised at or below the LHA shared accommodation rate
- adverts_at_or_below_lha_pct: Those adverts as a percentage of all priced adverts in the town
- rent_source_url: Source for the room-rent figure
- rent_checked: Date the room-rent source was last collected
- pay_source_url: Source for the pay figure
- pay_published: Publication date of the pay figure
- pay_checked: Date a person last verified the pay figure at that URL
- lha_source_url: Source for the LHA figure
- lha_published: Publication date of the LHA figure
- lha_checked: Date a person last verified the LHA figure at that URL

SOURCE LINKS AND REVIEW DATES
https://outstandingproperty.co.uk/room-rent-index/
https://outstandingproperty.co.uk/room-rent-affordability/
Office for National Statistics — Median gross weekly pay, full-time employees, by place of work — Westmorland and Furness — ASHE 2025 (provisional)
Published 2025-10-23; checked 2026-09-17; Open Government Licence v3.0
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/placeofworkbylocalauthorityashetable7
Valuation Office Agency — Local Housing Allowance shared accommodation rate (Category A) — Barrow-in-Furness BRMA — April 2026 to March 2027
Published 2026-01-30; checked 2026-09-17; Open Government Licence v3.0
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-housing-allowance-lha-rates-applicable-from-april-2026-to-march-2027

PERMANENT DATA FILES
https://outstandingproperty.co.uk/data/rent-index-2026-q3.json
https://outstandingproperty.co.uk/data/room-rent-affordability-2026-q3-notes-2026-10-18-pay-scope.json
https://outstandingproperty.co.uk/data/rent-index-2026-q3.csv
https://outstandingproperty.co.uk/data/room-rent-affordability-2026-q3.csv
https://outstandingproperty.co.uk/data/rent-index-2026-q3-barrow-chart.svg

REUSE AND CREDIT
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Source: Furness Room Rent Index, Outstanding Property — https://outstandingproperty.co.uk/
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Source: Furness Room-Rent Affordability Index, Outstanding Property — https://outstandingproperty.co.uk/
ONS and VOA figures remain Crown copyright and are reused under the Open Government Licence.
Credit those original sources directly if quoting their figures on their own.

FILES AND INTEGRITY
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