Furness Room Rent Index
This quarterly index records headline asking rents in room-offered adverts on SpareRoom for Barrow-in-Furness, Dalton-in-Furness and Ulverston. It gives people moving to Furness a dated snapshot to compare with the adverts they are considering.
Headlines, Q3 2026
Three findings from the Q3 2026 count
Quotable as they stand, with a link back to this page. Every number is computed from the published rows.
- The median asking rent across all 127 priced adverts in Barrow is £135 a week — £585 a month.
Across all 127 priced room adverts in Barrow on 2 September 2026, asking rents ran from £92 to £225 a week. 120 of the 127 adverts (94%) stated that bills were included. This records advert wording, not verified bill coverage or council-tax liability; check the proposed agreement. - The en-suite advert median is £15 a week above the standard-room advert median.
58 of the 127 adverts (46%) offered an en-suite, median £140 a week against £125 for the 69 standard rooms. This compares different advert groups; room size, condition and bills vary. - 76% of Barrow's priced adverts have SpareRoom's agent advertiser label.
SpareRoom labelled 96 of 127 adverts as agent, 27 as private live-out landlord, 3 as live-in landlord and 1 as current flatmate. The live-in-landlord counts were 3 of 5 in Dalton and 3 of 8 in Ulverston. These are advertiser labels on the count day, not a verified classification of management or ownership.
What rooms are advertised at, band by band
By town
| Town | Priced adverts | Median £/week | Range £/week | Median £/month | Stated bills included | Immediate-start flag on count day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barrow-in-Furness (LA13/LA14) | 127 | £135 | £92–£225 | £585 | 120 (94%) | 114 (90%) |
| Dalton-in-Furness (LA15) | 5 | £127 | £100–£132 | £550 | 5 (100%) | 5 |
| Ulverston (LA12) | 8 | £138 | £125–£249 | £598 | 6 (75%) | 7 (88%) |
Three towns, different sample sizes
Barrow in detail
| Segment | Adverts | Median £/week | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| En-suite rooms | 58 | £140 | £100–£200 |
| Standard rooms (shared bathroom) | 69 | £125 | £92–£225 |
| Adverts mentioning contractors, BAE, NHS or "professional" | 48 (38%) | Contractor-worded adverts are 38% of all priced adverts | |
| Advertised by agents | 96 (76%) | SpareRoom advertiser label: agent | |
| Advertised by private live-out landlords | 27 (21%) | SpareRoom advertiser label: live-out landlord | |
| Live-in landlords (lodgings) | 3 (2%) | SpareRoom advertiser label: live-in landlord | |
| Current flatmate | 1 (1%) | SpareRoom advertiser label: current flatmate | |
Price clusters: the most common asking rents were £140 (18 adverts), £120 (15), £130 (13) and £150 (12) a week. Prices alone do not establish room size, condition or what bills include; compare the advert details alongside the asking rent.
Using this snapshot when you compare adverts
- £135 a week is the median of all 127 priced Barrow adverts. Check each advert's room type, bills and terms; the median is not a recommended price for a particular room.
- Dalton and Ulverston have small samples: 5 and 8 adverts on the count day. Use their counts and ranges with care.
- Compare what bills include. 120 of 127 Barrow adverts stated bills were included; the median covers both bills-inclusive and other adverts.
- Check who manages the home. Advertiser categories are SpareRoom labels and have not been independently verified.
What changes if you select adverts stating bills included?
| Sample | Priced adverts | Median £/week |
|---|---|---|
| All priced adverts | 127 | £135 |
| Adverts stating bills included | 120 | £130 |
The second row is a subset of the first: 120 of 127 priced adverts in Barrow stated that bills were included. That is advert wording, not verified bill coverage or council-tax liability. The headline median covers all 127 adverts.
These samples have different room mixes. Their medians are not adjusted to a common bills-inclusive total; any difference is not an estimate of utility costs, a saving or a like-for-like rent comparison. Counts describe priced adverts, not a verified inventory of distinct rooms or properties.
Both rows are calculated from the same dated per-advert CSV: filter town to Barrow-in-Furness, then filter bills_included to yes for the second row. Use rent_pw for the median.
Is that affordable here?
Rents on their own do not answer that. The Furness Room-Rent Affordability Index sets these same medians against ONS median gross weekly pay for Westmorland and Furness and the Local Housing Allowance shared accommodation rate, and publishes the gap between them — same licence, same per-edition files, every source linked and dated.
Download the data — free to reuse with a link
Download the data. One row per advert, 140 rows, the same rows every figure on this page is computed from:
- rent-index-2026-q3.csv — CSV, 10 KB, opens in Excel or Sheets
- rent-index-2026-q3.json — JSON, with the method, the limitations and the per-town summary in the payload
- Download the Q3 2026 research pack (ZIP, 17 KB) — both datasets, the SVG chart, sources, column definitions and a read-first note with the interpretation limits
- Download the one-page Q3 2026 research handout (PDF, 46 KB) — asking-rent figures, count date, method and limitations; a printable summary of this existing edition.
- Download the Q3 2026 Barrow chart — SVG image for articles and reports; includes the count date, source, limitations and credit. Scales for print.
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Free to reuse, republish and re-analyse, including commercially, with credit as a link to https://outstandingproperty.co.uk/. Read the licence. Please credit it as:
Source: Furness Room Rent Index, Outstanding Property — https://outstandingproperty.co.uk/
Each edition keeps its own permanent URL and is never overwritten, so a link to the Q3 2026 file will always return the Q3 2026 numbers. Columns are documented in the JSON payload's fields.
Copy a linked source credit
For an article or report: select and copy this HTML. It links the source, dated files and existing licence, and keeps the count date and sample limits with the credit.
Rendered credit:
Source: Furness Room Rent Index — Q3 2026, by Outstanding Property. Rent adverts counted 2 September 2026. One portal on one day; asking rents, with bills varying between adverts. Dated JSON, method and limitations; CSV. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
Copy the chart embed with credit
For an article or report: paste this HTML into your page. It uses the dated chart file and includes the source, data link and credit. Keep those links when reusing it.
Method
On the count day we fetch every live "room offered" advert on SpareRoom for each town and record the headline rent, period, room type, advertiser type and whether bills are included. Monthly prices are converted to weekly (×12 ÷ 52) and rounded to the pound. Medians are used rather than averages so a handful of studios or £90 box rooms don't skew the figure. En-suite is taken from the advert wording. Adverts wanted (people looking for rooms) are excluded. The unit counted is a priced advert, rather than a verified distinct room or property. This covers one portal on one day; OpenRent, Facebook, agent websites and word of mouth are outside the count. 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.
Source: SpareRoom, "rooms offered" listings. Collected: 2 September 2026, in a single pass. Sample: 127 adverts in Barrow-in-Furness, 5 in Dalton-in-Furness and 8 in Ulverston — every priced advert live on the count day, not a sample of them. Geography: the Furness peninsula, Cumbria: postcode districts LA12, LA13, LA14 and LA15. Unit: pounds per week, bills as advertised. Cadence: quarterly; next edition December 2026.
Every figure on this page is computed at build time from the published rows, not typed in by hand, so the tables, the headline stats, the chart and the answers below cannot drift apart. If you find a figure here that the CSV does not support, tell us and we will correct it — info@outstandingproperty.co.uk.
What this count cannot tell you
Stated plainly, because the data is published for other people to use:
- 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.
Why we publish this
The council's 2025 Plan for Barrow announcement identifies housing and transport among the priorities for supporting the town's growth. This index provides a dated snapshot of advertised room rents, with the underlying data open for other people to examine and reuse. If you write about housing in Furness, you're welcome to use these numbers with a link.
Use a written quote for your own plans
A dated advert median or pay benchmark is not a quote for your stay or a personal budget. Use the printable quote worksheet to compare written quotes for the same dates, charged units, extras and terms. The room-viewing checklist and printable questions help you check the room, agreement and practical arrangements before deciding.
Renting a room here, not writing about one?
If you found this page because you're moving to Furness rather than reporting on it: our rooms are from £135/week, all bills included. Tell us where you’ll be working and when you’d like to move on the interest list. We’ll contact you if a room suits your requirements.
Editions
- Q3 2026 (2 September 2026) — this page.
- Next edition — due December 2026.
Earlier editions and their data files