Data from the Nationwide shows that private rental homes are substantially larger, in terms of square footage, than social housing.
The owner-occupier sector has the highest average floor area at 112m2.
The average floor area in the private and social rented sectors is smaller at 76m2 and 65m2 respectively, due to greater concentration of flats.
Dwellings in England tend to be a little smaller on average compared with some of our European neighbours. The average dwelling size in the EU is 103m2, although there is considerable variation amongst nations. The Netherlands, Norway and Belgium stand out as having the most spacious properties (on average), while typical properties tend to be much smaller in eastern European nations.
Some 87% of owner-occupied properties in England have at least one spare bedroom.
And 53% are classified as being ‘under-occupied’, that is to say they have two or more spare bedrooms. The proportion of under-occupied properties has been trending up over time. By contrast, in the private rented sector, only 16% of properties are ‘under-occupied’.
Robert Gardener, chief economist at the Nationwide – which produced the data, having analysed government figures – says: “In our recent research report on the housing stock, we noted that typical property sizes have increased slightly over the last decade. Since 2013, the average floor area has increased from 95.3m2 to 96.2m2. The largest increase has been in terraced houses, where the average floor area is 3.6% bigger than in 2013. But the average size of flat, the smallest property type, is now 1.7% smaller than 10 years ago at 60.3m2.”
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Changes in the housing stock – all tenures:
| Average floor area (m2) | 2013 | 2023 | % chg |
| Flats | 61.4 | 60.3 | -1.7% |
| Bungalow | 77.0 | 77.5 | 0.6% |
| Terraced | 88.7 | 91.9 | 3.6% |
| Semi-Detached | 96.9 | 99.1 | 2.2% |
| Detached | 152.9 | 151.9 | -0.6% |
