Flats to Rent in City of London

Renting in the City of London

The City of London is the Square Mile, 1.12 square miles running from Temple to Aldgate and from the Thames north to the Barbican, Golden Lane and Liverpool Street. It is not a London borough. Its local authority is the City of London Corporation, which has its own police force and holds ward elections in which businesses vote as well as residents. About 676,000 people worked in the City in 2024 (ONS), against about 8,600 residents at the 2021 Census: roughly 80 workers for every person who lives here.

That small population is why this page has no rent table. The ONS publishes no average rent for the City of London, because its sample of private rentals is too small to give a reliable figure; FTR London's Rent Index page for the City shows London-wide figures instead, and says so.

Council tax is low: MHCLG's area-average Band D for the City is £1,329.56 in 2026/27, against a London average of £2,068. Part of the difference is that City residents pay only the Mayor's non-police precept (£176.38), because the City funds its own police. Only mandatory HMO licensing applies: a home shared by five or more people from two or more households needs a licence from the City Corporation. There is no additional or selective licensing scheme.

Who rents here

At the 2021 Census, 48.3% of the City's households rented privately, against 30.0% across London, and 14.9% rented from a social landlord (ONS). The City Corporation counted 8,161 homes in March 2022, most of them one- and two-bedroom flats, and 21% of homes on the council tax list were second homes. More than half of all homes are in six places: four purpose-built estates and the Smithfield and Queenhithe areas.

Where the homes are

The Barbican

The Barbican Estate, built between 1965 and 1976 to designs by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, has just over 2,000 flats in towers and long terrace blocks, joined by raised walkways called highwalks. Around 4,000 people live there, and the estate has been Grade II listed since 2001. It was built as rented housing, but almost every flat has since been sold on a long lease, so most Barbican lets come from individual owners; the City Corporation still lets some itself. In the middle of the estate is the Barbican Centre, opened in 1982, with a concert hall that is home to the London Symphony Orchestra, a theatre, cinemas, an art gallery and a library; the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the City of London School for Girls are next to it. Barbican station (Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines) is on Aldersgate Street.

Golden Lane

The Golden Lane Estate, just north of the Barbican, came first: the same architects designed it, and it opened in stages from 1957 to 1962. It has been inside the City since the 1994 boundary changes, and listed since 1997 (Grade II, with Crescent House at Grade II*). Built as council housing, it had just over half its flats sold on long leases by 2016, so private lets sit alongside council tenancies. Golden Lane Leisure Centre, on the estate, closed on 30 April 2026 for refurbishment; the City Corporation expects the work to start in December 2026 and take up to a year.

Smithfield

The area around Smithfield, between the Barbican and Holborn, had 1,003 homes in 2022, more than any of the City's other residential areas except the Barbican. Smithfield meat market is still trading, but the City Corporation has dropped its plan to move it to Dagenham: traders will stay until at least 2028, and in December 2025 the Corporation named Albert Island in the Royal Docks as the preferred site for new Smithfield and Billingsgate markets, side by side. The London Museum (formerly the Museum of London) opens in the old market buildings at West Smithfield on 28 November 2026, with free entry to its permanent galleries. Farringdon station, just over the boundary in Islington, has the Elizabeth line, Thameslink and the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines; its eastern Elizabeth line entrance, on Long Lane by the market, is inside the City. If you rent here in the next few years, ask what building work is planned around the market.

Aldgate and Portsoken

On the City's eastern edge, the Middlesex Street Estate (Petticoat Tower, 23 floors, and the lower Petticoat Square) was built for the City Corporation between 1968 and 1972. The Mansell Street estate, to the south, is housing association homes. Aldgate station (Circle and Metropolitan lines) is in the City, but Aldgate East (District and Hammersmith & City lines) is in Tower Hamlets, as are Tower Hill station and the Tower of London. Check which side of the boundary a flat is on: it decides your council and council tax.

Smaller pockets

The rest of the City's homes are scattered: flats around Carter Lane south of St Paul's, by the river at Queenhithe, around Fleet Street and Fetter Lane, in the Temple, and in lanes near Monument. Newer blocks include Milton Court beside the Barbican, 150 Bishopsgate on the edge of the office towers and Sugar Quay on Lower Thames Street.

Getting around

Liverpool Street has the Elizabeth line, four Tube lines (Central, Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan), the Stansted Express, Greater Anglia trains to Cambridge and Norwich, and the Weaver line (London Overground). Moorgate, linked to the same Elizabeth line station, adds the Northern line and Great Northern trains to Welwyn Garden City, Hertford North and Stevenage. Bank has the Central, Northern and Waterloo & City lines and the DLR, with Monument (Circle and District lines) joined to it; the new Cannon Street entrance opened in February 2023.

Further west are St Paul's and Chancery Lane on the Central line (Chancery Lane has entrances on both sides of the Camden boundary), and Blackfriars and City Thameslink, both with Thameslink trains to Bedford, Gatwick Airport and Brighton; Blackfriars also has the Circle and District lines. Cannon Street has Southeastern trains to south-east London and Kent, and Fenchurch Street has c2c trains into Essex. Temple station is just over the boundary in Westminster. Check a specific journey on the TfL Journey Planner before you sign.

Schools

The City has one state-funded school: the Aldgate School, a Church of England primary on St James's Passage near Aldgate, which was called Sir John Cass's Foundation Primary School until 2020. There is no state secondary school in the City, so secondary places mean a school in a neighbouring borough. The independent schools are the City of London School (boys aged 10 to 18, on Queen Victoria Street by the Millennium Bridge), the City of London School for Girls (girls aged 11 to 18, on the Barbican Estate) and St Paul's Cathedral School (a prep school for children aged 4 to 13, on New Change). Read each school's admissions criteria and latest inspection report before choosing a flat for a school.

Parks and open space

There is no large park in the City. The biggest public open space is Finsbury Circus, a two-acre garden near Moorgate that was a Crossrail work site from 2010 to 2020 and reopened in May 2025 after a redesign. Postman's Park, just north of St Paul's, has the Watts Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice: 54 plaques, from 1900 on, to people who died saving others.

St Dunstan-in-the-East, between Monument and Tower Hill, is a garden inside the walls of a church bombed in 1941, under a Wren steeple that survived. The Thames Path runs along the river. The City Corporation also manages more than 11,000 acres of green space outside the City, including Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest, but none of it is in the Square Mile.

Safety

The City is policed by the City of London Police, not the Metropolitan Police: the smallest territorial force in England and Wales. Its crime figures include offences against hundreds of thousands of daytime workers and visitors, so they say little about the residential streets. For a specific street, the police's crime map at police.uk shows reported crime month by month.

Who it suits

The City suits people who work in it and want to walk to work, people who want the Barbican Centre and the London Museum on the doorstep, and people who use the Elizabeth line, Thameslink or the Stansted Express often. It suits people less well if they need a state secondary school nearby, a large park or a house. With about 80 workers to each resident, the streets around a flat can feel very different on a weekday and at the weekend, so view on both.

Useful links

City of London Corporation: cityoflondon.gov.uk (council tax, HMO licensing, housing, school admissions)
City of London Police: cityoflondon.police.uk
Crime by street: police.uk
Journeys: tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-journey
Barbican Centre: barbican.org.uk

The listings above are homes advertised by their landlords in the City of London now. With no ONS figure for the City, compare a listing's rent with similar flats across the boundary in Islington, Tower Hamlets or Camden, whose pages show their own ONS averages.