Plenty of people – myself included – are also agreeing to longer-term contracts of two or three years just to protect ourselves against annual rent increases and being forced to endure the whole process all over again.

It has long been normal for renters to outbid each other, often offering way above the asking price to secure a home. It’s worth considering, too, just how tricky and arduous it is to secure a flat in the UK to begin with. With the country’s housing shortage as it is, there very well may be a subletter who will pay your rent for a couple of weeks when you go away. There is definitely not a lack of demand, however. The fact that despite the risks, people are still willing to do it – subletting is almost always against the terms of a rental contract – proves how tight things are for renters.

With rents so high, people have precious little to spare for a holiday, meaning that covering the rent while they’re gone can be the key factor in being able to afford it.

With the above in mind, it’s no wonder renters are no longer able to afford holidays or brief stints abroad without making sure everything at home is covered financially. And for those on housing benefit, only 5% of private rented homes are now affordable. For students, the average price of student housing far outstrips the maximum government-offered maintenance loan. Meanwhile, a third of renters in England lack savings to pay the rent if they were to lose their jobs. According to property website Rightmove, in the first quarter of the year, average monthly rents outside London soared to a record high of £1,190, with renters in London paying about £2,500 for the first time. Private rent prices have risen by 5% in the past 12 months. While these sublet posts are obviously funny (just popping to the shop for some ciggies, anyone looking for a room?), it’s worth considering why sublets across the UK appear to be spiralling so wildly out of control. In one recent post, someone was advertising a sublet on their student halls for nine days, presumably because they didn’t need to start university yet. All bills included.” The length of a “sublet” – a term that used to evoke a multiple-month stay, or someone taking over a room before the original tenant could escape the lease – appears to be getting shorter and shorter. As one meme on popular Instagram account reads: “Hi am looking for someone to rent my room for 8 hours while I go out for a bit of lunch and see an exhibition. Over the past couple of years, such posts have become more common and increasingly a subject of ridicule.

Room for rent