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The fixed costs of a household in 2026 are large, rising slower than they were, and vary far more by where you live than by anything you can control. In the UK, the average private rent was £1,388 a month in June 2026 and the energy price cap sits at £1,663 a year for a typical dual-fuel direct debit household. In the US, the average 30-year fixed mortgage was 6.69% in the week ending 6 August 2026 and median gross rent was $1,487 a month in 2024. Behind the rent and electricity figures sit gaps of two to four times between the most and least expensive places within the same country.
This report assembles the published series that actually measure those costs, charts the ones with real history behind them, and is explicit about which figures cannot be placed next to each other.
Methodology, and what is not comparable
Everything here comes from the publishing body's own release. Where a number is our arithmetic on published inputs, it says so.
UK sources. Rents and house prices from the ONS Price Index of Private Rents and UK House Price Index bulletin of 22 July 2026 (rents to June 2026, prices to May 2026). Energy from Ofgem price cap announcements from August 2025 to May 2026. Mortgage rates from the Bank of England quoted-rate series for July 2026. Communications from Ofcom's pricing report (Q2 2025 billing data), water from the Consumer Council for Water (2026-27, which reports the industry's own announced average — Water UK's and Ofwat's pages were not reachable when this was checked), council tax from MHCLG (2026-27), and household spending shares from ONS Family Spending for the year to March 2025.
US sources. Rent and homeownership from the US Census Bureau Housing Vacancy Survey (Q2 2026) and American Community Survey table B25064 (2024). Mortgage rates from Freddie Mac's PMMS. Energy prices from the US Energy Information Administration. Geographic price levels from the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities for 2024.
Five things are not comparable, and we do not treat them as such:
- UK and US rent measures are different animals. ONS's Price Index of Private Rents covers new and existing tenancies, so it reflects what sitting tenants pay. The Census Bureau's $1,531 median asking rent covers only units that are vacant and advertised. ACS median gross rent of $1,487 includes utilities where the renter pays them. Three definitions, three numbers. No currency conversion is attempted anywhere in this report.
- The Ofgem cap changed basis mid-series. For July 2026 Ofgem updated its Typical Domestic Consumption Values, so the £1,663 headline assumes lower usage than earlier quarters. Ofgem publishes a like-for-like figure of £1,862 on the old assumptions. Charts here use the like-for-like number; prose gives both.
- Price levels and price changes are separate measures. BEA Regional Price Parities compare how expensive places are. BLS metro CPI compares how fast prices are moving within one place. BLS states plainly that its area indexes do not measure differences in price levels between areas. New York metro inflation of 4.1% and Atlanta's 2.8% in the year to June 2026 tell you nothing about which city is dearer.
- UK household spending categories are drawn oddly. ONS puts mortgage interest and council tax outside the "housing, fuel and power" group. So the widely quoted 18% housing share understates what most people mean by housing.
- UK and US mortgage rates describe different products. The Bank of England series is an advertised rate on a two- or five-year fix at 75% loan-to-value, after which the loan reverts to a variable rate. Freddie Mac's PMMS is a 30-year fully amortising fix with 20% down and excellent credit, held for the life of the loan. The UK and US percentages in this report are used only within their own country; putting 4.79% next to 6.69% would compare a two-year teaser with a thirty-year commitment.
The four numbers this report is built on
Source: Office for National Statistics, Price Index of Private Rents, June 2026; Ofgem, Energy price cap, 27 May 2026; Freddie Mac, Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 6 August 2026; US Census Bureau, ACS 1-year estimates, table B25064
Housing: the line that dwarfs everything else
UK rents rose 3.3% in the year to June 2026, to £1,388 a month. House prices rose 2.7% to £271,000 in the 12 months to May 2026 — a slowdown from 3.9% in the 12 months to April, which ONS attributes largely to a base effect from the April 2025 Stamp Duty Land Tax changes in England and Northern Ireland. Slower growth still compounds on a base that is already high: ONS's housing affordability bulletin puts the median home in England at 7.6 times median full-time earnings in 2025 — £300,000 against £39,300. That uses median sale prices, so it is not the same series as the £271,000 mean.
In the US, the median existing-home sale price reached an all-time high of $440,600 in June 2026 according to the National Association of Realtors, while the median new single-family home sold for $398,300, 2.7% lower than a year earlier. Those two series are not interchangeable and the new-build median currently sits below the resale median.
Property size moves the UK rent figure far more than a year of rent inflation does. A one-bedroom home rented for £1,127 a month in June 2026; a home with four or more bedrooms went for £2,061. By property type, detached homes averaged £1,577 and flats and maisonettes £1,355. Across the nations, average house prices in May 2026 were £292,000 in England, £215,000 in Wales and £196,000 in Scotland; Northern Ireland, published quarterly, was £198,000 in the first quarter of 2026 and growing fastest of the four at 7.4%.
What matters more to a monthly budget than the price is the rate attached to it. In the UK, the Bank of England's average quoted two-year fix at 75% loan-to-value was 4.79% in July 2026 and the five-year fix 4.61% — the shorter fix was the more expensive one. The lender revert-to rate, formerly the standard variable rate, was 6.60%. Bank Rate itself was 3.75% and had not moved since the start of 2026, so the spread over base, not the base rate, is what a borrower is actually paying for. Secured borrowing is still by far the cheapest money a household gets: the same Bank of England release quoted 24.71% on credit cards and 34.55% on arranged overdrafts, which is why the size of a debt matters far less than which line it sits on.
Tenure decides which of these numbers applies to you at all. The US homeownership rate was 65.0% in the second quarter of 2026, unchanged on the year, but the rental vacancy rate was 7.3% — up from 5.6% in the second quarter of 2022. More empty units is the one indicator in this report that points towards renters having more room to negotiate than they did.
US residential electricity price, 2016–2025
Annual average across all 50 states and DC; 2025 is a preliminary estimate
- Residential price (cents/kWh)
Show the data
| Year | Residential price (cents/kWh) |
|---|---|
| 2016 | 12.6 |
| 2017 | 12.9 |
| 2018 | 12.9 |
| 2019 | 13.0 |
| 2020 | 13.2 |
| 2021 | 13.7 |
| 2022 | 15.0 |
| 2023 | 16.0 |
| 2024 | 16.5 |
| 2025 | 17.3 |
Source: US Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.3, annual totals
Energy: the cap is not the bill
The Ofgem cap is the most misread number in UK household finance. It limits unit rates and standing charges for a household on a standard variable tariff — it does not cap the total bill. A household using more energy than Ofgem's typical assumption pays more than the headline figure, and one using less pays less.
For 1 July to 30 September 2026, direct debit customers pay an average of 26.11p per kWh for electricity and 7.33p for gas, plus standing charges of 57.19p and 29.04p a day. Those standing charges alone come to 86.23p a day; multiply by 365 and that is about £315 a year before a single unit of energy is used — our arithmetic on Ofgem's published rates, not an Ofgem figure. That fixed floor is why cutting usage by 10% does not cut the bill by 10%, a point worth internalising before spending a weekend on reducing your energy bills.
Ofgem energy price cap, last four quarters
Typical dual-fuel household paying by direct debit, all on the pre-July 2026 consumption basis
Source: Ofgem, Cap for October to December 2025; Ofgem, Cap for January to March 2026; Ofgem, Cap for April to June 2026; Ofgem, Cap for July to September 2026, like-for-like basis
There is no trend to declare here. On a consistent basis the cap fell 7% in April 2026 and rose 13% in July. Anyone telling you UK energy costs are settling into a direction is reading four data points as a story.
The US series is longer and does show a direction. Residential electricity averaged 17.30 cents per kWh across 2025, up 37.8% from 12.55 cents in 2016, with almost all of that increase arriving after 2021. In May 2026 the average was 18.44 cents, against 17.37 cents in May 2025. EIA's own Short-Term Energy Outlook projects 18.3 cents for 2026 and 18.7 cents for 2027 — projections, not outturns. On the volume side, EIA's most recent complete year shows an average US residential electricity bill of $142.26 a month in 2024 on 863 kWh of use, which annualises to roughly $1,707. Residential natural gas averaged $15.34 per thousand cubic feet in 2025, up from $10.78 in 2020.
The bills that never get looked at
Beyond rent or mortgage and energy sits a layer of costs almost nobody re-prices. In the UK the published averages are: water and sewerage £639 a year from April 2026 in England and Wales, average Band D council tax £2,392 in England for 2026-27, a TV licence at £180, standalone fixed broadband at £31.05 a month, and a pay-monthly SIM-only mobile plan at around £18 a month.
Six published UK fixed bills, annualised
Latest published figure for each, in the year each applies
Source: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Council tax levels 2026-27; Ofgem, Price cap, July to September 2026; Consumer Council for Water, Average household bill 2026-27; Ofcom, Pricing and consumer engagement report, Q2 2025 billing data; TV Licensing, Licence fee from 1 April 2026
Added together those six come to £5,462.60 a year, about £455 a month — our arithmetic, and a composite rather than a measured household. Still, it is the right order of magnitude for the floor under a UK budget before housing. Ofcom's data adds one lever worth pulling: bundling communications services rather than buying them separately saved three of the four household types it modelled between £26 and £48 a month, 25% to 37%. It was not cheaper for the fourth, so check rather than assume — the method is the same one in our guide to negotiating bills in the UK.
For scale against actual spending, ONS Family Spending puts housing (net), fuel and power at £118.40 a week in the year to March 2025 — 18% of the £676.60 total and the largest single group. But mortgage interest (£30.40) and council tax (£32.30) sit in a different category worth another £65.30 a week. Add them and housing-related costs reach roughly £183.70 a week. That average includes outright owners paying no rent or mortgage at all, so it understates the cost for any individual renter or mortgagor.
How big a share of the budget is this, really?
The honest answer is that nobody publishes one number that works for both countries, because the categories are drawn differently.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts housing at $26,266 in 2024, or 33.4% of the $78,535 an average "consumer unit" spent that year. Two caveats travel with that: a consumer unit is close to but not identical with a household, and $78,535 is a mean, not a median. It is not directly comparable with the ONS 18% housing share, which excludes mortgage interest and council tax and is calculated on a different survey. Move those two items back where an American or Canadian reader would expect them and the UK share becomes 27.1% without a single household changing anything.
The nearest like-for-like measure is the OECD's national accounts series for spending on housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels as a share of net adjusted disposable income. On that basis UK households spent 21.5% in 2023 against 15.7% in the United States, 19.6% in Canada and 18.0% in Australia. Even that comes with a warning: the OECD populates this measure for only 15 countries in 2023, with Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden all absent, so it is a partial picture rather than a league table. It also includes imputed rent for owner-occupiers, which is why it runs below any survey asking people what share of take-home pay goes on rent.
The safe conclusion is narrow but real: housing and its attached utilities take roughly a fifth to a third of household spending in both countries depending on how you draw the line, and it is the largest single line either way.
It depends where you live — and it depends more than you think
This is where national averages stop being useful. The rent and electricity figures above are midpoints of distributions two to four times wide.
In the UK, London rents averaged £2,302 a month in June 2026 against £781 in the North East — 2.9 times. The direction of travel runs the other way: over the same 12 months the North East had the fastest rent inflation of any English region at 6.3%, London the slowest at 2.2%.
UK average monthly private rent, June 2026
The four UK nations, plus the highest and lowest English regions
Source: Office for National Statistics, Price Index of Private Rents, published 22 July 2026
The Census Bureau publishes the US version of that spread state by state, and it is of a similar order. Median gross rent — contract rent plus utilities where the tenant pays them — ranged from $2,104 in California to $883 in West Virginia in 2024, a gap of 2.4 times, against a national median of $1,487. Eighteen states plus the District of Columbia sit above the national figure; the rest sit below. States are larger and more internally varied than English regions, so this understates the spread a mover would actually face.
US median gross rent by state, 2024
American Community Survey table B25064; includes utilities where the renter pays them. US median: $1,487
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 1-year estimates, table B25064, released 11 September 2025
BEA's Regional Price Parities put a number on why. Across all goods and services, state price levels range from 110.7 in California to 86.9 in Arkansas against a US average of 100 — a spread of about 27%. But BEA states that housing rents are usually the main driver of the difference, and the housing rent parities are far more extreme: 155.0 in the District of Columbia and 154.3 in California against 54.2 in West Virginia, close to a threefold gap.
Housing rent price levels: the five highest and five lowest, 2024
BEA Regional Price Parity for housing rents, US = 100
Source: US Bureau of Economic Analysis, Real personal consumption expenditures by state, 2024, published 19 February 2026
Energy varies even more, and in a different pattern. In May 2026 residential electricity ranged from 52.00 cents per kWh in Hawaii and 33.25 in California to 12.35 in Idaho — a fourfold gap for an identical product. Grouped into census divisions the picture is cleaner.
US residential electricity price by census division, May 2026
Cents per kWh; US average 18.44
Source: US Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A
The UK equivalent is coarser but points the same way. ONS's three-year regional spending averages show households in the South East spending £724.20 a week against £505.50 in the North East, with London's housing, fuel and power spend at £182.20 a week against a UK average of £112.50 on the same basis.
What this means for your budget
Five things follow from the data, in order of how much money they move.
1. Check what your mortgage reverts to, not what it costs today. In July 2026 the average UK revert-to rate was 6.60% against 4.79% on a new two-year fix at 75% LTV. On an illustrative £216,000 repayment loan over 25 years — 75% of a £288,000 property, matching the loan-to-value band the quoted rates apply to — that is £1,472 a month on the revert rate against £1,236 on the fix: a difference of £236 a month, roughly £2,830 a year, for doing nothing when a deal expires. That is our arithmetic on the Bank of England's published rates, not a quote from any lender. In the US the same logic applies to term rather than reversion: 6.69% on a 30-year fix against 6.01% on a 15-year changes the monthly payment enormously in the other direction, because the shorter term front-loads capital. The two countries' rates are not compared with each other here — see the methodology note above. Run your own numbers through the mortgage calculator before assuming which is cheaper.
2. Benchmark against your region, not the country. A budget built on a £1,388 national rent is meaningless in London and unnecessarily gloomy in the North East. Same in the US: $1,487 is nobody's rent in California or West Virginia. Take the state or regional figure from the tables above as your starting line, then build the rest of the household budget step by step on top of it.
3. Separate the fixed floor from the variable part. Council tax, water, the TV licence and your broadband and mobile contracts do not move month to month. Energy does, and the standing charge portion — about £315 a year in the UK — does not move even when you use nothing. Splitting a budget along that line makes the 50/30/20 rule far easier to apply honestly, because it tells you what share of "needs" is genuinely non-negotiable.
4. Do not double-count utilities. US median gross rent already includes utilities where the tenant pays them. Adding the EIA's $142 average monthly electricity bill on top of $1,487 overstates the total. Check which of your bills your rent covers before slotting them into budget categories.
5. Re-price the untouched contracts once a year. Ofcom's finding that bundling saved three of four modelled household types £26 to £48 a month is a straightforward annual review task, not a lifestyle change. Our guide to reducing bills walks the same list in order.
One honest limitation on all of this: every figure here is a published average or median, and averages describe populations, not people. ONS's own Household Costs Indices show renters facing 3.7% annual cost growth in the year to March 2026 against 3.6% for mortgagors and outright owners — a real difference, but a small one next to the geographic spreads above. Where you live moves your fixed costs more than almost anything else in this report.
If you want to see how your own fixed costs compare with the published figures, the budget calculator will lay them out in one place — or set them up as recurring categories in iBudget and let the app track the drift for you.
All figures in this report are as published on the dates cited. Energy caps, mortgage rates and rent indices are revised or replaced on regular schedules; check the linked source before relying on any number for a decision.
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