Guildford town centre is a flat market, and it lets on one thing above all others: walking distance to the station. Direct trains to London Waterloo make GU1 a commuter market, and the tenant base — young professionals, couples, people relocating for work — behaves very differently from the family suburbs.
The borough averaged £1,728 a month in May 2026, up 6.1% (ONS), but that figure blends houses and flats across the whole borough. A one or two-bed town centre flat sits below it; what the location buys you is speed of letting rather than headline rent.
Faster lets, shorter tenancies
Town centre flats let quickly and turn over more often. Tenants here move for jobs, move in together, or buy. Expect shorter average tenancies than in Burpham or Merrow, and budget accordingly — the risk in this market is not finding a tenant, it is the cumulative cost of finding one repeatedly.
That makes void management the central skill. A flat that relets in a week and one that takes a month have very different annual returns at the same rent. Start marketing as soon as notice is given, and keep the property in a condition where it can be photographed and viewed immediately.
Tenant notice changed, and it affects you here most
Since 1 May 2026 tenants give two months’ notice and can leave at any point. There is no fixed term to hold anyone to. In a fast-moving market like the town centre that is a real operational change — you get less predictability, but you also get two months’ warning rather than the scramble at the end of a fixed term.
Use it. Two months is enough to market, reference and check in a new tenant with no void at all, provided you start on day one. How tenant notice now works.
The leasehold questions to answer before you advertise
Check your lease before you make any promises. Three things matter.
Subletting. Some leases restrict or prohibit it, or require freeholder consent. Letting in breach of your lease is a problem between you and the freeholder that your tenant will end up caught in.
Pets. You can no longer operate a blanket no-pets policy — you must consider a request and respond within 28 days, and you can only refuse for a reason that is genuinely reasonable. A clear prohibition in the head lease is one of the few reasons that qualifies. If your lease is silent, you will struggle to justify a refusal. Where the line sits.
Service charge and what it covers. Be precise in the advert about what the tenant pays and what you pay. Ambiguity here is a recurring source of disputes, and it is entirely avoidable.
Compliance in a flat
Your obligations cover your demise, but the building matters too. You still need an annual gas safety record if there is a gas appliance, a five-yearly EICR, and working alarms.
Where flats differ is that some problems are not yours to fix. If damp is coming through a shared wall or a communal roof, the freeholder or managing agent has to act — but your tenant’s remedy is against you. With Awaab’s Law heading for the private sector and fixed response timescales likely, knowing who is responsible for what, and being able to escalate quickly, is worth sorting out before you need it.
Furnished usually wins here
Unlike the family suburbs, town centre flats generally let better furnished. The tenant profile — relocating professionals, first-time renters, corporate lets — often does not own furniture. The trade-off in detail, and if you are targeting relocation specifically, corporate lets run to different expectations.
Pricing and the bidding ban
You must advertise a rent and you cannot accept offers above it. In a fast market where several applicants may want the same flat, that is a genuine change — the days of letting competition push the figure up are over. The asking rent has to be right on day one. Working out what that is.
General information, not legal advice. Rent figures are borough-level ONS data; individual streets vary considerably. Property Lounge, Guildford.
Thinking of letting in this area?
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