Any rental listing advertises one number: the rent. That is not the number that actually leaves your account each month once you have moved in. Council tax, energy and water all land on top, and none of them appear on the listing itself.
Why the advertised rent is not the real number
The rent covers the property. Everything else, council tax to the local authority, electricity and gas to whichever supplier you choose, water to the regional water company, is a separate bill the tenant sets up and pays directly, unless the listing specifically says bills are included. A flat advertised at a lower rent than the one next door can easily cost more overall once those bills are added, especially if it sits in a higher council tax band or has old, inefficient heating.
What actually lands on top of rent
Four kinds of cost get added to rent for most tenants in England:
- Council tax, paid to the local council, based on the property's valuation band.
- Energy, whether mains gas and electricity, an all-electric supply, or a communal heat network, priced by how much you use.
- Water and sewerage, paid to whichever company covers that postcode. There is no choice of supplier for water.
- Broadband and contents insurance also land every month, but they depend on the deal you pick and what you own, so they are not estimated here, or by ListingMap's own cost estimate.
Council tax
Every home in England has a council tax band from A to H, set by the Valuation Office Agency. If a listing does not state the band, search GOV.UK's Check your Council Tax band tool by postcode, which lists the band for every home on that street. GOV.UK also publishes the actual amount each council charges every year, in a release called the council tax levels set by local authorities. That figure is for Band D. Every other band is a fixed national share of it, from six ninths for Band A up to double for Band H, so once you know a council's Band D charge you can work out any band yourself.
For example, a Band D home in a fairly typical English council costs around £2,000 a year in council tax for 2026-27, about £167 a month. A more expensive council, or a larger home in a higher band, can be well over double that.
Energy
The single biggest unknown is usually heating. A property's Energy Performance Certificate states its floor area, its estimated energy use in kWh per square metre a year, and whether it is heated by mains gas, electricity or a communal system. GOV.UK's Find an energy certificate service looks one up for free by postcode, and most homes built or sold in the last twenty years have one on file.
Once you have a kWh figure, price it at Ofgem's current price cap unit rates and standing charges, which change every three months. From 1 July to 30 September 2026 the cap is 26.11p per kWh for electricity with a standing charge of 57.19p a day, and 7.33p per kWh for gas with a standing charge of 29.04p a day. From 1 October to 31 December 2026 it moves to 26.32p and 54.83p a day for electricity, and 7.97p and 29.68p a day for gas.
If a property has no EPC on file, Ofgem's own typical consumption values are a reasonable stand-in. From July 2026, a medium-sized home, roughly 2 to 3 bedrooms, is assumed to use about 2,500 kWh of electricity and 9,500 kWh of gas a year. At the July to September 2026 cap, that works out to around £1,660 a year, about £140 a month, for a home on mains gas. An all-electric or communal heat network property is priced differently and, unit for unit, usually costs more.
Water
Water has no market to shop around in. Whichever company covers a postcode is who supplies it, and each one publishes an average annual household bill every year. The England and Wales average for 2026-27 is £639 a year, about £53 a month, though it varies by region, from under £550 a year in the North East to over £750 in parts of the South East and South West.
A worked example
A 2-bedroom flat in Lambeth, south London, listed at £4,117 a month, is council tax band F. That comes to about £2,957 a year for the council, roughly £246 a month. Add a typical energy bill and Lambeth's water company average on top and the real monthly cost comes to around £4,509, about £392 more than the advertised rent.
A smaller example: a Band D home in a fairly typical English council adds about £167 a month in council tax alone, before energy and water. It is a smaller addition in cash terms, but it is still real money that never appears on the listing.
The single-person discount
If only one adult lives in the home, the household qualifies for a 25% discount on council tax. It is not automatic, you claim it directly from the council once you have moved in, and it only applies to council tax, not to energy or water. In practice a single occupant also tends to use less energy and considerably less water than a shared household, though there is no official discount for either, just lower usage.
How ListingMap works this out automatically
On a Rightmove or OnTheMarket rental listing in England, ListingMap's Costs tab adds the rent from the listing to council tax, energy and water, using the same public sources described above: the gov.uk council tax table for the listing's postcode, the property's own Energy Performance Certificate where one is on file, and the local water company's published average. If the listing does not state a council tax band, a band picker lets you choose one. A control switches the whole estimate between 1 adult and 2 adults, and every line already shows where its figure comes from. It is free, does not require signing in, and works through the existing browser extension without reinstalling it.
None of these figures are bills. They are estimates built from public rates, and actual usage varies by household. But doing the sum before viewing a property, rather than after the first bill arrives, is the difference between comparing homes on rent alone and comparing them on what they actually cost.