A gym within easy reach has become a serious factor in where young adults choose to live. Access to a gym or fitness facility is an important consideration when deciding on an area for 72 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds, according to a poll of 2,000 adults aged 16 to 29 run by low-cost operator The Gym Group with the research firm OnePoll.
For landlords, the detail that matters is that the preference comes with money attached. Almost one in three respondents, 32 per cent, said they would spend more on rent or housing to live closer to a gym, putting the extra at an average of £40 a month, or £480 a year.
Why gym access ranks so highly for Gen Z renters
Gen Z, the cohort born between the late 1990s and early 2010s, has built a reputation for taking its physical and mental health seriously, and the survey’s spending figures suggest the reputation is earned.
Some 42 per cent of respondents said they prefer to put their disposable income, once fixed monthly costs are paid, towards health and fitness memberships ahead of categories such as eating out, travelling or streaming services. A year earlier the figure was 26 per cent.
The habit itself looks well established rather than aspirational. Of those surveyed, 58 per cent said they exercised at least twice a week, while 54 per cent attended a gym at least once a week.
Will Orr, chief executive of The Gym Group, said: “The findings in this year’s report paint a clear picture that going to the gym is becoming more than a way to stay active, it is increasingly influencing how young adults organise their everyday lives.”
Demand is strongest in London
The pull is most pronounced in the capital. Among those weighing up where to live in London, 82 per cent said access to a gym mattered.
That is unlikely to shock anyone letting one and two bedroom flats in the inner boroughs, where budget gym chains have expanded street by street and the tenant base skews young. It does argue for treating a nearby gym as listing copy rather than local colour, alongside the transport links and the council tax band.
London is also where the arithmetic works hardest. Against the monthly cost of a room or a one bed in the capital, £40 is a modest slice of the rent, which makes the stated premium look plausible rather than fanciful.
What this means for investors
The cheapest response is also the most effective one: know every fitness facility within walking distance of each unit and say so in the advert. A budget gym round the corner is a tenant benefit the landlord did not have to build, maintain or insure.
Institutional money worked this out some time ago. On-site fitness space has long been part of the build to rent pitch to precisely the tenants The Gym Group polled, and the sector’s growing 2026 pipeline suggests more such stock is on the way.
The demand backdrop does the rest. With rental supply forecast to keep shrinking, well located stock already lets quickly, and a visible fitness offer nearby is one more way to widen the applicant pool and defend the rent at renewal.
Nor is this a minority pursuit. The industry body ukactive’s UK Health and Fitness Market Report 2026 counts 12.2 million members of gyms and leisure facilities across the UK.
The caveat is the one that attaches to every willingness-to-pay survey: £40 a month volunteered to a pollster is not £40 a month signed into a tenancy agreement, and nobody should reprice a rent roll on sentiment. But demand signals rarely come this cheap to act on. The gym next door is already there; the survey suggests too few adverts mention it.
