Market and listings
Local Housing Allowance (LHA)
The maximum housing benefit for private tenants, set weekly per bedroom category for each Broad Rental Market Area; the effective rent floor for a benefit-funded tenancy.
Also called: LHA rate, housing benefit rate, BRMA, Broad Rental Market Area.
Definition
Local Housing Allowance, as the data uses it
LHA is what the state will pay towards rent for a claimant renting privately, set at the 30th percentile of local rents (frozen in some years) for each bedroom category from shared accommodation to four bedrooms. It is set for Broad Rental Market Areas, a geography of its own that does not align with local authorities, by the VOA in England, Rent Service Scotland and Rent Officers Wales.
The rate is weekly. Comparing it with a monthly rent understates it by about 4.33 times; convert with 52 divided by 12, not by multiplying by four. MarketCode returns the rate for a full postcode and bedroom count, with the BRMA that answered and the lower shared accommodation rate for under-35 single claimants.
Tools
Tools that return it
Local Housing Allowance rate
lha_rate()Local Housing Allowance for a postcode and bedroom category — the ceiling on housing benefit, and therefore the effective rent floor for a benefit-funded tenancy. Nothing else in this API tells you what the state will pay for a property.
See also
Related terms
- Gross yield: Annual rent as a percentage of price, before costs; net yield deducts costs. MarketCode computes gross yield from listing rents and prices and reports net yield only where an auctioneer quoted one.
- Asking price and asking-to-sold ratio: The price a property is marketed at, as against the price it sells for; asking leads sold by months and includes what never sells, and the ratio between them is a temperature gauge.
FAQ
Questions about local housing allowance
What does Local Housing Allowance mean?
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The maximum housing benefit for private tenants, set weekly per bedroom category for each Broad Rental Market Area; the effective rent floor for a benefit-funded tenancy.
Which MarketCode tools return local housing allowance?
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Local Housing Allowance rate. Each runs as an MCP tool in Claude, ChatGPT, Codex and Cursor and as a REST endpoint with an API key, at the same price.
Is housing benefit rate the same thing?
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Yes. LHA rate, housing benefit rate, BRMA are other names for what this entry defines; MarketCode uses "Local Housing Allowance" in its tool descriptions and responses.
See it on a real address.
Thirty minutes, your property or area, every figure sourced.