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Best tube line?
hammersmith & city is my dark horse pick tbh. goes through some of the best bits of east london like bethnal green and stepney green where you can get a proper bagel at 3am. it's slow and the trains are a bit grimy but you never have to deal with the central line madness. plus it's the only line where you can go from west london to barking in one shot without switching, which is oddly satisfying if you're heading out that way for a cheap pint.
ngl the bakerloo line is underrated. it's got that old school tube vibe with the squeaky brakes and the seats that feel like they've been there since the 70s. plus it's the only line that goes to harrow & wealdstone so you can hit the curry houses on station road for like half the price of brick lane. the trains are a bit cramped but it's never as rammed as the central line at rush hour.
honestly the circle line gets way more hate than it deserves. sure it's slow but it's the only one that actually does a loop so you can accidentally end up in aldersgate or bakersfield without really planning it. plus it connects to pretty much everything at some point so you're never stuck.
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What are some innovative ways to anonymously compare rental prices in a city?
SpareRoom's "rooms wanted" ads are underrated for this. people post what they're currently paying alongside what they want next, so you can scrape a rough sense of going rates by postcode without anyone knowing you looked. it skews young and flatshare heavy tho, so not much use if you're after 2-beds in zone 2.
Another one is just the depozit or tenancy deposit scheme data. not public-facing, but your council's housing officer can tell you median rents from deposit registrations if you email them under FOI. takes weeks, but its proper anon and nobody clocks u.
Rightmove and Zoopla only show asking rents, which are often 10 to 15 percent above what a place actually goes for, so they're a poor benchmark. The trick I've used is the ONS Price Index of Private Rents, which breaks things down to borough level and is genuinely anonymous since it's aggregate data, no listing or account needed. For something more granular, the London Renters Union runs a rent reporting tool where you submit what you're paying with your postcode and it maps it against others nearby, though the coverage is patchy outside the inner boroughs.
the openrent "rent check" thing is decent for zones 3-4 where the unions tool barely reaches. also worth checking the london.gov.uk planning portal for new build applications, they list "affordable" and market rent figures per unit in the viability assessments, which is basically the developer telling the council what they expect to charge. bit of a faff to dig through but its public, anonymous & nobody knows ur looking