The UK’s most and least affordable places to buy a house in 2026
Rose is editor at Financial Interest. With over 15 years of writing experience and a passion for personal finance, she focuses on making money less intimidating, more interesting, and occasionally even fun 🙌
Last updated 5th August 2026
12 min read
They say home is where the heart is. In Britain, it's also where the national psyche lives. We are a nation obsessed with property; with watching programmes about it, with talking about it, and, most of all, with owning it.
But how the aspiration of becoming a homeowner plays out – or whether it plays out at all – varies greatly depending on where you happen to be in the country.
In some parts of the UK, the average house costs little more than three times the average local salary. In others, you might need the earning power of a Premier League footballer, a successful hedge fund manager, or a very generous relative.
So what are the best areas to bag a bargain, and which would require something closer to a lottery win?
We've taken a deep dive into the latest official data to reveal all: the most and least affordable areas of the UK, broken down by nation, region, and local authority, plus where that picture is shifting fast.
Financial Interest provides guidance, not advice. If you’re unsure about anything, speak with a qualified adviser. When investing, your capital is always at risk. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
The national outlook: affordability across the UK
Before delving into the data, it's worth defining what we mean by "affordability".
One of the clearest ways to measure this is by applying what's known as a "house-price-to-earnings ratio".
This works by dividing the average house price in an area by the median annual salary, giving you a single figure: the number of years of income it would take the typical person to buy a typical home outright. A ratio of 5, for example, means the average house costs five times the typical salary.
For some historical context, the worst this metric has ever been in the UK – at least, since anyone started keeping track – was around 12 back in the 1800s, when your odds of owning a home were only slightly better than your odds of surviving cholera.
By the 90s – when Britain was in the grip of Cool Britannia and D:Ream were assuring us things could only get better – it sat at around around 4, with average salaries of £15,034 average house prices of £60,551.
And right now, our study puts the price-to-income ratio at 6.9 for the UK as a whole, with an average house price of £268,132, and a median salary of £39,039.
But that figure varies greatly across the UK's constituent nations.
England comfortably takes the crown for the most expensive nation at 7.4, while Scotland comes out cheapest at 4.7, with Northern Ireland not far behind at 5.3.
| Nation | Average house price | Median salary | Price-to-earnings ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | £268,132 | £39,039 | 6.9 |
| England | £289,946 | £39,243 | 7.4 |
| Wales | £213,240 | £36,354 | 5.9 |
| Northern Ireland | £198,015 | £37,129 | 5.3 |
| Scotland | £186,582 | £39,905 | 4.7 |
But if a ratio of 6.9 seems pretty bleak, it's worth knowing that it's actually decent compared to recent years.
This metric peaked at 7.6 in 2022 – surpassing even the 2007 high right before the financial crash – buoyed by a record-low base rate cut and stamp duty holiday in the preceding two years, which meant that buyers flooded in and prices raced far ahead of wages.
UK house-price-to-earnings ratio, 1984–2026
Since then, average earnings have been growing faster than house prices, driving the price-to-earnings ratio down.
This means that houses have, in theory, been getting more affordable.
But at the same time, the base rate has been rising, making borrowing costlier and steadying demand.
The UK's most and least affordable regions
Affordability varies hugely across the country as a whole, with a price gap of over £380,000 between the most expensive region – London – and the cheapest – the North East of England.
But in all but three of the UK's twelve regions and nations, a 20% deposit for the average house still tops £40,000.
In London – one of the most expensive cities in the whole world to buy a house – average prices come in at well over half a million pounds, with a price-to-income ratio of 11.7, making regular homes in the capital about as unaffordable as they were back in 1845.
| Region | Average house price | Median salary | Price-to-earnings ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| London | £542,065 | £46,414 | 11.7 |
| South East | £378,515 | £41,618 | 9.1 |
| East of England | £337,182 | £40,863 | 8.3 |
| South West | £300,849 | £37,543 | 8 |
| East Midlands | £241,747 | £36,194 | 6.7 |
| West Midlands | £245,797 | £37,048 | 6.6 |
| Wales | £213,240 | £36,354 | 5.9 |
| Yorkshire & Humber | £204,750 | £35,990 | 5.8 |
| North West | £214,679 | £37,445 | 5.7 |
| Northern Ireland | £198,015 | £37,129 | 5.3 |
| Scotland | £186,582 | £39,905 | 4.7 |
| North East | £161,629 | £34,833 | 4.6 |
Down at the bottom of the table though, in the North East and Scotland, they're still partying like it’s 1999 with affordability ratios under 5.
Despite this seemingly rosy picture, the North East actually has one of the lowest rates of home ownership in the whole of the UK. Low average wages stretch disposable income, making saving for a deposit much more challenging.
Meanwhile, house prices in Scotland have historically run below the UK as a whole, while salaries are typically higher.
But don't pack up your bindle and head to the highlands just yet. Scotland has recently seen house sales reach record levels, with prices rising faster than almost anywhere else in the UK in the past year.
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When we break down our data even further and look at affordability at the local authority level, we start to see some huge regional differences.
Unfortunately, this data excludes Northern Ireland, where house prices aren't published at local authority level in the same way.
Hover over the map to see affordability by area
In a win for north-of-the-border finances, nine out of 10 of the most affordable council areas are actually in Scotland, aside from Burnley in Lancashire, which scrapes in at tenth place.
Across our top 10, the average 20% deposit would be around £27,000 – a whopping £34,000 less than the first-time buyer average of £61,090.
| Local authority | Area | Average house price | Median salary | Price-to-earnings ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Inverclyde | Scotland | £112,529 | £36,650 | 3.1 |
| 2. West Dunbartonshire | Scotland | £127,161 | £40,011 | 3.2 |
| 3. North Ayrshire | Scotland | £130,233 | £40,312 | 3.2 |
| 4. City of Aberdeen | Scotland | £133,906 | £40,020 | 3.3 |
| 5. Shetland Islands | Scotland | £156,982 | £46,527 | 3.4 |
| 6. East Ayrshire | Scotland | £128,845 | £37,968 | 3.4 |
| 7. North Lanarkshire | Scotland | £151,455 | £40,070 | 3.7 |
| 8. South Ayrshire | Scotland | £164,331 | £43,076 | 3.8 |
| 9. City of Dundee | Scotland | £134,392 | £34,860 | 3.9 |
| 10. Burnley | Lancashire | £128,826 | £33,208 | 3.9 |
Topping the list is Inverclyde, a scenic council area in west-central Scotland bordering the River Clyde. With an affordability ratio of 3.1, buyers could bag an average home with an annual salary of around £23,000, assuming they can stump up a 20% deposit.
For context, that's cheaper relative to local wages than England as a whole was back in 1997 – when the Spice Girls ruled the charts, and people were more worried about the Millennium Bug than mortgage rates.
Almost as affordable is West Dunbartonshire, a district on the north bank of the River Clyde just west of Glasgow, with an affordability ratio of 3.2.
For the most part, median salaries across our Scottish local authorities are also at or above average, pointing to a healthier kind of affordability where housing is genuinely reasonable, rather than simply being the byproduct of a depressed local economy. Alba gu bràth.
At the other end of the table sits Burnley – the most affordable place to buy a home in England.
To be able to purchase a house here on a single income, you'd need a salary of close to £28,000, only £5,000 more than the full-time national minimum wage. At around £128,000, the average home costs over 50% less than the UK average of £268,132, and around 40% less than the North West average of £214,679.
But a salary significantly below the UK median hints that this affordability may be more symptom than success story, with low prices reflecting limited local earning power.
Of our priciest council areas, eight are London boroughs and two are desirable commuter-belt areas just outside – Elmbridge in Surrey, and Three Rivers in Hertfordshire.
Across the list, a 20% deposit would average an eye-watering £149,899 – or 2.5x the first-time-buyer norm.
| Local authority | Area | Average house price | Median salary | Price-to-earnings ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Kensington & Chelsea | London | £1,256,680 | £52,576 | 23.9 |
| 2. City of Westminster | London | £844,095 | £52,610 | 16 |
| 3. Hammersmith & Fulham | London | £730,674 | £47,912 | 15.5 |
| 4. Haringey | London | £646,557 | £43,995 | 14.7 |
| 5. Elmbridge | Surrey | £759,229 | £51,942 | 14.6 |
| 6. Camden | London | £772,336 | £53,133 | 14.5 |
| 7. Ealing | London | £566,930 | £40,889 | 13.9 |
| 8. Richmond upon Thames | London | £785,897 | £57,233 | 13.7 |
| 9. Three Rivers | Hertfordshire | £594,115 | £43,980 | 13.5 |
| 10. Brent | London | £538,452 | £39,944 | 13.5 |
But Kensington and Chelsea is in a class of its own. With an affordability ratio of 23.9, it's nearly 50% less affordable than the second-placed City of Westminster, and unlike anywhere else in the country.
Yet the typical people living in our top two areas are earning only around £13,000 more than the national median – decent salaries, but nowhere close to the income actually required to comfortably afford homes there, which would be closer to £400,000 in Kensington and Chelsea, and almost £260,000 in Westminster.
In practice, what we're seeing here is prices that have long since detached from earned income altogether. That's because, for the most part, buyers in these areas aren't relying on a salary at all.
Global real estate services provider Savills found that 66% of homes it sold in prime central London in 2023 were actually purchased entirely in cash, suggesting that homes are bought with assets, wealth and inheritance far more often than they are with a monthly payslip.
And much of the time, buyers aren't even living in the same country, let alone the same city. A significant percentage of properties in both areas are actually owned by mysterious foreign shell companies – a layer of demand that pushes prices further out of reach of most locals.
At the bottom end, places like Brent and Three Rivers look almost reasonable by comparison – until you remember that "reasonable" here still means average prices comfortably above half a million pounds.
In Brent, where residents earn close to the national median, you'd need an income of around £150,000 to afford the average home, which would place you firmly in the top 2% of all UK earners.
The big picture: is affordability across the UK improving?
Over the past year, housing affordability has been improving just about everywhere, as the market continues to drift back to pre-pandemic norms. Our data shows improvement in 267 local authorities – 77% of the total.
This effect has been strongest in the capital, where 88% of council areas saw affordability improve, helped by London also posting the sharpest housing price fall of any region: down 2.1% on the year.
But that doesn't mean prices are falling across the board. Everywhere outside England saw increases: up 7.4% in Northern Ireland, 2.9% in Wales and 1.6% in Scotland. Affordability still improved in all three nations, but only because wages rose faster than prices. In England, prices slipped while wages climbed, which handed most areas even bigger affordability gains.
But if we look back at house price behaviour over the past five years, we start to see some weirder patterns.
The gap between the UK's cheapest housing markets – typically the North East, North West, Wales, and Northern Ireland – and the most expensive – typically London and much of the south – has started to close.
Since April 2020, prices are up around 50% in Northern Ireland, 41% in the North West and Wales, 39% in the North East and 38% in Yorkshire.
The expensive south has gone the other way. London is up just 6%, the East of England 17%, and the South East 16% – all well below the northern and Welsh gains, and below the England average of around 25%.
We can see this effect in action by indexing each region's prices to a common starting point in April 2020:
That means those who bought in these areas in 2020 have actually seen their property values decrease in real terms, meaning once inflation is factored in – a sustained decline that's rarely been seen in living memory.
This is largely symptomatic of most buyers simply being priced out of more traditionally expensive regions, flocking to cheaper markets, where the same salary buys far more.
So it's perhaps not surprising that the time taken to sell a home has recently hit a nine-year high, as sellers continue to hold out for prices that the market is increasingly unwilling to meet. Over the past three years, 53% of Zoopla sellers have been forced to lower their asking price, erasing the equivalent of £18,800 from the average list price.
While the market appears to be correcting, it seems our national mentality is still adjusting.
Bottom line
The UK housing market remains defined by striking inequality.
An average home in Kensington and Chelsea costs nearly twenty-four times the local salary; in Inverclyde, barely three. A 20% deposit in the priciest boroughs runs past a quarter of a million pounds, more than four times the entire first-time-buyer average, while the same money would buy more than half a house in the cheapest.
In other words, where you happen to live still decides whether a home is a reasonable aspiration or a mathematical impossibility up there with perpetual motion and getting through to HMRC after the first ring.
What's changing, though, is the direction of travel. Since 2020, the cheapest regions have risen fastest and London has been the worst-performing market in the country, so the gap, for once, is closing rather than widening.
But a closing gap is not a closed one. London is still more than three times the price of the North East in cash terms, and in much of the south, prices have fallen in real terms since 2020. The market is correcting, slowly and unevenly. Whether it lasts, or whether the next fall in interest rates simply reignites the old machine, is the question no one can answer yet.
For now, homes are creeping back within reach in parts of the country – though the deeper divide between them remains very much intact.
Methodology
House prices are taken from the ONS/HM Land Registry UK House Price Index (average price, all property types, March 2026). Salaries are median gross annual pay for full-time employees from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) 2025, measured by area of residence.
Five-year and annual change figures use the same UK House Price Index, comparing the relevant months.
Our worked examples of the income required to buy in a given area assume a buyer purchasing the area's average home with a 20% deposit, repaying the remaining 80% over a 25-year mortgage term at an interest rate of 5.5%. We cap monthly mortgage repayments at one-third of take-home pay.
Financial Interest provides guidance, not advice. If you’re unsure about anything, speak with a qualified adviser. When investing, your capital is always at risk. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
