A new report says the gap between income and house prices in UK has been widening over the past 20 years.
The gap is so much that even buyers in the most affordable regions in UK and Wales have to spend six times their income. The situation is most dire in London where the median house costs 12 times the median income.
The report by The Guardian is built on analyses of 19 million sales over 20 years from Land Registry and HMRC data.
According to The Guardian, “the homebuyer earning the median salary for their region in 1995 would have had to spend between 3.2 times and 4.4 times their salary on a house, depending on where they lived. In 2012-13, the last year for which complete data is available, the median house price had risen to between 6.1 times and 12.2 times median regional incomes.”
“Even in more affordable regions, prices have risen dramatically. In the north-east, the most affordable region in England and Wales, the proportion of income spent on property has almost doubled in 20 years, increasing from 3.4 times the median income of the region in 1995 to 6.1 times the median income in 2012,” the report said.