Oxbridge rejects rejoice, as the county of Durham has been named the most affordable county in England to buy a home, according to data published by My Home Move Conveyancing. The data looked at the average house price in each English country before dividing it by the average annual income. The results paint a predictable picture. If you live in the north of England, houses are cheaper. If you live in London, good luck.
The main number we are looking at here is called the affordability ratio. For example, for England as a whole, the average house price is £305,879, while the average annual salary is £35,955. The national affordability ratio is 8.5, meaning the average home costs 8.5 times the average salary. This is what we might describe as ‘not good’, considering that mortgage lenders traditionally offer a loan of about 4-5 times your average salary. If you had an average salary, and wanted to buy an average house, you would somehow need to find about half of the rest of the asking price. Perhaps behind the sofa? We’ll never know.
Durham’s affordability ratio currently stands at 4.3, making it (using this method) the most affordable county to purchase a home in the UK. The north of England makes up the rest of the top-10, with Tyne and Wear, Lancashire, Cumbria, South Yorkshire, other bits of Yorkshire and Northumberland all present. Shall we look at some nice pictures of those places? Places you could probably afford to live? Yes, let's.
I am being mean to London, which is unfair, considering A) I live there and B) it’s where all the jobs are basically and C) it’s not even the most expensive county on this list. That would be Oxfordshire, which has a ratio of 11.4. In second place is Devon, with 11.1, followed by London with 11. Various other bits of the south (your Sussexes, your Dorsets, your Isles of Wight, your Surreys) round out the top 10.
I think to many people, the results of this data/analysis are hardly a surprise. It is, however, still quite jarring to see just how heavily correlated the price of property is in the country to latitude. It’s not even distance to London. Have you ever tried to take the train from Devon to London? It takes forever. Newcastle is closer, when compared to time spent on a railway.
So there you have it. Yet another reason to move north, if you needed it. Happy Monday.
James Fisher is the deputy digital editor of countrylife.co.uk
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