Today the ONS has published affordability analysis covering the whole UK looking at ratios of house prices to disposable household incomes.
As part of additional measures of housing affordability series, the ONS publication looked at housing purchase affordability across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as the English regions.
The average annual disposable household income was £35,000 during the financial year ending (FYE) 2023 in England; the average house price was £298,000, which is the equivalent to a ratio of 8.6 years of household income.
The average house price to disposable household income ratios were 5.8 in Wales, 5.6 in Scotland and 5.0 in Northern Ireland in FYE 2023.
Since this series began, house prices have increased twice as quickly as household incomes in England; house prices in Wales and Scotland have also increased more rapidly than incomes, but the differences are more moderate.
For low-income households, average-priced homes in all four countries have been “unaffordable” (costing more than five years of income) throughout the series.
Only the 10% highest-income households in England could afford an average-priced home with fewer than five years of household income in FYE 2023; in Wales this was the top 30%, the top 40% in Scotland, while in Northern Ireland an average-priced home was affordable with an average household income.
In London, the average home was not affordable for any household income decile; in three other regions, the average home was only affordable to the top decile.
