An interactive map reveals how much your salary needs to be to buy a house in your area – with a commuter town one of the cheapest places to get on the property ladder.
Analysis suggests that most Britons earning the UK average salary of £34,963 would by priced out of buying a home in a staggering 88 per cent of the country.
Those wanting to lay roots in London will find it the hardest place to buy with a six-figure salary needed in the top 10 priciest areas.
Figures show Kensington and Chelsea is the hardest place to buy with the £1.2million average price tag for a property meaning would-be buyers need to be high earners on at least £245,309 a year.
The monthly mortgage payments are an eye-watering £6,884.73 – and that is after laying down a six-figure deposit of £122,654.
However, in one commuter town locals earning less than £25,000 can snap up a home with a 10 per cent deposit.
It lays bare the staggering chasm in house prices across the UK which are pricing people out of getting onto the housing ladder in their area.
HYNDBURN: The Lancashire town is also in the top ten ‘easiest’ places to get onto the property ladder
BLACKPOOL: People in the town need to earn £26,608 a year to get on the property ladder on top of a 10 per cent deposit
PENDLE: Another Lancashire town is in the top 10 ‘easiest’ places to buy a home where locals need to earn at least £25,249.40 to get on the ladder
BURNLEY: A typical home in Burnley costs £106,314, meaning a buyer would need to earn £21,262 to afford it
A typical home in Burnley costs £106,314, meaning a buyer would need to earn £21,262 to afford it, provided they could stump up a £10,631 deposit.
After tax, this would mean a monthly take-home pay of roughly £1,554.50 – leaving £957.75 left over for bills and living costs, which is around the 65 per cent recommended by lenders.
The Lancashire town, where workers earn an average of £25,000 a year, is just a 46 minute train journey to Manchester, with the trip down the A56 by car typically taking around an hour and 15 minutes in rush hour.
Properties in the Manchester commuter town are valued at around half the price of the county-wide average of £211,686.
The new interactive tool, from AI household money-saving tool Nous.co, allows users to see how much they would need to earn on top of laying down a 10 per cent, 25 per cent or 40 per cent deposit upon purchase.
Greg Marsh, Nouse.co CEO and cofounder, said: ‘What with sky-high house prices and hefty interest rates, typical earners barely stand a chance of buying a home in most of the UK.
‘And because mortgage rates have soared over the last three years, there is still plenty of pain to come for the half a million homeowners set to refinance their mortgage this year.
‘Shopping around when you are refinancing is complicated and stressful. The most important thing is to get organised well in advance – or better still get a service like Nous to help.’
There are other parts of the UK where a worker on the average wage can still get on the property ladder with a 10 per cent deposit.
As a rule of thumb, most lenders will allow mortgage applicants to borrow 4.5 times their annual pre-tax salary, and look favourably on buyers with a deposit of at least 10 per cent saved.
The North West county of Lancashire is home to four areas that are among the top 10 easiest places to buy in the UK – namely Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle and Blackpool.
A typical home in all four locations could be comfortably afforded by a worker earning the average UK salary.
Bargain-hunters can also look to the coastal town of Hartlepool in North East England where a typical home costs £122,963 – requiring a £24,592 salary.
The average Brit earns over £10,000-a-year more than the salary needed to afford a typical property in the seaside town in County Durham.
A local worker, earning an average of £26,000-a-year, could also become a homeowner, provided they could stump up a £12,296 deposit.
The Scottish regions of Inverclyde and East Ayrshire also made the top 10 along with the Welsh town of Merthyr, according to the analysis.
In stark contrast, some of London’s most exclusive areas are well and truly out of reach for the average UK earner – making them the reserve of the nation’s super-rich.
It comes after it was revealed last month that renters earning £70,000 a year still can’t buy a house.
Almost a fifth of potential first-time buyers are ploughing 60 per cent of their income into rent and other housing costs, while more than a third (37.7 per cent) are seeing 45 per cent of their money disappear every month.
It means that in some areas even people earning more than one-and-a-half times the UK average salary of £42,000 are unable to get on the housing ladder locally, the Skipton Group Home Affordability Index found.