Housing affordability in the UK has worsened notably since 2020, with the share of income spent on mortgage payments rising for first-time and repeat buyers. In 2024, homebuyers spent, on average, 20.5 percent of their income on mortgage payments, up from 16.2 percent in 2020. First-time buyers spent a notably higher percentage than repeat buyers. One of the main factors for the declining affordability is the rising housing costs. House prices have increased rapidly since the COVID-19 pandemic. Mortgage rates have also soared since, leading to notably higher monthly payments.

For the past decade, buying a home in the UK has been more affordable than renting one, when only considering the monthly costs. The renting versus buying gap fluctuated during the period and in 2016, it reached its highest value of 131 British pounds. In 2023, the monthly costs for a first-time buyer were 1,231 British pounds, compared to 1,258 British pounds for renters. Rental growth vs house price growth Housing costs in the UK have been on an uprise, with both renting and buying a home increasingly unreachable. Though the monthly costs of buying have consistently been lower in the past decade, house price growth has been much stronger than rental growth since the beginning of the pandemic. Additionally, buyers have been affected by the aggressive mortgage rate hikes, making acquiring their first home even less affordable. Barriers to homeownership Buying a home is not straightforward. For younger (18-40) potential first-time buyers, there are a number of barriers. Approximately one in three first-time buyers point out that raising a deposit was the main obstacle. Other reasons stopping buyers were not being able to take out a mortgage on their current income and poor credit ratings. Unsurprisingly, the highest share of people who buy a home with a mortgage was in the age group of 45 to 55-year-olds.

Mortgage rates increased at a record pace in 2022, with the 10-year fixed mortgage rate doubling between March 2022 and December 2022. With inflation increasing, the Bank of England introduced several bank rate hikes, resulting in higher mortgage rates. In May 2025, the average 10-year fixed rate interest rate reached **** percent. As borrowing costs get higher, demand for housing is expected to decrease, leading to declining market sentiment and slower house price growth. How have the mortgage hikes affected the market? After surging in 2021, the number of residential properties sold declined in 2023, reaching just above *** million. Despite the number of transactions falling, this figure was higher than the period before the COVID-19 pandemic. The falling transaction volume also impacted mortgage borrowing. Between the first quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024, the value of new mortgage loans fell year-on-year for five straight quarters in a row. How are higher mortgages affecting homebuyers? Homeowners with a mortgage loan usually lock in a fixed rate deal for two to ten years, meaning that after this period runs out, they need to renegotiate the terms of the loan. Many of the mortgages outstanding were taken out during the period of record-low mortgage rates and have since faced notable increases in their monthly repayment. About **** million homeowners are projected to see their deal expire by the end of 2026. About *** million of these loans are projected to experience a monthly payment increase of up to *** British pounds by 2026.

Mortgage repayments as a percentage of monthly equivalised disposable household income, throughout the house price and income distribution.

Interest rates in the UK spiked in 2022 and 2023, with the average rate for new mortgage advances to individuals and individual trusts rising by 3.61 percentage points between January 2022 and January 2024. Mortgages on a floating interest rate were the most expensive as of January 2024, at 5.75 percent. On the other hand, the average rate for new advances with a five-year fixed rate was 4.88 percent.

The average cost of buying a property with a mortgage in Camden, London, was about twice as high as in Croydon in June 2024. Despite experiencing one of the highest declines in property prices in the past year, Kensington and Chelsea remained the most expensive borough for residential real estate. The average cost of buying a new residential dwelling with a mortgage is usually higher than the original asking price. The amount of the down payment, interest payments placed on the repayment of the loan, and other added costs on can amount to thousands of British pounds. Property prices in other cities in the UK Cambridge, Oxford, and Bristol were some of the other cities with costly housing markets. Despite the slowdown in the residential sector, many of the major cities in the UK continued to see house prices increase in 2023. Though the housing boom witnessed during the pandemic has come to an end, prices show little volatility, due to the high demand and chronic shortage of affordable housing. To buy or to rent? Buying has long been the better option for those who can afford it. Homebuyers can achieve monthly savings of several hundred British pounds, depending on the region. Nevertheless, the soaring mortgage rates and house prices in recent years have led to a narrowing gap between purchase and rental costs.

Mortgage Approvals in the United Kingdom increased to 63.03 Thousand in May from 60.66 Thousand in April of 2025. This dataset provides the latest reported value for - United Kingdom Mortgage Approvals - plus previous releases, historical high and low, short-term forecast and long-term prediction, economic calendar, survey consensus and news.

About 1.4 million households with mortgages up for renewal in the United Kingdom (UK) will face increasing monthly costs by the end of 2024 because of the aggressive mortgage interest hikes since the beginning of 2022. For about one million of these households, the increase will be between one British pound and 300 British pounds, while for 388,000 households, the increase will be higher. By December 2026, the number of households with rising mortgage payments is projected at 3.9 million. Meanwhile, about two million mortgage borrowers are expected to benefit from reduced mortgage payments by the end of 2026.

Mortgage Rate in the United Kingdom decreased to 6.98 percent in June from 7.09 percent in May of 2025. This dataset provides - United Kingdom BBA Mortgage Rate- actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

This page is no longer being updated. Please use the UK House Price Index instead.

Mix-adjusted house prices, by new/pre-owned dwellings, type of buyer (first time buyer) and region, from February 2002 for London and UK, and average mix-adjusted prices by UK region, and long term Annual House Price Index data since 1969 for London.

The ONS House Price Index is mix-adjusted to allow for differences between houses sold (for example type, number of rooms, location) in different months within a year. House prices are modelled using a combination of characteristics to produce a model containing around 100,000 cells (one such cell could be first-time buyer, old dwelling, one bedroom flat purchased in London). Each month estimated prices for all cells are produced by the model and then combined with their appropriate weight to produce mix-adjusted average prices. The index values are based on growth rates in the mix-adjusted average house prices and are annually chain linked.

The weights used for mix-adjustment change at the start of each calendar year (i.e. in January). The mix-adjusted prices are therefore not comparable between calendar years, although they are comparable within each calendar year. If you wish to calculate change between years, you should use the mix-adjusted house price index, available in Table 33.

The data published in these tables are based on a sub-sample of RMS data. These results will therefore differ from results produced using full sample data. For further information please contact the ONS using the contact details below.
House prices, mortgage advances and incomes have been rounded to the nearest £1,000.
Data taken from Table 2 and Table 9 of the monthly ONS release.

Download from ONS website

When comparing the mortgage or rental costs incurred by owners with mortgage, private renters and social renters in England, private renters pay a considerably larger share of their income than the other two groups. While owner occupiers with mortgages paid approximately **** percent of their income on mortgage in 2024, private renters paid ** percent, or more than *********. In terms of average monthly costs, renting a three-bedroom house is more expensive than buying.

This is the unadjusted median house priced for residential property sales (transactions) in the area for a 12 month period with April in the middle (year-ending September). These figures have been produced by the ONS (Office for National Statistics) using the Land Registry (LR) Price Paid data on residential dwelling transactions.

The LR Price Paid data are comprehensive in that they capture changes of ownership for individual residential properties which have sold for full market value and covers both cash sales and those involving a mortgage.

The median is the value determined by putting all the house sales for a given year, area and type in order of price and then selecting the price of the house sale which falls in the middle. The median is less susceptible to distortion by the presence of extreme values than is the mean. It is the most appropriate average to use because it best takes account of the skewed distribution of house prices.

Note that a transaction occurs when a change of freeholder or leaseholder takes place regardless of the amount of money involved and a property can transact more than once in the time period.

The LR records the actual price for which the property changed hands. This will usually be an accurate reflection of the market value for the individual property, but it is not always the case. In order to generate statistics that more accurately reflect market values, the LR has excluded records of houses that were not sold at market value from the dataset. The remaining data are considered a good reflection of market values at the time of the transaction. For full details of exclusions and more information on the methodology used to produce these statistics please see http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/qmis/housepricestatisticsforsmallareasqmi

The LR Price Paid data are not adjusted to reflect the mix of houses in a given area. Fluctuations in the types of house that are sold in that area can cause differences between the median transactional value of houses and the overall market value of houses. Therefore these statistics differ to the new UK House Price Index (HPI) which reports mix-adjusted average house prices and house price indices.

If, for a given year, for house type and area there were fewer than 5 sales records in the LR Price Paid data, the house price statistics are not reported. Data is Powered by LG Inform Plus and automatically checked for new data on the 3rd of each month.

The benchmark interest rate in the United Kingdom was last recorded at 4.25 percent. This dataset provides - United Kingdom Interest Rate - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

Expenditure on rent by renters and mortgages by mortgage holders, by region and age from the Living Costs and Food Survey for the financial year ending 2022. Data is presented as a proportion of total expenditure and a proportion of disposable income.

Quarterly house price data based on a sub-sample of the Regulated Mortgage Survey.

Update 29-04-2020: The data is now split into two files based on the variable collection frequency (monthly and yearly). Additional variables added: area size in hectares, number of jobs in the area, number of people living in the area.

Context

I have been inspired by Xavier and his work on Barcelona to explore the city of London! 🇬🇧 💂

Content

The datasets is primarily centered around the housing market of London. However, it contains a lot of additional relevant data: - Monthly average house prices - Yearly number of houses - Yearly number of houses sold - Yearly percentage of households that recycle - Yearly life satisfaction - Yearly median salary of the residents of the area - Yearly mean salary of the residents of the area - Monthly number of crimes committed - Yearly number of jobs - Yearly number of people living in the area - Area size in hectares

The data is split by areas of London called boroughs (a flag exists to identify these), but some of the variables have other geographical UK regions for reference (like England, North East, etc.). There have been no changes made to the data except for melting it into a long format from the original tables.

Acknowledgements

The data has been extracted from London Datastore. It is released under UK Open Government License v2 and v3. The underlining datasets can be found here: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/uk-house-price-index https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/number-and-density-of-dwellings-by-borough https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/subjective-personal-well-being-borough https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/household-waste-recycling-rates-borough https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/earnings-place-residence-borough https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/recorded_crime_summary https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/jobs-and-job-density-borough https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/ons-mid-year-population-estimates-custom-age-tables

Cover photo by Frans Ruiter from Unsplash

Inspiration

The dataset lends itself for extensive exploratory data analysis. It could also be a great supervised learning regression problem to predict house price changes of different boroughs over time.

Housing Index in the United Kingdom decreased to 511.60 points in June from 511.80 points in May of 2025. This dataset provides - United Kingdom House Price Index - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

United Kingdom Average House Prices: England: North East data was reported at 134,545.000 GBP in May 2020. This records an increase from the previous number of 127,761.000 GBP for Apr 2020. United Kingdom Average House Prices: England: North East data is updated monthly, averaging 123,135.000 GBP from Jan 2005 (Median) to May 2020, with 185 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 139,400.000 GBP in Jul 2007 and a record low of 110,454.000 GBP in Feb 2005. United Kingdom Average House Prices: England: North East data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by HM Land Registry. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United Kingdom – Table UK.EB016: Average House Prices: HM Land Registry.

Annual mean and median property prices calculated by the GLA from Price Paid Data published on Land Registry website. Number of property sales also included. Data has been aggregated to Borough, Ward, MSOA, LSOA, Postcode Districts and Postcode Sectors.

Caution should be used when analysing figures based on a low number of sales.

Price Paid Data provides information on every residential property sale in England and Wales that has been lodged with HM Land Registry for registration. Download full price paid data from the Land Registry.

Click here to access an interactive dashboard using some of the data available from this page.