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.

Mortgage rates surged at an unprecedented pace in 2022, with the average 10-year fixed rate doubling between March and December of that year. In response to mounting inflation, the Bank of England implemented a series of rate hikes, pushing borrowing costs steadily higher. By October 2025, the average 10-year fixed mortgage rate stood at **** percent. As financing becomes more expensive, housing demand has cooled, weighing on market sentiment and slowing house price growth. How have the mortgage hikes affected the market? After surging in 2021, the number of residential properties sold fell significantly in 2023, dipping to just above *** million transactions. This contraction in activity also dampened mortgage lending. Between the first quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024, the value of new mortgage loans declined year-on-year for five consecutive quarters. Even as rates eased modestly in 2024 and housing activity picked up slightly, volumes remained well below the highs recorded in 2021. How are higher mortgages impacting homebuyers? For homeowners, the impact is being felt most acutely as fixed-rate deals expire. Mortgage terms in the UK typically range from two to ten years, and many borrowers who locked in historically low rates are now facing significantly higher repayments when refinancing. By the end of 2026, an estimated five million homeowners will see their mortgage deals expire. Roughly two million of these loans are projected to experience a monthly payment increase of up to *** British pounds by 2026, putting additional pressure on household budgets and constraining affordability across the market.

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

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.

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 **** percentage points between January 2022 and January 2024. Mortgages on a floating interest rate were the most expensive as of January 2024, at **** percent. On the other hand, the average rate for new advances with a five-year fixed rate was **** percent.

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.

Summary of UK House Price Index (HPI) price statistics covering England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Full UK HPI data are available on GOV.UK.

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

Mortgage Rate in the United Kingdom remained unchanged at 6.78 percent in October. This dataset provides - United Kingdom BBA Mortgage Rate- actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

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.

United Kingdom Mortgage Loans Repayment: Other Lump Sum data was reported at 1,442.000 GBP mn in Sep 2018. This records a decrease from the previous number of 1,623.000 GBP mn for Aug 2018. United Kingdom Mortgage Loans Repayment: Other Lump Sum data is updated monthly, averaging 1,163.000 GBP mn from Jan 1999 (Median) to Sep 2018, with 237 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 1,809.000 GBP mn in Oct 2008 and a record low of 467.000 GBP mn in Jan 1999. United Kingdom Mortgage Loans Repayment: Other Lump Sum data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Bank of England. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United Kingdom – Table UK.KB023: Mortgage Loans: Repayment.

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

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.

The benchmark interest rate in the United Kingdom was last recorded at 4 percent. This dataset provides - United Kingdom Interest Rate - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

View monthly updates and historical trends for UK Average House Price. from United Kingdom. Source: Office for National Statistics. Track economic data wi…

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.

Average monthly House Prices (£) for Lincolnshire and Districts. The data shows prices for the following House types: All Houses, Detached, Semi-detached, Terraced, and Flat/maisonette. House Prices shown are based on Land Registry methodology. This dataset is updated on a monthly basis for a rolling 12 month period. Historical data is subject to revision. Source: Land Registry, UK House Price Index statistics. Copyright and licensing: Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right [year]. This data is licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.