Portugal, Canada, and the United States were the countries with the highest house price to income ratio in 2024. In all three countries, the index exceeded 130 index points, while the average for all OECD countries stood at 116.2 index points. The index measures the development of housing affordability and is calculated by dividing nominal house price by nominal disposable income per head, with 2015 set as a base year when the index amounted to 100. An index value of 120, for example, would mean that house price growth has outpaced income growth by 20 percent since 2015. How have house prices worldwide changed since the COVID-19 pandemic? House prices started to rise gradually after the global financial crisis (2007–2008), but this trend accelerated with the pandemic. The countries with advanced economies, which usually have mature housing markets, experienced stronger growth than countries with emerging economies. Real house price growth (accounting for inflation) peaked in 2022 and has since lost some of the gain. Although, many countries experienced a decline in house prices, the global house price index shows that property prices in 2023 were still substantially higher than before COVID-19. Renting vs. buying In the past, house prices have grown faster than rents. However, the home affordability has been declining notably, with a direct impact on rental prices. As people struggle to buy a property of their own, they often turn to rental accommodation. This has resulted in a growing demand for rental apartments and soaring rental prices.

Affordability ratios calculated by dividing house prices by gross annual residence-based earnings. Based on the median and lower quartiles of both house prices and earnings in England and Wales.

Affordability ratios calculated by dividing house prices by gross annual workplace-based earnings. Based on the median and lower quartiles of both house prices and earnings in England and Wales.

The house price to income ratio in the United Kingdom stood at ****** points in the first quarter of 2025. This is lower than the observation from the first quarter one year earlier, when the ratio had been ****** points.

Since 2015, the gap between the cost of buying a home and renting has grown, with homeownership becoming increasingly less affordable. In the ***** ******* of 2024, the house price to rent ratio in the UK stood at *****. That meant that house price growth has outpaced rental growth by nearly ** percent between 2015 and 2024. The UK's house price to rent ratio was slightly below the average Euro area ratio. House price to income ratio in the UK Another indicator for housing affordability is the house price to income ratio, which is calculated by dividing nominal house prices by the nominal disposable income per head. The ratio saw an overall increase between 2015, which was the base year, and 2022. After that, the index declined, but remained close to the average for the Euro area. Is it more affordable to rent or buy? There are many things to be considered when comparing buying to renting, such as the ability to qualify for a mortgage and whether prospective homebuyers have sufficient savings for a deposit. Generally, purchasing a home is more affordable than renting one. However, the average monthly savings first-time buyers can achieve have been on the decline. In East of England, where house prices have increased rapidly over the past few years, it was cheaper to rent than to buy in 2022.

Explore how UK house prices compare to average wages. Interactive charts show the long-term price-to-income ratio using official ONS earnings and UK HPI data — a key measure of housing affordability.

Context

Demand for houses has exploded in the UK in the last two years due to the pandemic. As a result, it feels like it is becoming more difficult for young people to afford to buy a house in the near future. I wanted to collect data to see if this sentiment is backed up by numbers.

Content

In this folder you will find the average house price in the UK between between 1975 and 2020, the median wage in the UK between 1999 and 2020. Both of these metrics have been adjusted by inflation up to 2020.

This folder also contains a table containing data on the wage gap in 2021, in the UK and by age group.

Sources

Statista: https://www.statista.com/statistics/802183/annual-pay-employees-in-the-uk/ and https://www.statista.com/statistics/1002964/average-full-time-annual-earnings-in-the-uk/.

allAgents: https://www.allagents.co.uk/house-prices-adjusted/.

Bank of England: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator.

The price-to-earnings ratio for first-time buyers in the United Kingdom was the highest in London and the lowest in Scotland in the second quarter of 2025. In London, the average house bought by first-time buyers was about 7.79 times higher than the mean gross earnings in the region. In Scotland, this figure amounted to 3.04.

The house price to income index in Europe declined in 13 of the 28 European countries in 2024, indicating that income grew faster than house prices. Portugal had the highest house price to income index ranking, with values exceeding ***** index points. Romania and Finland were on the other side of the spectrum, with less than 100 index points. The house price to income ratio is an indicator for the development of housing affordability across OECD countries and is calculated as the nominal house prices divided by nominal disposable income per head, with 2015 chosen as a base year. A ratio higher than 100 means that the nominal house price growth since 2015 has outpaced the nominal disposable income growth, and housing is therefore comparatively less affordable. In 2024, the OECD average stood at ***** index points.

This table shows the average House Price/Earnings ratio, which is an important indicator of housing affordability. Ratios are calculated by dividing house price by the median earnings of a borough. The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) is based on a 1 per cent sample of employee jobs. Information on earnings and hours is obtained in confidence from employers. It does not cover the self-employed nor does it cover employees not paid during the reference period. Information is as at April each year. The statistics used are workplace based full-time individual earnings. Pre-2013 Land Registry housing data are for the first half of the year only, so that they are comparable to the ASHE data which are as at April. This is no longer the case from 2013 onwards as this data uses house price data from the ONS House Price Statistics for Small Areas statistical release. Prior to 2006 data are not available for Inner and Outer London. The lowest 25 per cent of prices are below the lower quartile; the highest 75 per cent are above the lower quartile. The "lower quartile" property price/income is determined by ranking all property prices/incomes in ascending order. The 'median' property price/income is determined by ranking all property prices/incomes in ascending order. The point at which one half of the values are above and one half are below is the median. Regional data has not been published by DCLG since 2012. Data for regions has been calculated by the GLA. Data since 2014 has been calculated by the GLA using Land Registry house prices and ONS Earnings data. Link to DCLG Live Tables An interactive map showing the affordability ratios by local authority for 2013, 2014 and 2015 is also available.

This is the unadjusted lower quartile 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 lower quartile 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 three quarters of the way down the list, such that 75Percentage of transactions lie above and 25Percentage lie below that value. These are particularly useful for assessing housing affordability when viewed alongside average and lower quartile income for given areas.

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 lower quartile transactional value of houses and the overall market value of houses.

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 UK house price index (UK HPI) represents changes in the value of UK residential properties (i.e., detached houses, semi-detached houses, terraced houses, flats and maisonettes) and indicates trends in the UK housing market. The UK HPI applies a hedonic regression model that utilises the various sources of data on property price (e.g., HM Land Registry's Price Paid dataset) to allow for a true comparison of UK property prices in each period. The data is sourced from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and HM Land Registry, using house sales data from HM Land Registry, Registers of Scotland, and Land and Property Services Northern Ireland. Forecast data is estimated by IBISWorld, with reference to Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts submitted in its 'Economic and fiscal outlook – March 2022' publication. The figures are presented with a base month in 2015 (i.e., January 2015 = 100) and are averages of the UK HPI over each financial year (i.e., April-March).

Affordability ratios calculated by dividing house prices by gross annual residence-based earnings. Based on the median and lower quartiles of both house prices and earnings in England and Wales.

This dataset contains the ratio of lower quartile/median house price to lower quartile/median earnings in England This dataset uses the median/lower quartile house price data sourced from ONS House Price Statistics for Small Areas (HPSSA) statistical release for years 2013-2015 and house price data sourced directly from Land Registry prior to 2013. This leads to slight differences in the distribution of affordability ratios before and after 2013 which should be noted if the dataset is used as a time series. It is planned to update the ratios with the HPSSA dataset for all years in the future. The house price data is then compared to the median/lower quartile income data of full time workers from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) produced by the ONS. This data was derived from Table 576 and 577, available for download as an Excel spreadsheet from the Live tables page (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-housing-market-and-house-prices). More details about the data sources are also available in the link provided.

CLG Table

Table 577 Housing market: ratio of median house price to median earnings by district, from 19971-6

Based on the Survey of Annual Hours and Earnings

🇬🇧 United Kingdom English This table shows the average House Price/Earnings ratio, which is an important indicator of housing affordability. Ratios are calculated by dividing house price by the median earnings of a borough. The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) is based on a 1 per cent sample of employee jobs. Information on earnings and hours is obtained in confidence from employers. It does not cover the self-employed nor does it cover employees not paid during the reference period. Information is as at April each year. The statistics used are workplace based full-time individual earnings. Pre-2013 Land Registry housing data are for the first half of the year only, so that they are comparable to the ASHE data which are as at April. This is no longer the case from 2013 onwards as this data uses house price data from the ONS House Price Statistics for Small Areas statistical release. Prior to 2006 data are not available for Inner and Outer London. The lowest 25 per cent of prices are below the lower quartile; the highest 75 per cent are above the lower quartile. The "lower quartile" property price/income is determined by ranking all property prices/incomes in ascending order. The 'median' property price/income is determined by ranking all property prices/incomes in ascending order. The point at which one half of the values are above and one half are below is the median. Regional data has not been published by DCLG since 2012. Data for regions has been calculated by the GLA. Data since 2014 has been calculated by the GLA using Land Registry house prices and ONS Earnings data. Link to DCLG Live Tables An interactive map showing the affordability ratios by local authority for 2013, 2014 and 2015 is also available.

Renters in the UK spent on average 32.5 percent of their income on rent as of January 2025. Scotland and Yorkshire and Humber were the most affordable regions, with households spending less than 28 percent of their gross income on rent. Conversely, London, South West, and South East had a higher ratio. Greater London is the most expensive region for renters Greater London has a considerably higher rent than the rest of the UK regions. In 2024, the average rental cost in Greater London was more than twice higher than in the North West or West Midlands. Compared with Greater London, rent in the South East region was about 600 British pounds cheaper. London property prices continue to increase In recent years, house prices in the UK have been steadily increasing, and the period after the COVID-19 pandemic has been no exception. Prime residential property prices in Central London are forecast to continue rising until 2027. A similar trend in prime property prices is also expected in Outer London.

Kensington and Chelsea was the least affordable area to buy a home in London, England in 2022, followed by Westminster. Prospective home buyers in Kensington and Chelsea would have to spend over ** percent of the median income to buy a median priced property. On the other end of the scale were Barking and Dagenham and Bexley where the price to income ratio was about ** percent. These were also the areas with the lowest house price.

Ratio of median quartile workplace earnings to median quartile house prices. The statistics used are workplace based full-time individual earnings. Source: Land Registry/Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings Publisher: Communities and Local Government (CLG) Geographies: Local Authority District (LAD), County/Unitary Authority, Government Office Region (GOR), National Geographic coverage: England Time coverage: 1997 to 2009 Type of data: Survey

In 2025, Turkey had the highest inflation-adjusted house price index out of the ** European countries under observation, making it the country where house prices have increased the most since 2010. In Turkey, the house price index exceeded *** index points in the second quarter of 2025, showing an increase in real terms of *** percent since 2010, the baseline year for the index. Iceland and Hungary completed the top three, with an index value of *** and *** index points. In the past year, however, many European countries saw house prices decline in real terms. Where can I find other metrics on different housing markets in Europe? To assess the valuation in different housing markets, one can compare the house-price-to-income ratios of different countries worldwide. These ratios are calculated by dividing nominal house prices by nominal disposable income per head. There are also ratios that look at how residential property prices relate to domestic rents, such as the house-price-to-rent ratio for the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, these numbers are not available in a European overview. An overview of the price per square meter of an apartment in the EU-28 countries is available, however. One region, different markets An important trait of the European housing market is that there is not one market, but multiple. Property policy in Europe lies with the domestic governments, not with the European Union. This leads to significant differences between European countries, which shows in, for example, the homeownership rate (the share of owner-occupied dwellings of all homes). These differences also lead to another problem: the availability of data. Non-Europeans might be surprised to see that house price statistics vary in depth, as every country has their own methodology and no European body exists that tracks this data for the whole continent.