Shelter recommends that housing costs should be no more than 35% of income. So to work this out, we took the cost of the average house in each of Britain’s 2650 postcodes and worked out mortgage repayments based on having a 20% deposit and taking a 25-year term with a 2.63% interest rate. Next, we divided this figure by 0.35 to show the monthly salary a homeowner would need to buy in a location and divided that by the average number of hours worked in a month (150) to show their hourly salary.
You can click on the pins to find out more about that postcode.
The interactive map on the next page shows how much you need to earn per hour to buy a house in each of Britain’s postcodes. Take a look and see where you can – and can’t – afford to live.
Each pin represents a postcode and shows how much you’d need to earn per hour to buy a property there. It’s based on a single person working a 37.5 hour week and mortgage repayments being 35% of the income.
You can click on the pins to find out more about that postcode.