Where wages are too low to buy a house

The plight of prospective home-buyers in London is highlighted in a new report today.

The average home in the capital costs £237,053 - 4.69 times the average annual household income of £50,504 in London.

The study by Professor Steve Wilcox, of York University, found the least affordable boroughs - in terms of prices as a multiple of earnings - are Westminster, Brent, Waltham Forest, Southwark and Ealing. The most affordable are Bexley, Barking and Dagenham, and Greenwich.

The least affordable parts of the South-East were Adur, Chichester, Lewes and Eastbourne in Sussex, and Mole Valley in Surrey. The only affordable areas in the region were Milton Keynes and Ashford in Kent. The findings are worrying as mortgage lenders will rarely lend to individuals at ratios of more than 4.1 times their annual income.

Professor Wilcox said: "This demonstrates that even the most modest twobedroom properties in many parts of London and the South are priced beyond the reach of many young households."

The study was based on working households, aged between 20 and 39, and the price of a two- or threebedroom home in the last three months of last year.

It comes after research by the Halifax revealed that across the capital the proportion of first-time buyers had dropped by a half in a decade.