Where Can You Afford to Live?

The short answer to the question of where young people can afford to rent in the UK is 'practically nowhere'. For example if you want to live in London then you might just be able to afford a one bedroom apartment if you earn north of £51,000. If you earn the average wage for a person in their 20's then you could move to Brighton where you would only have to pay around 50% of your salary, on average, for renting a one bedroom apartment.

If you are prepared to move anywhere in the country then your best bet is to move to Argyll and Bute where your rent would be a very affordable 15% of the average income (for someone in their 20's). If you want to know how much the average rent costs in the rest of Britain then you should refer to the BBC's interactive map Where does rent hit young people the hardest?

Enter a postcode into the map and you can find out how much it costs to rent a one bedroom apartment in the area, as a proportion of the average wage. If you are feeling rich then you can adjust the map to show the rents for apartments with more than one bedroom. You can also adjust the map to show the cost for the average wage for all ages.


The Guardian newspaper has created an interactive map which allows you to see where you can afford to buy a property in England and Wales based on your annual income. If you earn the national average wage in England or Wales then you can not afford to buy a house in 93% of the country. Don't worry though, if you do well and manage to raise you income to twice the national average salary then you just might be able to afford a house in one of the country's poorest neighborhoods

Unaffordable Country is a choropleth map which colours postcode areas based on the affordability of properties in the area. Type in your average salary and the map will show you all the areas where you can afford to live - or, as is more likely, all the places in the country where you can't afford to live. For example, where I live, in one of the poorest boroughs in the whole country, you would need to earn around three times the average salary to be able to afford a house. In other words you would need to be in the top 5% of earners to be able to afford to buy a property in one of the country's poorest boroughs.