Where You Can't Afford to Live

The Guardian has published an interactive map which visualizes where you can't afford to live or rent in the UK. Unfortunately the newspaper has mistakenly mistitled the map Find out where you can afford to buy or rent in Great Britain rather than the presumably intended 'Find out where you can't afford to buy or rent in Great Britain'.

The Guardian map allows you to enter your annual salary to discover all the locations where you might be able to afford to rent or buy a property. The screenshot at the top of this post shows all the locations (in red) where you cannot afford to buy or rent on the average UK salary of £31,772. As you can see from the map if you earn at or below the UK average salary then you might be able to afford to live in a few towns in the northeast of England or in parts of Scotland. However housing in the vast majority of the UK is way beyond your dreams.

Once you have entered your annual salary you can also click on postcode areas on the map to find out more about the affordability of property in that area. For example if I click on my London postcode (one of the cheapest places to buy in London) it says that the median property price is £400,000 - which The Guardian says is 11.3 times the annual income (although my calculations make the real figure 12.59 times the UK average salary). 

Most mortgages in the UK are agreed on at 4-4.5 times the average salary. So even if you are a couple who are both earning the equivalent of the UK average salary your combined earnings would still not be enough to buy a property in one of London's poorest boroughs.