Can you still afford a house in the UK?

"Ordinary people will never own a home again" is the most-watched sentence in British personal finance. But can you still afford a house in the UK, actually? It is a testable question: the prices, the earnings, the deposits and the lending rules are all published. So here is the arithmetic instead of the mood. What the average home costs, what a normal salary borrows, what the deposit really takes, and where the wall is. It turns out not to be quite where the internet puts it.

Everything below is public data and arithmetic: ONS and Land Registry prices, ONS earnings, UK Finance deposits, published lending multiples and current mortgage rates. It is not financial advice and not a prediction about where prices go next. It is what the numbers say today, so you can check your own position against them.

What a house actually costs in the UK in 2026

These are official average sale prices from the ONS and Land Registry's UK House Price Index: what buyers actually paid over the year to May 2026, the most recent full set published.

Set that against earnings and you get the number the affordability argument actually turns on. England's £292,000 average is 7.4 times the £39,300 median full-time salary. The ONS puts the 2025 ratio at 7.6× in England and 6.0× in Wales, against the long-standing rule of thumb that a market is affordable at around 5×. So the claim that housing is historically expensive relative to wages is simply true. That part of the video is not hype.

The less-quoted half: that ratio has been falling since it peaked in 2021. Prices are up about 5% since then, earnings about 25%. Housing has been getting slowly more affordable for four years, from a very bad starting point. Both things are true at once, which is why the same data supports two very different YouTube videos.

How much can you borrow on your salary?

UK lenders work to an income multiple, typically 4 to 4.5 times income, occasionally stretching to 5.5× for higher earners or specific schemes, and then stress-test the payment at a higher notional rate. Here is the mortgage each salary supports at 4.5×, and the asking price that reaches once a 10% deposit is added on top:

One median salary and a 10% deposit lands at £196,500: £29,500 below the £226,000 average first-time-buyer home, and nearly £75,000 below the £271,000 UK average. Two median salaries buy £393,000, above the average price everywhere except London and the South East. Buying alone and buying together are not the same market, and most national statistics quietly describe couples.

The deposit is the wall, not the salary

Here is the figure that reframes the whole argument. The average first-time-buyer deposit in England is £63,855. On a £226,000 home that is 28.3% of the price, not the 10% everyone plans around. Real buyers are not scraping over the line with a minimum deposit; they are arriving with nearly a third of the money.

Run the same purchase with that deposit and the mortgage is only £162,145. At 4.5× income, that needs a salary of £36,032, which is below the £39,300 median. On the national averages, the borrowing test is passed by an ordinary salary. What is not ordinary is having £63,855 in cash.

“On the averages, the salary clears the bar. It's the £63,855 that takes nine years.”

How long does it take to save a deposit?

Saving that £63,855 from nothing, at 4%:

Where you hold that money changes the answer. Interest in an ordinary savings account is taxable once you pass your personal savings allowance (£1,000 at basic rate, £500 at higher rate), and at 4% a £63,855 balance alone throws off more than £2,500 a year. A cash ISA shelters that interest completely, within the £20,000 annual ISA allowance. Better still, a Lifetime ISA adds a 25% government bonus on up to £4,000 a year, turning £4,000 into £5,000: £1,000 a year of free money, and the only guaranteed 25% return in the saving phase. The catches are specific: you must be 18 to 39, the property must cost £450,000 or less, and withdrawing for anything other than a first home before 60 costs a 25% charge that takes back more than the bonus.

That timeline is the real answer to why the average first-time buyer is 33.9 years old, and why help from family changes outcomes so sharply: a gift is not a boost to the plan, it removes the longest phase of it. And these are targets reached while renting, in the same years that rent competes for the same money.

The obvious escape is a smaller deposit. A 5% deposit here is £11,300: 22 months at £500 a month rather than nine years. The trade-off is real. The mortgage becomes £214,700, needing about £47,700 of income at 4.5×, and 95% loan-to-value products price well above the market averages.

And then the monthly payment

Take the realistic case: the £226,000 average first-time-buyer home, the £63,855 average deposit, a £162,145 mortgage. At 5.09%, Rightmove's average two-year fix in August 2026, over 25 years that is £956.41 a month and £124,777 of interest over the life of the loan. Rates matter more than they look: at 4.5% the payment is £901.25, at 6% it is £1,044.70.

The lever most buyers actually reach for is the term. Stretching the same loan to 35 years cuts the payment to £827.66, which is £128.75 a month easier, but total interest rises to £185,471: an extra £60,694. It is the most effective affordability tool available and the most expensive one, and it is why average mortgage terms have been lengthening.

Stamp duty: the cost that has to be cash

Stamp duty deserves its own line in the budget: unlike the deposit it buys you nothing, and unlike the mortgage you cannot borrow it. In England the first-time-buyer relief runs to £300,000, so on the £226,000 average first home the bill is £0. Move up and it bites fast: a mover at the £271,000 UK average pays £3,550, and at £292,000 it is £4,600. Above £500,000 the relief disappears altogether rather than tapering, which is why a first-time buyer at the £545,000 London average pays the full £17,250, the same as anyone else.

Scotland and Wales run separate taxes (LBTT and LTT) with their own thresholds, and a second property adds a surcharge of 5% in England or 8% in Scotland. Whatever the figure, it lands on completion day alongside legal fees, searches, a survey and moving costs, so save it as part of the deposit rather than as an afterthought.

London is a different country

Everything above breaks in the capital. The average London property is £545,000: the only region where prices fell over the year, by 3.7%, and still nearly double the England average. The average London first-time-buyer deposit is £132,200, and even after putting that down the £412,800 mortgage needs an income of about £91,733 at 4.5×. That is 2.3 times the median salary, and the payment is £2,434.88 a month over 25 years.

London also loses the one break first-time buyers get: that £17,250 stamp duty bill has to be saved on top of the £132,200. When people say the ladder is broken, this is the arithmetic they mean, and in London it is hard to argue with.

What actually moves the needle

• A second income. It is the single biggest lever in the data: £39,300 buys £196,500, two of them buy £393,000. Nothing else doubles your borrowing.
• Geography. The same salary that is £29,500 short of the average English home is comfortably clear of the Scottish (£196,000) or Northern Irish (£198,000) average. Remote and hybrid work made that a live choice for more people.
• The deposit, in both directions. More deposit means a smaller loan and a better rate band; each step down in loan-to-value (95% to 90% to 85%) typically buys a cheaper product.
• The Lifetime ISA. £1,000 a year of free government money on £4,000 saved, for homes up to £450,000. Nothing else in the saving phase pays 25% guaranteed.
• The term. Cheaper monthly, dearer overall: £60,694 more interest to go from 25 to 35 years. Worth using knowingly, and worth shortening again at the next remortgage.

So, can you still afford a house?

On the published numbers: on two ordinary salaries, in most of the UK, yes. On one median salary with a 10% deposit, in the average area, you are around £29,500 short. That is close enough that another year of saving, a cheaper region or a second income closes it, and far enough that it will not close by itself. In London, on one ordinary salary, the arithmetic simply does not work at any deposit an ordinary saver can reach.

So the honest headline is not "you'll never own a home". It is that the barrier moved: it used to be whether you could carry the mortgage, and now it is whether you can assemble the deposit and the tax on top. Nine years of £500 a month is a real obstacle, but it is a different problem from an impossible one, and it responds to different things. Once more, plainly: these are national averages and arithmetic, not financial advice. Your street, your salary and your lender's stress test decide the rest.