Story · Curiosities map · about 3 min
Can you afford to live there? Homes, pay and years of wages
Three maps from the Office for National Statistics tell one story: what homes cost, what people earn, and where the two collide.
Where a home costs most and least
In June 2026 the average home in Kensington and Chelsea cost £1,324,073, 12.0 times the £110,158 of Inverclyde. Across 360 councils, 15 of the 20 dearest are London boroughs, so the darkest colours gather in and around the capital.
The same map in 2005
Prices have risen almost everywhere: the typical council's average is now 1.8 times its 2005 level. Shetland Islands rose the most, 3.3 times (a small market, where a few sales move the average), while Aberdeen City rose only 1.2 times. Drag the year slider to watch the colours change.
What people earn
Median weekly pay of people who live in Kensington and Chelsea was £955; in Melton it was £515. That is a gap of 1.9 times in pay, set against 12.0 times in the price of a home. Pay differs far less from place to place than house prices do, which is why a home costs so many more years of wages in some places than others.
Years of wages for a home
Divide a typical home's price by a typical year's full-time earnings and you get a count of years. In Kensington and Chelsea it is 21.9 years; in Hyndburn, 3.9. 55 of the 316 councils in England and Wales need ten years of pay or more. This map covers England and Wales only.
For classrooms and curious minds
Questions to talk about, alone or in a group.
- Why might house prices rise faster than pay for twenty years in a row?
- Median pay here is for where people live, not where they work. How could that change the picture for a city centre?
Try it on the map: Switch between 2005 and 2026 on the house price map. Which councils changed colour the most, and can you think why?
The figures above are calculated from the datasets listed on Data & sources and are approximate: many map layers are modelled or interpolated. Read each layer’s caveats on the map.