Mapped: The most unaffordable places to get a mortgage in the UK
Last year the bar was raised for first-time buyers hoping to get a mortgage, as the Bank of England introduced new rules limiting the amount banks and building societies can lend. For the first time, the amount mortgage customers can borrow has been capped at 4.5 times their income.
If you're looking to buy that first home and are hoping for it to be near where you live now, check this map. We've analysed price-to-income ratios across the country (spoiler – if you're a Londoner, look away now).
As we've shown, that 4.5 times income cap is particularly problematic. More figures, from Halifax and the ONS, show that in large parts of the country, average price-to-earnings ratios are way above the threshold.
In fact, the national average ratio by the end of 2014 was 5.2, and figures collated by Halifax show that historically price-to-earnings ratios tend to increase over time.
Over the last two years, the national average house price-to-earnings ratio has increased from its lowest point at 4.4, which is already dangerously close to the cap, to that 5.2 figure. According to Halifax's figures, the national average has remained higher than the new government cap for the past five years
As the map below shows, in large parts of southern England the price-to-earnings ratio is higher than the national average.
In some parts of the country, first-time buyers earning an average wage for the area they want to buy in can expect to have to fork out as much as 11.4 times their salary.
Those in London and the South East fare the worst, with Camden topping the list, with a ratio 11.4 times the average salary – and already-pretty-decent £53,892.
The best place for buyers earning the average salary of the area was East Ayrshire, where the average house price was a snip, at 2.8 times the average salary.
UK's 10 highest price to earning ratios 2014:
| Camden | 11.4x |
| Hammersmith and Fulham | 11.3x |
| Hackney | 10.8x |
| Brent | 10.3x |
| Haringey | 9.9x |
| Lambeth | 9.9x |
| Harrow | 9.7x |
| Islington | 9.5x |
| Ealing | 9.1x |
| Wandsworth | 8.8x |
UK's 10 lowest price to earning ratios 2014:
| East Ayshire | 2.8x |
| Inverclyde | 2.8x |
| Renfrewshire | 2.9x |
| West Dunbartonshire | 3x |
| South Ayshire | 3.1x |
| North Ayshire | 3.1x |
| South Lanarkshire | 3.2x |
| Stirling | 3.2x |
| Copeland | 3.2x |
| North Lanarkshire | 3.3x |