The London housing market is now ‘impossibly unaffordable’, according to a thinktank

In case you didn’t know, buying a house in London these days costs the world. Unless you’ve got wealthy parents to give you a leg up, or fancy saving up for the next 40 years, cobbling together the money for a deposit feels to most Londoners like an impossible task. 

Now a new study has confirmed just how bad things have got for the capital’s housing market. According to a report by the Demographia International Housing Affordability (DIHA) – try not to get your tongue tied saying that one – housing in London is now ‘impossibly unaffordable’. At this point, why even bother? I’d rather spend my money on flat whites and avocado toast. 

The study was conducted by the centre for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in LA and a Canadian think tank called the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (FCPP). Now in its 21st year, the DIHA used the median house price-to-income ratio to work out which locations around the world were the most and the least affordable for buying houses, which essentially means they worked out how many times you would have to multiply the median salary to afford the median house price. 

By no surprise, London did not perform well in the analysis, and the capital was given the worst rating of being ‘impossibly unaffordable’ with a ‘median multiple’ of 9.0 and over, meaning that homes in the city cost up to nine times the median salary. London was the only UK region to receive this ranking. The report noted that house prices relative to household incomes have up to tripled in London. 

Per the report, London is one of the least affordable markets in the world, joining the likes of Hong Kong, Sydney, San Jose, Vancouver and Los Angeles. As for the rest of the UK, buying in London was revealed as 2.5 times more expensive than Britain’s most affordable market (which was still rated as ‘moderately unaffordable’), Middlesbrough and Durham. You can read more about that here. 

Before you crash out over this frankly horrible news, don’t forget that living in London is actually pretty great, even if it means we can never afford houses. At least we have a conveyor belt cheese restaurant, eh?

London’s Elizabeth Tower and Young V&A have just won very prestigious architecture awards. 

It’s official: London is home to one of the most beautiful outdoor cinemas in the world. 

Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – from news and reviews to events and trends. Just follow our Time Out London WhatsApp channel.