Housing Affordability Ratios for Local Authorities in England and Wales

Affordability ratios for local authorities in England and Wales, calculated by dividing house prices by gross annual workplace-based earnings. The dataset is based on the median and lower quartiles of both house prices and earnings. It is published by the Government Digital Service under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Ranking local authorities by housing affordability based on the price-to-earnings ratio.
• Analyzing the distribution of affordability between median and lower quartile earners.
• Comparing regional housing market pressures across England and Wales.
• Modeling the relationship between local earnings and property prices.

Strengths

• Derived from official government sources for house prices and earnings.
• Provides a standardized metric (affordability ratio) for cross-regional comparison.
• Calculated using both median and lower quartile values, offering two perspectives on affordability.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service

Collection Method

Calculated by dividing house prices by gross annual workplace-based earnings, using median and lower quartile values.

Time Range

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Freshness

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Geography

England and Wales, with a focus on local authorities.