Revealed: only area of England and Wales with average home under £100k

Only one local authority in England and Wales has an average house price below £100,000 - while in every London borough now, the average is over £300,000.

Estate agency Savills, which has produced the figures, says it’s only Blaenau Gwent in Wales that is still in five figures with an average sale price of £97,147 as of late 2017. 

At the other end of the scale, house prices in all local authorities in London and the South East had exceeded £100,000 by 2002, with Barking and Dagenham in London, Dover, Portsmouth, Medway, Gosport, Thanet and Hastings the last to do so.  

By the end of 2003, the last of the local authorities of the East and the South West regions had also breached this threshold.

Savills says that as far back as 1995, the average sale price in 35 local authorities had crossed the £100,000 line, including nine London boroughs, plus a number of high value commuter towns such as Guildford, St Albans, Winchester, Sevenoaks and Woking, plus a single local authority in the South West - Cotswold.

Fifteen years ago, half of all London borough had crossed the £200,000 mark, while Trafford, Harrogate and Hambledon, all relatively affluent locations with established prime housing market clusters, were the first northern local authorities to pass the £200,000 mark did so in 2014.

Fifteen years ago, half of all London borough had crossed the £200,000 mark, while Trafford, Harrogate and Hambledon, all relatively affluent locations with established prime housing market clusters, were the first northern local authorities to pass the £200,000 mark did so in 2014.

“It remains to be seen if Bleanau Gwent will finally cross the £100,000 line this year, but this analysis lays bare the stark regional polarisation of housing wealth in the UK,” says Lucian Cook, Savills head of residential research.

“Even if house prices continue to rise in line with the average of the past two decades, it’ll be 2036 before the average sale price in all local authorities of England and Wales reaches the £200,000 mark.

“House prices at a regional level are a clear reflection of underlying regional economic factors, but such polarisation reduces social mobility and perpetuates the haves and have nots of housing wealth.”