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How much you need to earn to buy a house in every London borough

Zoopla has revealed that we should be earning more than £100,000 in order to own an average home in London

Amy Houghton
Written by
Amy Houghton
Contributing writer
A view of London from Muswell Hill, north London
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It’s a depressing fact that buying a house in London is way, way out of reach for the average person. To really stick the knife in, Zoopla has revealed just how much Londoners should be earning annually if they want to purchase their own home here. Don’t get your hopes up – even in the cheapest boroughs, the findings are bleak.

Now that you’ve mentally prepared yourself, we can reveal that if you want to buy your own house in London, you should to be earning around £101,080 a year, based on the average house price of £535,100. That’s almost two and a half times more than the average London salary of £41.5k. 

The estimates assume that the buyer puts down a 15 percent deposit and a mortgage 4.5 times their income, rounded to the nearest £10.

Broken down by borough, Zoopla found that houses in Kensington and Chelsea require the highest salary (a staggering £214,750 per year). An average home in Barking and Dagenham requires the smallest salary out of all the boroughs, but at £63,620, it’s still significantly higher than what most Londoners make. We warned you – bleak. 

The average salary needed to buy a house in each London borough

  • Kensington and Chelsea: £214,750
  • Westminster: £180,860
  • Camden: £147,000
  • Richmond-upon-Thames: £142,990
  • City of London: £137,510
  • Hammersmith and Fulham: £136,160
  • Islington: £125,320
  • Wandsworth: £124,340
  • Hackney: £111,180
  • Kingston-upon-Thames: £108,240
  • Barnet: £107,650
  • Haringey: £106,870
  • Merton: £105,350
  • Lambeth: £104,440
  • Southwark: £98,590
  • Brent: £97,220
  • Ealing: £97,170
  • Bromley: £97,020
  • Harrow: £96,070
  • Waltham Forest: £94,460
  • Tower Hamlets: £90,890
  • Redbridge: £88,810
  • Hounslow: £87,330
  • Hillingdon: £85,630
  • Lewisham: £85,110
  • Sutton: £83,810
  • Enfield: £82,550
  • Havering: £79,590
  • Greenwich: £79,410
  • Newham: £76,020
  • Bexley: £75,260
  • Croydon: £74,430
  • Barking and Dagenham: £63,620

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