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Roundup: Scotland cheapest place to settle in UK: Halifax

Xinhua, July 24, 2016 Adjust font size:

First-time house buyers in Britain would have to head to Scotland for the most-affordable homes, the country's biggest mortgage-lender, the Halifax, revealed Saturday.

Properties in East Dunbartonshire, a suburb of Glasgow, cost an average 2.6 times the average annual local salary, the bank says in its latest survey. It also reveals that in the top-10 five cheapest areas to buy a home, five are in Scotland.

Copeland in North West England was the second least expensive area, with houses costing 2.9 times the average annual local salary, while Blaenau Gwent was the cheapest place for people wanting to settle in a home in Wales. There, the average home for a first-timer would cost 3.3 times the annual average salary.

At the opposite end of the scale, London remains the most expensive area for first time buyers, according to the Halifax. In the Brent area of Britain's capital, a property for a first time buyers costs 12.5 times the average local salary, followed by Hackney where it was 12 times. All of the top 10 places for Britain's least affordable homes were in London and cost at least 10 times local earnings.

The survey also showed that in London, first time buyers had to pay more than half a million U.S. dollars to get their hands on their first home.

The statistics were based on transactions for homes for first time buyers in the first six months of 2016, said the Halifax.

Its First Time Buyer Review showed in the first half of this year the number of people stepping onto the property ladder for the first time in the first six months of 2016 was 10 percent higher than in the same period of 2015. In total 154,200 first time buyers bought homes, compared to 140,500 in the first six months of 2015.

Even so, the number of first time buyers in the first half of this year was a fifth lower than a boom period in 2006.

There was also a wide variation in the prices paid by first time buyers. On average they spent 505,000 U.S.dollars to buy a home in London, and 144,250 U.S. dollars for a home in Northern Ireland where the cheapest homes were available for first time buyers.

Chris Gowland, Mortgages Director at Halifax, said Saturday: "There was a further increase in the number of first time buyers in the first half of the year with the total exceeding 100,000 in the first six months of each year since 2012. This rise has been broadly in line with a general improvement in market activity and is likely to have been helped by government measures including the Help to Buy scheme.

"Although numbers remain below their previous peaks and many potential first time buyers are facing escalating house prices and deposit sizes, record low mortgage rates continue to make buying seem a more attractive option than renting." Endit