It’s official: living in Oxford is less affordable than London

Oxford tops the list as the most expensive city to live in


Londoners have become accustomed to topping study after study proclaiming how unaffordable it is to live there, but in an unprecedented turn of events, Oxford has out-ranked London in 2017.

The average city house prices outpace earnings growth over the last five years, according to Lloyds TSB Banking Group, now being nearly seven times the annual earnings.


Greater London house prices have recovered the fastest following the downturn, with an increase of 57% between 2012 and 2017. Most painful of all, is that Oxford tops the list of least affordable cities.

The average house price in Oxford is £385,372, which is nearly 11 times (10.7) annual gross average earnings in the city (£36,033), making it the UK’s least affordable city.

This being said, its a fairly common concern spanning the entirety of the UK, with home affordability in Britain being the worst since 2008, mostly due to slow wage growth and rapidly increasing house prices.

As if graduation couldn’t look bleaker, we’ll now be looking at grad schemes much closer to Mum and Dad.