Someone’s worked out how long you’d have to cancel Netflix for in order to buy a house

As young people, we’re constantly told by boomers that buying a house should be easy – we just have to move to the middle of nowhere and give up coffee, avo toast, and literally everything else that’s even slightly fun. Simple, right? The latest thing we’ve been told is to just give up Netflix (by Kirstie Allsopp, who is literally the daughter of a baron). But now someone on Twitter has worked out exactly how many years we’d have to go without Netflix for in order to buy a house at different locations around the UK, and spoiler alert – it’s literally impossible.

Nathan Bickerton has made a map of the UK, showing exactly how may years we’d have to cancel Netflix for in order to bag ourselves a sweet, sweet house, based on the average house price in that region.

It’s no surprise that London is the highest – you’d have to have 4,307 years without Netflix to be able to afford the average house there, which is over 53 lifetimes. This is followed by the South East (3,060 years), South West (2,491 years) and East of England (2,771 years).

The cheapest place is the North East – but at 1,232 years without Netflix, this is still pretty impossible at almost 16 lifetimes’ worth of the streaming service. After this comes Scotland (1,369 years) and Wales (1,492 years).

You can see Nathan’s full map here:

Speaking to The Tab, Nathan said he wanted to show privileged people how naive these comments are.

He said: “I’m 23 and nearing the age where buying property starts to become a real thought. And all the talk of deleting Netflix, not buying coffee, etc feels quite patronising coming from a generation who could buy houses for £80k. A lot of privileged people, particularly in older generations, forget that times have changed considerably since they were our age. So I just wanted to illustrate the naivety of those kind of comments and a map seemed like a good way to do so.”

He was so shocked when he worked out the numbers that he had to get a friend to double-check the data and make sure he’d got it right. “I was even more shocked by the number of lifetimes figure”, Nathan said.

How many lifetimes you’d have to go without Netflix for in order to afford a house, via Nathan’s Twitter

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• These students’ uni house ceiling was leaking – so their landlord put them in Premier Inn

• Half of young people have been screwed over by a landlord’s illegal behaviour

• These are the most expensive UK cities to rent in