Property: Most and least expensive places to buy a house in the UK as prices drop - full list
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The most expensive and cheapest places to buy a house in the UK have been revealed in new research by RightMove. The city of Bradford in West Yorkshire has been crowned “Britain’s cheapest city” for first-time buyers hoping to get on the property ladder.
RightMove’s analysis looked at the prices of two bedroom homes in major urban locations across the UK, basing its research on the assumptions that first-time buyers had a 10 per cent deposit and would be paying back their mortgage over 25 years. Carlise in Cumbria came second place for cheapest locations, with an average asking price only slightly higher than Bradford at £104,789 and the average mortgage costing £522 a month.
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Hide AdUnsurprisingly, London was the most expensive place to buy property in the UK with the average monthly mortgage payment for first-time buyers coming in at £2,533. Excluding London, St Albans in Hertfordshire, a popular commuter city with regular trains to the capital, was named as the priciest city to get on the property ladder, with average monthly mortgage payments at around £1,958.
Tim Bannister, property expert at RightMove, said: “For those who are able to save up the deposit, it’s still cheaper to pay off a mortgage as a first-time buyer in many areas than pay the equivalent in monthly rent, despite prices reaching a new record at a national level and mortgage rates rising.
“It highlights how frenetic the rental market has been for a long time now, with many areas continuing to see record rents and fierce competition between tenants for the properties available.” It comes after UK house prices fell at their fastest annual pace for nearly 14 years in May.
Nationwide said prices in the year to May dropped by 3.4 per cent - the biggest decline since July 2009. But the building society also warned that more rises in mortgage interest rates could hit the housing market.
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Hide AdMost and least expensive places to buy a house in the UK
Locations were ranked by average asking price for first time buyers:
Top five cheapest places
- Bradford - Asking price: £104,643 - Mortgage: £521- Rent: £623 (-£102)
- Carlisle - Asking price: £104,784 - Mortgage: £522, - Rent: £556 (-£34)
- Aberdeen - Asking price: £106,088 - Mortgage: £528 - Rent: £718 (-£190)
- Hull - Asking price: £106,939 - Mortgage: £532 - Rent:£595 (-£63)
- Dundee - Asking price: £111,415 - Mortgage: £555 - Rent: £731 (-£176)
Top five expensive places
- London - Asking price: £508,879, Mortgage: £2,533, - Rent: £2,054 (+£479)
- St Albans - Asking price: £393,485, Mortgage: £1,958,- Rent: £1,433 (+£525)
- Bath - Asking price: £354,636, Mortgage: £1,765, - Rent: £1,342, (+£423)
- Cambridge - Asking price: £354,181, Mortgage: £1,763, - Rent: £1,522, (+£241)
- Oxford - Asking price: £351,943, Mortgage: £1,752 - Rent: £1,422, (+£330)
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