The mainstream media usually report UK House Prices at a national level. Recently we went one level deeper by examining English and Welsh property at County Level however this data left an elephant in the room. That elephant was London, a small village located in the South East of England with a population of 8.2 million, and one which was included as a single data point. Today let’s go deeper into London and look at the Salaries, House Prices and Value of each London Borough.
To Value the London market by borough we will maintain consistency with our previous definition which is a simple Price to Earnings Ratio (P/E). As with the County level analysis we will use the Land Registry House Price Index for prices. We’ll stay with calling high house prices bad (the Borough with the highest average house price, unsurprisingly, is Kensington & Chelsea at £1,104,770 and is shown in dark red) and low house prices good (the Borough with the lowest house price is Barking & Dagenham at £213,581 and is dark green) with all other prices shaded between red and green depending on house price. What I find amazing is that Barking & Dagenham, the cheapest Borough, is still 32% more expensive than the England and Wales average.
For Earnings we’ll also stay with the 2012 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) which provides information about the levels, distribution and make-up of earnings and hours paid for employees within industries, occupations and regions in the UK. To ensure that our Earners and Houses are located within the same Borough we’ll use the Earnings by Place of Residence by Local Authority. We again multiply the data by 52 weeks to convert it to an annual salary. We stay with calling low earnings bad (the lowest average earnings are £19,183 in Newham which surprisingly is only 8% higher than the lowest County which was Blackpool and is shown in dark red) and high earnings good (the highest average earnings are £59,441 in Kensington and Chelsea and is dark green) with all other earnings shaded between red and green depending on earnings.
