Scots town is UK's most affordable for key workers

Published on Friday 22 May 2009 23:38

GRANGEMOUTH is the most affordable place for key sector workers to buy a home in, according to new research.

The average property in the Stirlingshire town costs 2.7 times average key worker earnings, mortgage lender Halifax revealed yesterday.

Grangemouth is followed by Peterlee, in County Durham, and Nelson, in Lancashire, where the property price-to-earnings ratio is 2.8.

The number of towns in which key workers can afford to buy a home has increased sevenfold since house prices first started to fall.

Key workers, such as nurses, teachers, fire fighters, paramedics and police officers, can now afford a typical property in 21 per cent of towns in the UK, up from just 3 per cent when house prices peaked in 2007.

The Halifax group said all five groups of key workers had seen an improvement in the number of towns where they could afford to buy a property, with police officers seeing the biggest change, with homes in 37 per cent of towns now within their reach.

Teachers have also seen a substantial improvement in affordability, and could now buy a home on a single salary in just over a quarter of towns, up from only 6 per cent in 2007.

Fire fighters and paramedics have seen moderate improvements in the number of places they could buy a home.

However, nurses continue to suffer severe affordability problems. The average nurse could afford to buy a property on a single salary in just 3 per cent of towns, only a slight improvement on the 0.4 per cent of places with affordable property in 2007.

This is despite house prices falling by more than 20 per cent since then.