Ask a first-time buyer what sets their budget and most will point to the deposit they have saved. In practice, the bigger lever is usually the salary on the payslip. Most UK lenders size a mortgage as a multiple of income, and that multiple — not the deposit — decides which homes are even on the table. This piece fixes three household incomes (£35,000, £50,000 and £75,000), works out the most each could pay for a home, and then maps those ceilings against the median sale price in 19 of the UK's largest cities.
This is general information, not financial advice.
How the affordability ceiling is built
Two numbers, added together, set the most a buyer can pay:
- The mortgage — the amount a lender will advance. Most UK lenders cap borrowing at around 4.5 times household income. This reflects the Bank of England Financial Policy Committee's loan-to-income (LTI) "flow limit", which restricts how much of a lender's new lending can be advanced at 4.5× income or above. Some lenders offer higher multiples — 5× to 5.5× — for higher earners, certain professions or specific schemes, and every lender runs its own affordability and stress-rate assessment. The 4.5× figure used throughout is a widely-used rule of thumb, not a guarantee.
- The deposit — the cash the buyer puts in. The deposit also sets the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio, which in turn influences the interest rate a lender offers.
So the maximum price a buyer can reach is the loan plus the deposit. If the deposit is a fixed percentage of the price, the sum rearranges to:
Maximum price = (4.5 × income) ÷ (1 − deposit %)
Run three incomes through that, at a 10% and a 25% deposit:
| Household income | Max loan (4.5×) | Max price (10% deposit) | Deposit needed | Max price (25% deposit) | Deposit needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £35,000 | £157,500 | £175,000 | £17,500 | £210,000 | £52,500 |
| £50,000 | £225,000 | £250,000 | £25,000 | £300,000 | £75,000 |
| £75,000 | £337,500 | £375,000 | £37,500 | £450,000 | £112,500 |
These ceilings are rate-independent — they come purely from the income multiple and the deposit. What changes with the interest rate is the monthly cost of the loan, not the amount a lender will lend. We return to that below.
What each salary reaches across 19 cities
The table below lists the median sale price for each city in 2025 (standard "sold for value" transactions, houses and flats), from HM Land Registry Price Paid data fetched on 23 August 2026. For each income, the entry shows the smallest deposit level at which the ceiling covers the local median — "10%", "25%", or "—" if the median is out of reach even with a 25% deposit.
| City | 2025 median price | £35k income | £50k income | £75k income |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kingston upon Hull | £142,000 | 10% | 10% | 10% |
| Liverpool | £182,500 | 25% | 10% | 10% |
| Bradford | £186,500 | 25% | 10% | 10% |
| Nottingham | £200,000 | 25% | 10% | 10% |
| Newcastle upon Tyne | £205,000 | 25% | 10% | 10% |
| Swansea | £207,500 | 25% | 10% | 10% |
| Sheffield | £218,000 | — | 10% | 10% |
| Plymouth | £226,000 | — | 10% | 10% |
| Birmingham | £238,000 | — | 10% | 10% |
| Newport | £239,995 | — | 10% | 10% |
| Leicester | £242,000 | — | 10% | 10% |
| Leeds | £248,000 | — | 10% | 10% |
| Manchester | £250,000 | — | 10% | 10% |
| Cardiff | £270,000 | — | 25% | 10% |
| Bristol | £350,000 | — | — | 10% |
| Bath | £400,000 | — | — | 25% |
| Oxford | £450,000 | — | — | 25% |
| Cambridge | £494,250 | — | — | — |
| London (all boroughs) | £530,000 | — | — | — |
The pattern is stark. A household on £50,000 with a 10% deposit reaches the median home in 13 of the 19 cities — the whole affordable North, the Midlands and South Wales, up to Manchester, which sits exactly on the £250,000 line. But Bristol, Bath, Oxford, Cambridge and London all stay out of reach at that income.
A £35,000 household is far more constrained: the local median is reachable only in Hull with a 10% deposit, widening to six cities once the deposit reaches 25% (Hull, Liverpool, Bradford, Nottingham, Newcastle and Swansea). At £75,000, Bristol comes into range with a 10% deposit and Bath and Oxford with a 25% deposit — but Cambridge and London remain beyond reach even for a £75,000 household putting down a quarter of the price.
Why income moves the needle more than the deposit
Notice what stretching the deposit actually buys. On £50,000, moving from a 10% to a 25% deposit lifts the ceiling from £250,000 to £300,000 — but the cash required triples, from £25,000 to £75,000, and it adds just one city to the map (Cardiff). Raising the income does far more: going from £50,000 to £75,000 at the same 10% deposit lifts the ceiling from £250,000 to £375,000 and brings Bristol into range.
That asymmetry is baked into the arithmetic. Because the loan is a multiple of income, every extra £1,000 of income lifts the borrowing ceiling by £4,500, while every extra £1,000 of deposit lifts it by only £1,000. It is the same mechanism that makes a second earner so powerful — we work that through in how a deposit and a salary compare as levers on your budget, and the reverse calculation — the income needed to buy a given city's median — in what salary you need to buy a house across the UK. You can test your own figures on the mortgage affordability calculator.
The borrowing cap is not the monthly cost
Reaching a price ceiling and comfortably affording the monthly payment are two different things. The ceiling is set by the income multiple; the monthly cost is set by the interest rate. At the Bank of England's most recent quoted rate for a 75% LTV five-year fix — 4.32% (April 2026) — each £100,000 of repayment mortgage over 25 years costs roughly £546 a month. So the £225,000 loan behind a £50,000 household's £250,000 purchase would cost about £1,228 a month before council tax, energy and insurance are added; the £157,500 loan on £35,000 works out near £859, and the £337,500 loan on £75,000 near £1,842. The rate a buyer is actually offered depends on their lender, deposit and credit profile. We break the per-£100,000 figure down in how much each £100,000 of mortgage costs a month, and you can see the full monthly bill for any street on the Homecost postcode tool.
The deposit is only part of the upfront cash
One caution on the deposit column: it is not the whole of the money a buyer needs on completion. Stamp duty (above the relevant threshold), conveyancing, searches and survey fees all come on top. For a mover buying at £250,000 in England, stamp duty alone is £2,500 (HMRC, 2026); a first-time buyer buying their main residence pays nothing below the £300,000 first-time-buyer threshold. We add those components city by city in the guide to the cash you need to complete, by UK city, and joint buyers can see how two incomes combine in the note on joint-applicant mortgage affordability.
The takeaway
For most buyers, the city they can afford is decided at the point of hire, not at the point of saving. A £50,000 household can reach the typical home across most of the North, Midlands and Wales; the same household needs either a materially higher income or a much larger deposit to buy the median home in Bristol, and neither a 10% nor a 25% deposit gets a £75,000 household into Cambridge or London at the median. Deposit still matters — it sets the LTV, the rate and the size of the loan to service — but income sets the ceiling.
Every figure here is a rule-of-thumb calculation from public data: median prices are based on more than 161,000 Land Registry transactions recorded across these 19 cities in 2025 (see the full Cost Intelligence guides for method), and the income multiple is a market convention, not a promise from any lender. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting.