Cheaper house prices offset by lower salaries in bay

THE average property in Torbay was bought for £259,000 in the year to January, according to the latest data from the Land Registry – the lowest in Devon outside of Plymouth.

When you take local salaries into account, Torbay is also the second most affordable. By comparison, Mid Devon homes sold for an average of £299,000 and in Exeter for an average of £312,000.

The average full-time salary in Torbay is £29,459 a year. That means that the average home in the local authority area is 8.8 times greater than the average salary.

That ratio is still above the national average of 8.1 times salary. Homes in Exeter are 9.5 times salaries on average.

Plymouth is the most affordable place in Devon when it comes to local people being able to buy a house. The average property in Plymouth was bought for £221,000 in the year to January.

That makes it the cheapest local authority in which to buy a house in the whole of Devon. When you take local salaries into account, it’s also the most affordable. The average full-time employee who lives in Plymouth earns £31,615 a year. That means the average home in the area is seven times greater than the average salary.

That’s the lowest house price to income ratio of any local authority in Devon for which data is available.

In Torridge, meanwhile, the average home costs 9.4 times the average salary. In Teignbridge this is 10.6 times, and in West Devon 10.8 times the average.

The South Hams is the least affordable place to live in Devon. The average house sold for £432,000 in the 12 months to January, which works out at 12.7 times the average local full-time salary. That puts it just ahead of East Devon where the average house cost £353,000 which is 12.4 times the average salary.

Salary data isn’t available for Mid Devon or North Devon, but the average homes there cost an average of £299,000 and £288,000 respectively.

Kensington and Chelsea in London is the least affordable place to buy a home, with the average house costing 28.6 times the average salary.

Tim Ireland/PA Wire ⟫House prices in Torbay are nearly nine times the annual salary for the area, while in the South Hams that figure is substantially higher