About Pay vs Place
Pay vs Place compares what homes cost with what people earn, area by area, across England and Wales.
Most property sites tell you what a house costs. That only means something next to what people living there earn. A £300,000 home is a different proposition in an area where the typical full-time worker earns £45,000 than in one where they earn £30,000. Pay vs Place puts house prices, rents, local pay and recorded crime side by side for 316 local authority areas, so you can see how affordable a place really is, and how that has changed over time.
What you can do here
- Enter your salary and see which areas you could afford to buy or rent in.
- Look up any area for a plain-English summary of prices, rents, pay, crime and how they have changed.
- Compare two areas to see what your salary is worth in each.
Where the numbers come from
Everything on the site is built from official open data: HM Land Registry, the Office for National Statistics and the Home Office. How it works lists each source, the period it covers, how every figure is calculated and what the figures cannot tell you.
What this site is not
It is not financial, mortgage or property advice, and it is not a valuation. Averages hide a lot: every area contains cheap streets and expensive ones. Use it to narrow down where to look, then check the details yourself.
Spotted something that looks wrong? Tell us.