Where Can You Afford to Buy?
House hunting usually works the wrong way round. You pick a place, then find out you cannot afford it. This tool flips that on its head. Tell it your budget, and it shows you the towns where the typical home actually fits, based on millions of real sale prices from the Land Registry rather than asking prices or estimates.
How It Works
We take every residential sale in England and Wales since 2024 and work out the typical price of each property type in each town. When you enter a budget, we list the areas where that typical price is at or below your figure, starting with the most expensive areas you can still afford, so you can see the best places within reach rather than just the cheapest.
Why Typical Price, Not Cheapest
Almost anywhere has the odd bargain, so listing the cheapest single sale in each town would be misleading. Instead we use the average price for the property type you choose, which tells you what a normal home there actually costs. If a town appears on your list, it means a typical home of that type genuinely sits within your budget, not just a one-off doer-upper.
Choosing a Property Type
Your money goes a lot further on a terraced house or a flat than on a detached home, so the property type filter matters. Switching from "any home" to "detached house" will usually shorten your list considerably, while choosing "flat" or "terraced" will lengthen it. It is worth trying a few combinations to see how the type of home changes where you can afford to live.
A Realistic Picture
The areas that show up on a modest budget tend to be in the North East, the North West, Yorkshire, the Welsh valleys and parts of the Midlands, where solid housing is genuinely affordable. The trade-off is often fewer local jobs or longer journeys to the biggest employers, so affordability is only one part of the decision. Still, knowing where your budget actually stretches is the right place to start.
Once you have found an area, check its recent sales in detail with our house prices by postcode tool, and work out the tax on a purchase with the stamp duty calculator.