Across London and the South East house prices have shot up from £218,000 to £375,000; a rise of 42% from 2012 to 2015. Rents in these regions have risen at 19% from £ 1,000 to £1,234 over the same three-year period.
Overall, 51% of tenants in the UK who purchase their first property in 2015 bought outside the town or city where they had been renting, up from 39% in 2008.
Johnny Morris, research director at Countrywide, said: “It’s common for first-time buyers to make sacrifices to buy their first home, so with price rises in recent years outstripping income growth more are choosing to bypass rising prices by looking further for cheaper areas.”
The rising age of renters, many of which have children, has meant the appeal of owning a city-centre pad as a starter home has lessened with many looking to a family home for their first purchase, said Morris.
Further north, tenants have been finding it more affordable to stay within their town or city when making the leap from renting to buying.
Tenants buying in the North East, North West and Yorkshire tended to buy in similarly priced areas to where they were renting. The average price difference between where they rented and where they bought was £8,000. In Newcastle, the average tenant buying their first home was able to move from a cheaper area to a more expensive one.
In the Capital, tenants fared much worse. Three quarters of tenants who bought in the last year, ended up living somewhere cheaper than where they had been renting – with an average price gap between the two places of £93,000.
