Buying an average property in the AL1 area of St Albans requires an hourly income of £40.24, according to a new web tool.

Interactive microsite Can I Afford To Buy A House Here? (https://www.web-blinds.com/resources/buying-houses/) show how much money Brits would need to earn per hour in order to purchase an averaged priced home in each of the UK’s postcodes.

The home counties dominated the list of the 10 most expensive towns and cities, with Virgina Water, Surrey, in the top spot with a required hourly income of £84.84, followed by Cobham, Surrey (£74.76), Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire (£70.58), Radlett (£68.75) and central London (£63.72).

At the opposite end of the spectrum, those living in Ferndale, South Wales only need to earn £4.03 per hour in order to get on the property ladder. In fact, seven the 10 most affordable areas to live in the UK were in South Wales, two were in Scotland (North Ayrshire and Dumfries & Galloway) and one was in Cumbria.

Homeless charity Shelter recommends that housing costs should be no more than 35 per cent of a person’s income, so the team at www.web-blinds.com took the average cost of homes in each of Britain’s 2,650 postcodes and worked out the mortgage repayments based on having a 20 per cent deposit and taking a 25 year term with a 2.63 per cent interest rate.

Users are asked to input the first four digits of their postcode or the name of their town or city, and are then given the hourly figure they’d need to earn in order to be able to single-handedly own an average priced property within their chosen area.

When it came to individual postcodes, London had all of the 10 least affordable spots to itself, with SW7 in first place (average income per hour: £186.66).

The TS2 area of Middlesborough was the most affordable postcode, with an average income of just £2.15 required to buy a property.

Melissa Benedict, spokesperson for www.web-blinds.com, said: “Being able to see in monetary figures the huge difference between what someone would need to earn to buy a property in the most and least affordable areas of the country is pretty shocking to see.

“The tool has analysed every postcode in the UK, so employers might need to prepare themselves for members of staff asking for pay rises once they’ve had a go!”