Double take on housing market - papers 21 June

The figure has been obtained by looking at wages paid into about 5 million Barclays bank accounts, then looking at how much has been paid out to mortgage lenders. The average figure for May was £499, or about 20% of average household takehome pay, the paper notes. Woolwich says the figures underline its stance that fears of affordability dropping in the current housing market are overdone. London remains the most expensive place to own residential property according to this method of calculating affordability, but mortgage payments as a share of takehome pay have a fallen by 0.4% since N...