KPMG, one of the largest company of auditors in the world, has said that in general, house purchasing in the UK is unreachable for the majority of first time buyers.

Throughout the UK, according to research put together by the company, the average first time buyer needs a salary of £40,553 per year in order to buy a home.

In London, this figure rockets up to £76,971.

However, in the UK, the average salary is just £22,044 (or £27,999 in London).

The averages change depending on the region, when the figures are broken down, but the one constant is reported to be that the average salary for all regions is lower than the average required salary to buy a home.

Head of housing at the KPMG, Jan Crosby, said that “These figures make for frightening reading and show that housing affordability is no longer just a problem for lower wage earners.

“Now unless you earn well above average or receive and inheritance, it is unlikely you will [be able to] afford to buy, no matter where in the UK you live.”

69 per cent of people, according to the research, believe that there is no affordable housing in the UK, and 30 per cent of people are worried about continuing to pay for their home or to be able to afford the rent of the home that they live in currently.

16-17 year olds and 18-24 year olds had a much keener fear about being able to purchase a property in the current housing market.

And according to this research, there is good reason for these people to fear being able to afford a home. Crosby added: “Being able to live in a stable home is a basic human need, tied up with important feelings of choice and certainty. We are living in a world now where only a few can hope for that, which cannot be right.”

Help to Buy has gone a long way towards getting first time buyers a home who wouldn’t have been able to afford it otherwise (almost 50,000 people in fact). However, it hasn’t fixed the housing market. As well as help out individual cases, it was hoped that Help to Buy and the Help to Buy Mortgage Guarantee schemes would help to revitalise the housing market by stimulating building, but we are still getting shocking figures like these which put homeownership out of reach for so many.