The number is smaller than you think and it is the wrong number to look at.
By Frankie Bexley ·
The average UK house cost about 3,542 pounds in 1966, 11,866 in 1976, 37,627 in 1986 and 53,394 in 1996. Every one of those is from the Nationwide house price index, which has run since 1952.
Those numbers are the ones people reach for, and on their own they say almost nothing. A pound in 1966 buys what 27.24 pounds buys now. Comparing a 1966 price to a 2026 price without that is comparing two different units.
The figure that actually says something
Divide the average house by average annual earnings for the same year and you get how many years of the average wage a house cost. That number is comparable across decades, because both sides move together.
- 1966: 5.0 years
- 1976: 4.8 years
- 1986: 5.1 years
- 1996: 3.9 years
- Today: 7.1 years
For thirty years it sat around five. It did not creep. It went up and came down and went up again and stayed in the same place, through inflation that ran into double figures and interest rates that would end a dinner party.
Then it did not.
Which is why the argument at the table goes wrong
The version people have is that houses used to be cheap. What the figures say is that houses used to cost about five years of work, reliably, for three decades, and now cost about seven.
That is a worse fact than the cheap one and it is harder to argue with, because it survives the obvious objection. Yes, wages were smaller. The ratio already accounts for that. It is the only number in the conversation that does.
Where these come from
House prices are the Nationwide Building Society UK house price index. Earnings are the Bank of England millennium of macroeconomic data set and the Office for National Statistics average weekly earnings series. The pound comparison is the ONS Retail Prices Index long run, series CDKO.
Every one of those is published, free, and checkable, which is the point. A figure in an argument that cannot be traced is just a louder voice.
Questions people ask about this
How much did a house cost in the UK in 1976?
The average was 11,866 pounds, on the Nationwide house price index. Average weekly earnings that year were 47.55 pounds, which put the average house at about 4.8 years of average earnings.
Were houses really more affordable in the past?
On the ratio of price to earnings, yes, and by less than people assume for a long time. It sat near five years of average earnings through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, dipped to under four in the mid-1990s, and is about 7.1 now. The change is recent rather than steady.
What is a pound from the year I was born worth today?
It depends on the year and the gap is larger than most people guess. A pound in 1966 buys what 27.24 pounds buys now; a pound in 1996 buys what 2.74 does. Both are measured on the ONS Retail Prices Index long run series.
This is one chapter of Fifty. And Nobody Warned You. The rest of it is the same, at greater length, with the sources in the back.