Thursday 02 February 2017 10:17 am

Here’s how much you need to save each month if you want to buy a home in London in the next four years

If you're a first-time buyer in London hoping to get yourself somewhere to call home in the next four years, look away now – for a new study has suggested the average first-time buyer should be saving £2,300 each month if they want to buy a house in the capital by 2021. Yikes.

The National Housing Federation said a 20 per cent deposit on the average home in the capital – priced at £563,014 – has rocketed to £113,000.

The mean salary in London is £34,000 – but the NHF reckons you'll need an income of almost £130,000 a year to afford a mortgage on the average home.

Obviously, the figures are skewed by boroughs such as Kensington and Chelsea, where the mean house price is now just shy of £2m. But even with a relatively high salary of £56,500, house prices are out of reach, at almost 35 times the average income.

Under conditions imposed by the Bank of England in 2014, mortgage customers can only borrow 4.5 times their income. But even in the borough with the lowest house prices, Barking and Dagenham, average prices are still more than 10 times locals' wages, with homes costing over £250,000, compared with a mean salary of just £25,000.

And renting is just as bad: the average monthly rent of £1,727 now eats up 61 per cent of the typical Londoner's wages. Although a study has suggested Shepherd's Bush is the most popular place for first-time renters, with average prices of £1,417.

There is some light at the end of the tunnel: yesterday, figures from Nationwide showed house price growth was at a 14-month low in January, giving savers a bit of time to catch up.

But lest we forget, in December inflation hit its highest in two years, putting further pressures on wannabe home owners.

"The outlook for the housing market remains clouded, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding economic prospects more broadly," said Nationwide economist Robert Gardner. No kidding.