A family has to earn nearly £144,000 a year before they can purchase the average Wandsworth home, it has been revealed.

As prices rocket across London the signs of the housing bubble are no more evident than in the borough of Wandsworth, where an alleyway full of bins sold for a staggering £260,000 last week.Wandsworth Times:

This alleyway in the heart of Nappy Valley, Northcote Road, sold for £260,000 

According to the council’s 2014 housing market assessment, a family or individual would need to earn £143,534-a-year to buy a house, presuming a 5 per cent deposit and borrowing 2.9 times gross dual income.

A spokesman for charity Shelter said: “This is yet another sign that house prices in London are out of control.

"Sky high house prices are leaving young people and families in Wandsworth eternally stuck in the ‘rent trap’, watching their chance of a home of their own slip further out of reach.

"We know that piecemeal schemes to help first time buyers are just a drop in the ocean. To give back hope to all those left priced out, politicians must roll up their sleeves and commit to building the genuinely affordable homes we desperately need.”

Wandsworth Times:

Will Martindale, Battersea’s Labour MP candidate, said: “It’s a real problem. Pay rises are not keeping up with housing costs so local families are being priced out. Many young renters in Battersea have had to give up on the dream of one day owning a place of their own.”

According to the National Housing Federation the average house in Wandsworth will set you back £584,514 – a staggering £109,990 more than the average London house.

Wandsworth’s huge renting population is also faced with a bleak position.

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To rent a one-bedroom flat you need an annual income of £50,093, for a two-bed rent you need £61,533, for a three-bed rent is £80,080 and £121,333 for a four-bed rental.

From 2012 to 2014 rent for the average shared flat has increased 18 per cent and renting four-bedroom homes is up 32 per cent.

A spokesman for Wandsworth Council said: “For decades London’s house prise increases have outpaced wages and the result is low and middle income households cannot afford to buy on the open market.

“The council is doing everything it can to increase new housing supply and more homes are now being built in Wandsworth than just about anywhere else in London.

“Well over 2,000 new affordable homes have now been approved across the borough and up to 900 of them will be completed in the next two years alone.

“The council has also announced a new home building programme of its own which will boost the supply of low cost homes even further in the years ahead.”

The council has started a big redevelopment of three housing estates - Winstanley and York Road in Battersea and the Alton in Roehampton. 

Wandsworth Times:

The council has approved the first purpose-built private rented sector housing scheme in the country in Nine Elms. Homes will be let on secure five year leases with rent increases pegged.

This summer the Wandsworth Guardian revealed council plans to house homeless people outside the borough because it is too expensive to house them in Wandsworth.

The cost of buying a property is rising at its fastest rate for nearly seven years and the surge is considered the biggest property bubble in history.

(A family is considered able to afford to buy a home if it costs 2.9 times the gross dual-income – the benchmark of affordability for dual-income households.)