Local geographies of housing inequality: Neighbourhood trajectories of housing purchasing (un)affordability across neighbourhoods in England and Wales (2010-2023)

In recent decades, housing purchasing prices have outpaced incomes, increasing spatial inequalities and creating a growing challenge to homeownership. Despite housing markets being highly localised with most residential moves made at local scales, analyses of housing affordability have typically focused on national- and regional-level trends. We draw on a novel housing price dataset, to present the first neighbourhood-level analysis of housing (un)affordability trajectories across England and Wales (2010 to 2023). In doing so, we interrogate the reproduction of socio-spatial inequalities at the scale of everyday lives and raise questions about local geographies of housing inequality. We develop and map eight distinct neighbourhood trajectories of housing (un)affordability and reveal a nuanced geographical mosaic of housing (un)affordability across local areas. We show how different trajectories sit side-by-side, with localities of affordability in areas considered extremely unaffordable in aggregated analyses, such as London, and vice versa. While affordability pressures are experienced heterogeneously across the period, most neighbourhoods display a decline in affordability due to rising housing prices relative to incomes. Mapping these trajectories reveals a prominent spatial gradient in affordability pressures, which may narrow the ability of some residents to adjust to housing becoming less affordable, as surrounding areas are even less affordable. Overall, this geographically nuanced work illustrates unjust urban restructuring resulting from localised spatial manifestations of the financialisation of housing.