Town ranked among most 'affordable' places to live in UK

NEW research undertaken by online property portal Zoopla has revealed the 10 most affordable and popular towns in Great Britain and four Welsh locations are included - three of them in Swansea Bay.

- JO RIDOUT

The list of places for buyers to potentially find more space for their budget were all in Wales or Scotland apart from Dartford and Swanley in south east England.

Carmarthenshire town Llanelli appears in second place within Zoopla’s top ten, with the three remaining Welsh towns listed as Neath, Port Talbot and Maesteg.

The most affordable town was named as Glenrothes in Scotland, with an average three-bedroom home value of £136,900, as the most attractive option for families seeking affordability.

The research focuses in on families looking to move to more reasonably priced areas and so it is not a surprise to find that the most popular home this group on hunting for is a three-bedroom house, which are the most common type of private housing in Great Britain accounting for over 2 in 5 homes (43%).

According to Zoopla, the list was compiled using data that looks at the popularity of viewings of three-bedroom homes on the site and affordability measured by the ratio of average three-bed house prices to local authority average earnings in the local authority.

In each region of Great Britain, 30% of towns with the lowest price-to-earnings ratios were selected, resulting in a final list of 248 towns.