There is one Surrey borough where annual mortgage payments make up over 96 per cent of the average salary
Three Surrey boroughs made it to the top five for the areas outside London where homeowners are “most overstretched”, surprisingly to some, Guildford was not one of them(Image: Grahame Larter)
New data analysis has revealed that Surrey is one of the country’s most overstretched in terms of mortgage payments swallowing up residents’ salaries.
There is one Surrey borough that was ranked as the highest in Great Britain outside of London, with the data suggesting that the annual mortgage repayments as a percentage of salary is 96 per cent.
House prices and the size of mortgage payments required when buying a house have long been a concern for many residents of Surrey.
However, a new analysis gathered by SellHouseFast has revealed the extent of just how much annual mortgage payments are swallowing up salaries in three Surrey boroughs.
The data analysis has combined figures from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings with average house prices from the UK House Price Index, to gauge how much residents of Great Britain are spending on their mortgages each year.
And, making up three of the top five for the areas outside London where homeowners are most overstretched were three Surrey boroughs, Elmbridge in first place, Epsom & Ewell fourth, and Tandridge fifth.
Hertfordshire’s Hertsmere took second, and not-so far away Windsor & Maidenhead is third.
The borough of Elmbridge has four of the top five local areas in Surrey with the highest mean average equivalised disposable annual household income, after housing costs, according to ONS(Image: Surrey Live – Grahame Larter)
House prices in Elmbridge are often ranked the highest in Surrey on average and this reflects in the data, where the median annual net pay in the borough is £39,675, while the average annual mortgage repayment is £38,247.
This means the annual mortgage repayments as a percentage of salary is a staggering 96.4 per cent, according to SellHouseFast’s analysis.
This places Elmbridge sixth in the country for this metric, with the areas being in the top ten alongside the Surrey borough all found inside London. Kensington and Chelsea took the number one spot nationally, with an eye-watering 171.9 per cent.
Tandridge and Epsom & Ewell were not far behind. The borough known for its historic racecourse had a median annual net pay of £35,380, an average annual mortgage repayment of £29,083 creating a percentage of 82.2.
Meanwhile, in Tandridge the median annual net pay is £32,776 according to HomeSellFast, an average annual mortgage repayment of £26,455.27, going into one another to create a percentage of 80.7 salary spent on mortgages per year.
Having three in the top five outside of London may lead to the assumption that Surrey as a county has some of the highest annual mortgage repayments as a percentage of salary in the country. As, generally speaking, there is not a huge disparity between salaries and house prices between Surrey’s boroughs.
Elmbridge may be the only outlier to this though, being home to four of the top five local areas in Surrey with the highest mean average equivalised disposable annual household income, after housing costs. As revealed in ONS data, these being Oxshott & Stoke D’Abernon (£59,800), Claygate (£53,400), Weybridge St George’s Hill (£52,000) and Esher (£51,700).
There are not figures for the average disposable income after housing costs for Surrey. However, the average for England according to ONS is £34,500, placing these four areas of Elmbridge well above the national average.
Being a data examination of the entire borough of Elmbridge, SellHouseFast’s analysis does not take into account that it is likely just a few roads in the borough with multi-million pound homes that drive up the average house price to £737,718.
In turn, while it is likely many are “overstretched” with high mortgage payments in all three of the aforementioned boroughs, the extent of the issue may be exaggerated slightly.
The full table for the areas outside London where homeowners are “most overstretched” according to SellHouseFast.
In the methodology section of SellHouseFast’s data analysis, they state that for the mortgage repayment figures, they made the following assumptions:
- Mortgage type: New fixed rate
- Interest rate: 4.22 per cent (taken from August 2025 figures from the Bank of England)
- Deposit: 20%
- Loan-to-value (LTV): 80 per cent