"Figure 5: Housing affordability ratio for newly-built and existing dwellings","" "England and Wales, 1997 to 2017","" "","" "Notes","1. Data for annual earnings are not available before 1999. For these years the earnings relate to annualised weekly earnings. Annualised weekly earnings are not produced on an identical basis to annual earnings and so care should be taken when making comparisons. 2. Housing affordability ratio refers to the ratio of the median price paid for residential property to the median workplace-based gross annual full-time earnings." "Unit","Affordability ratio" "","" "","New ","Existing" "1997","4.62","3.44" "1998","4.87","3.4" "1999","5.2","3.76" "2000","5.58","3.95" "2001","6.03","4.27" "2002","6.57","4.81" "2003","7.16","5.67" "2004","7.63","6.39" "2005","7.62","6.61" "2006","7.43","6.87" "2007","7.42","7.13" "2008","7.09","6.9" "2009","6.35","6.35" "2010","6.71","6.86" "2011","6.85","6.71" "2012","7.13","6.68" "2013","7.47","6.63" "2014","8.05","6.88" "2015","8.6","7.22" "2016","9.18","7.41" "2017","9.68","7.57"