East Ayrshire named UK's cheapest place for first-time buyers – with first homes averaging £147k

In Newmilns and Darvel, the average home sold over the past year went for well under
even that figure.
East Ayrshire – home to Galston, Newmilns and Darvel – is the cheapest place in the UK to
buy a first home, according to research from Bank of Scotland.
The bank's study, published in May, ranked local authority areas by what first-time buyers
actually paid. East Ayrshire's average of £147,353 was the lowest in the UK.
Inverclyde came second at £149,929, with North Ayrshire (£164,348) and South Ayrshire
(£172,472) also in Scotland's top ten. England's cheapest area was Blackpool, at £150,780.
In London, the most affordable borough – Barking and Dagenham – came in at £363,748,
almost two and a half times East Ayrshire's figure.

Whatit means in the valley
Recent sales suggest buyers in parts of the valley can pay well under that figure. The
average home sold in Newmilns over the past year went for about £45,000 less, though
Galston has climbed above it.
Source: Registers of Scotland data published by Rightmove for Newmilns, Darvel and
Galston. Figures cover every home sold, not just first purchases. Galston's figures cover
sales registered up to the end ofApril 2026; the other two run to the end of July.
Newmilns prices are only 5 per cent above their 2007 peak of £97,564, while Darvel's sit 9
per cent below their 2023 high of £126,647. Galston's rise took it 6 per cent past its 2022
peak. With relatively few sales in each town, though, averages can swing sharply from
year to year.

Affordable on local wages too

East Ayrshire is also among Britain's most affordable places once wages are taken into
account. Lloyds Banking Group, which owns Bank of Scotland, ranked it joint eighth in its
latest affordability review, published at the start of this month.
Using figures forApril to June 2026, Lloyds found the average East Ayrshire home cost
£162,459, or 3.9 times local earnings. Nationally, homes cost 7.3 times earnings, while
Inverclyde and Aberdeen topped the ranking at 3.5.

The£5,000 deposit mortgage

Bank of Scotland released its findings as it opened applications for a mortgage aimed at
first-time buyers without family help. It lets buyers with a self-saved deposit of at least
£5,000 borrow up to 4.5 times their income, on homes costing up to £300,000.
At launch it came with a five-year fixed rate of 5.89 per cent, terms of up to 40 years and
no product fee. On those terms, the bank put the monthly repayment on an averagepriced first home in East Ayrshire at £843.
Isla Benzie, head of mortgages at Bank of Scotland, said buyers willing to look beyond
their first-choice area stood a better chance, and that the deposit was often the hardest
part. "Scotland continues to offer some of the best value in the UK," she said.