In this day and age house prices only seem to be going up, far beyond the realms of affordability for many people looking to get a foot on the property ladder.
In that vein it makes sense to keep an eye out for places where you won't need to fork over your life savings or the proceeds from selling your kidneys on the internet just to afford a deposit on a house.
For those who really want to cut down on costs, it's worth knowing the cheapest place to live in the whole of the UK.
Advert
By live we actually mean buy a house, because the actual cheapest place in the UK would be any cave you reckon you could live in away from the rest of civilisation.
According to Zoopla, the lovely little town of Shildon in County Durham has taken the title of cheapest place to live in the UK for the third year running.
The average house price in the town is just £71,000, meaning you won't have to sign over your immortal soul to get onto the property ladder and hopefully start climbing your way up.
Advert
Two average local buyers would only need 1.14 times their combined salaries to be able to afford the average house in the town outright.
That's far below the current UK average of a pair of buyers needing four times their combined annual salaries to afford the average UK house price, which is currently £263,000.
It's even handier when house prices are growing at a faster rate than wages, meaning the time it takes our hypothetical average couple trying to buy their average house to actually afford it will grow.
Although, according to The Sun, part of the reason behind Shildon's low average house price of £71,000 is because not many people want to live there.
Advert
If you are actually planning on moving to Shildon you might want to be a train enthusiast as the small town boasts Locomotion, an impressively large railway museum.
It's an offshoot of the National Railway Museum based in York, and the town has a long and storied heritage relating to this nation's railways.
Before the industrial revolution and the construction of the railways, Shildon was just a few houses at a crossroads,
Advert
Timothy Hackworth, Shildon's most famous son, was part of the early group of pioneers who developed and ran Britain's early railways.
So there you go, if you like cheap properties and railways museums you could do worse than look at Shildon as your next place to live.
Featured Image Credit: Alamy Stock Photo/Geograph (CC BY-SA 2.0)