The average price paid for a property by a first time buyer in London has exceeded £300,000 for the first time.
In the rest of the UK, the average price for the same buyer is just £155,782.
First time buyers in the capital must also raise a deposit of over £67,000, compared with £25,890 elsewhere.
Data from Your Move and Reeds Rains indicates that although the average starter home in London is now £304,205, around 9,100 first time buyers purchased a home in the capital in the first quarter (Q1) of 2015.
This figure was 11,700 in Q1 2014, but the average starter home was £266,497 then. However, the amount of first time buyers is likely to grow again, as high-end buyers tail off.
The latest House Price Index from Land Registry reveals that property prices in the capital are beginning to steady, at a slight 0.2% rise in the last month.
However, this will not help aspiring buyers, who saw a huge increase last year, meaning the annual price rise is 11.3% and the average house price is £462,700. This is two and a half times the average value in England and Wales of £178,007.
London’s resilient prices mean that outer areas, which offer better value for money, are benefitting from more buyers. More expensive boroughs of the capital are barely seeing rises above inflation.
The best performing areas of the capital in the last year were Newham, up 19% to an average of £291,364, and Greenwich, up 18.8% to £353,926.
The worst area was Kensington and Chelsea, where average prices increased 5.2% to just under £1.3m.
The borough saw the highest property price growth during the coalition government, at just under 48% in five years. Two other Conservative areas, the City of London and the City of Westminster, experienced increases of over 40% in the same period.
Just three Labour constituencies were in the top ten property price performers, Tooting and Islington North, both up 38.2%, and Tottenham at 35.7%.
The only places surpassing London’s rises are the commutable and fairly inexpensive areas of Thurrock, Hertfordshire and Reading, which have all experienced increases of 13%.