The newly published 2023/24 Household Expenditure Survey confirms what many landlords and lenders have suspected for months: household incomes have fallen in real terms, even as headline wages have nominally risen. Once inflation is stripped out, the average UK household is now worse off than it was two years ago, with disposable income growth failing to keep pace with the cost of essentials, energy and, crucially, housing costs. For a property market that has spent the past 18 months adjusting to a higher interest rate environment, this data point matters enormously — it is the clearest signal yet that affordability pressure is now coming from both sides of the equation: elevated borrowing costs and shrinking real spending power.