Chichester is the least affordable area outside London for first-time buyers to get on the property ladder, with homes in the cathedral city costing an average of 8.5 times the annual earnings of the typical full-time worker in the area, according to figures from Nationwide. The building society said there had been a “modest improvement” in affordability across Great Britain over the past year, as wage rises had outpaced house price growth, and mortgage costs had fallen slightly. However, affordability remained stretched by historical standards, and first-time buyers typically faced paying five times local earnings for a home, above a