The average price of a UK home is now close to £300,000 - more than 10 times the salary of the typical worker.
Halifax Building Society said the average property was worth £294,260 in August, up from £293,221 in July.
However, the UK average gross salary is £29,016, according to the Office for National Statistics.
That is a problem because banks and building societies have limits on how much they can lend house buyers, based on their salaries.
Most have restrictions that curb how much lending they can do at more than 4.5x a borrower's yearly wage.
Someone who wanted to buy the average house and could scrape together a 10% deposit of £29,426 would need a mortgage of £264,834 for the remaining 90%.
But salary restrictions mean a solo house buyer would need to earn around £60,000 to get lent that amount.
To buy the average home, someone earning a standard UK wage would need to buy with their partner.
But that 4.5 times figure is a maximum, meaning people wanting to buy a house may not even be able to borrow that much.
Lenders can increase these salary limits to lend more cash to homebuyers, but only for small numbers of people.
Some lenders will lend up to 5.5 times your salary - like Barclays and Halifax. They normally reserve this for borrowers they see as low risk, such as people with high wages.
Newer mortgage firm Habito will lend you up to 7x your salary, if you're lucky.
But house prices are so high that even being lent 7x your salary may not be enough to get on the ladder.
For example, a solo borrower in the example above, with the average wage of £29,016, could borrow £203,112 - £61,722 less than they'd need for the average home.
Regular pay is slumping at the fastest rate since records began in 2001, The Mirror reported last month.
Many lenders are also tightening up their lending restrictions due to the cost of living crisis.
Mortgage lender Martin Stewart, of London Money, said: "What lenders are doing at the moment is tweaking their algorithms to accomodate the cost of living crisis.
"Banks are not stupid. They know there's a risk of incomes being squeezed further and will not risk lending more than borrowers will be able to pay back.
"In six months' time that will probably be even worse.
"Beneath the veneer of 'we can lend to XXX times income' are all these other stress tests."
But how difficult it is to buy a home depends on where in the country you live.
For example, average house prices in the north are lower than in the south.
Stewart said: "The data is totally warped. It's very regionalised."
The rival house price index from Nationwide puts the average house price at £273,751 in August, up from £271,209 in July.
