Oxford is the most unaffordable place to live in Britain, outstripping London, according to an analysis of housing market data and local wages.

Average house prices in the city are 16.1 times the local average annual income, research by Danny Dorling, an Oxford university professor, has found, compared with 15.7 times in London.

The average cost of a house in Oxford in 2014 was £426,720 according to the research, with the city’s workers earning on average £26,500 a year. In London the average house price was £501,520 and the average wage £31,950 a year.

Other areas with house price to income ratios of more than 10 included Cambridge, Brighton, Milton Keynes and Reading.

The figures are revealed in a new edition of Mr Dorling’s book All That Is Solid, an assessment of Britain’s housing crisis, which argues that the current market is unsustainable.

“Compared with earlier decades, house prices across the UK are extremely high when compared with the average take-home pay,” Mr Dorling said. “‘Fewer and fewer people are able to get a mortgage.”

At least a third of those with mortgages would struggle if interest rates were to rise by “even a couple of percentage points”, he said. “The further that house prices rise, the greater that proportion will grow, leaving a growing proportion of people with no option but to rent.”

Oxford’s house prices have been driven up by the large number of London commuters who have moved out of the capital in search of cheaper housing, combined with restrictive planning laws protecting the greenbelt around the city from housing development, Mr Dorling said.

“Oxford is one of the country’s most economically successful cities, completely hemmed in by greenbelt, so we can’t build homes that people can even cycle into the city from,” he said.

“Forty thousand people drive into the outskirts of Oxford every day because we cannot build on the outskirts of the city. We need people to realise that this is a national strategic issue about where to house our growing population.”

Local and national government should open up the greenbelt for development, Mr Dorling added, suggesting that Oxford should build within four miles of the city centre and expand local towns such as Didcot and David Cameron’s constituency Witney, with light rail links to connect them to Oxford.

“Oxford is a good example of a place that is too small for its [economic] activity,” he said. “Economically successful cities need to expand.”

The housing market boom, which burst into renewed life in London over the past few years and rippled out to commuter belt cities and towns such as Oxford, has now spread further, according to a report published last week by data provider Hometrack.

The fastest-growing house prices are now to be found in cities in northern England, Scotland and Wales. Sheffield, Cardiff, Liverpool and Glasgow saw the fastest pace of growth in the three months to January, Hometrack found.

Meanwhile, the pace of growth in Oxford, Cambridge and London has begun to slacken, according to Hometrack.