Proportion of single first-time buyers on property ladder 'halved in 20 years'

Updated

The proportion of single first-time buyers getting on the property ladder in England has halved over the last 20 years as surging property prices have meant it may take two salaries to buy a home.

Figures from the English Housing Survey showed the proportion of first-time buyers that were single households halved from 29% in 1994/95 to 14% in 2014/15.

This means 86% of first-time buyer households now contain two or more people. Around four in five (80%) first-time buyers are couple households - a marked increase since 1994/95 when the proportion was less than two-thirds (63%).

The report said: "This may be due to an increasing need for two incomes to be able to buy."

Among first-time buying couples, the numbers with dependent children have increased over the period from 20% to 31%.

People are also getting on the property ladder later in life. The average age of first-time buyers increased from 30 to 33 over the past 20 years.

Between 1994/95 and 2014/15, the proportion of first-time buyers aged 35-44 years has increased from 11% to 20%.

As well as increasingly clubbing together to buy a home, more first-time buyers are also relying on friends and family or an inheritance to help them onto the property ladder.

Between 1994/95 and 2014/15, there was an increase in the proportion of first-time buyers who had help from friends and family from 21% to 27% and an upswing in those who used inherited money for their deposit from 3% to 10%.

Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures released this week show the average price of a UK home surged by £16,000 over the year to May, to reach £211,000.

But with the economic uncertainty following the vote to leave the EU, several housing market experts have said they expect house price growth and sales to cool down over the second half of this year.

Mortgage rates are generally expected to remain low, although it has been suggested following the referendum vote that some people may find it harder to get a mortgage deal.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) highlighted figures in the English Housing Survey showing the number of people owning their own home had stopped reducing for the first time since 2003 with 14 million owner occupiers across the country last year. Some 80% of households that applied were given a mortgage.

The DCLG said Help to Buy schemes continued to benefit first-time buyers overwhelmingly, with 118,000 households having bought their first home thanks to the scheme.

More than 52,500 people had also purchased their home through Right to Buy since the scheme was reinvigorated in 2012 - equating to over 1,000 households a month.

Housing minister Gavin Barwell said: "We are determined to ensure that anyone who works hard and aspires to own their own home has the opportunity to do so.

"Since 2010 over 300,000 households have been helped into home ownership through Government-backed schemes.

"The ground-breaking Housing and Planning Act will allow us to go even further delivering our ambition to build an additional one million homes."

But housing charity Shelter said the average income of first-time buyers was far higher than the income of the average household in 2014/15.

It said first-time buyers had an average yearly income of £43,000, but for the average household this was £27,000.

Campbell Robb, Shelter's chief executive, said: "The new Government has a real chance to ease the pressure on young people and families in these uncertain times by making housing a top priority, and bringing forward measures to quickly start building homes that people on ordinary incomes can actually afford to rent or buy."



RICS raises alarm on UK property market
RICS raises alarm on UK property market

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