First Time Buyer Home Ownership Study

The Financial Barriers to Home Ownership Report, produced in conjunction with Professor Steve Wilcox, chair of the Centre for Housing Policy at the University of York, provides a comprehensive review of the UK First Time Buyer mortgage market landscape, and examines the extent and characteristics of the UK’s wealth barrier that now prevents such significant numbers of younger households getting on the property ladder.

The report’s conclusions examine some of the interventions currently being considered by the regulator, alongside risk management practices, capital relief models and frameworks used in other countries to promote prudent mortgage lending.

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• An average 10% deposit for a UK first time buyer in 2010 is £18,600; in London the average is £29,700.

• The numbers of first time buyers under 30 purchasing with assistance has remained constant, but by 2009 these made up 80% of all younger buyers, as the number of unassisted buyers declined.

• Younger households continue to aspire to home ownership in the medium and long term; 42% of prospective first time buyers regard private renting as ‘throwing money away’.ⁱ

• The ‘deposit barrier’ to home ownership is now cited as by far the most significant obstacle by households seeking to become home owners.

• The deposit barrier is socially uneven. It impacts most on households who are unable to get assistance with a deposit from parents or friends.  It is a barrier to social mobility.

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