To think a lot of people get financial help from their parents in order to get onto the property ladder?

[DarlingDuck]

I often wonder about this. I know friends who are in their late 30's early 40's who have managed it themselves but everyone I know who is any younger has either been helped out financially by their parents or been bought a flat/house outright. AIBU to think the majority of people under 35 are helped out?

Laquitar - are you kidding about the lack of flats in London?

In my street, many (perhaps 25 - 30%) of the houses like mine (pic on profile) have been converted into two flats. This is the same all over London. Victorian 3 and 4 bed terraced houses are now flats. I cannot think of another city in this country where more people live in flats, tbh.

We were helped by DH's parents a little - though we had to find 90% ourselves. We are planning to help DCs to buy property in the next decade - providing that they are prepared to save hard themselves (as we did) and put up with some second hand furniture etc until they can afford to replace it!

My OH and I didn't get any help from parents. However my brother has been given £20,000 to help him on the property ladder from my parents and he and his OH are on much better wages than we are. I have to say I do feel a little upset by this.

yes, my parents gave me 10% of the price of my first flat.

bibbi i'm not comparing London to other uk cities, i compare it to other capital European cities i.e. in the centre of Madrit you don't usually have your own big garden. I think the same in Rome and Athens.

My parents paid for university, but have never suggested that they might pay or loan money for a deposit (they are reasonably wealthy, but who knows what they might need the money for, care can be expensive if it comes to that).

I don't mind, although my friends living in nice houses all seem to have had help. The education was the important bit, I guess DP and I have to make our own way in life now. We've saved up about £100k for a deposit so far, but with London prices we have a way to go yet. The problem as you get older is that the sort of property you want gets bigger - we are too old for a one bedroom starter flat now, we need two bedrooms (maybe even some outside space if we are lucky)!

With mortgages the way they are at the moment, I really don't know how most first time buyers will manage it.
We are just buying our first house after renting for the past 11 years. Because we now have loads of kids we are having to start with a bigger house rather than a flat or starter home which doesn't help but even so we have had to stump up £80K as a deposit for a not enormous terraced house in Surrey as well as huge amounts for stamp duty and solicitors fees etc.
We have only been able to do this because my DH has been very lucky (and worked really hard!) to get some big bonuses in the last 2 years which we have saved. If it hadn't been for this, however, I'm not sure we would ever have managed it. I find this astonishing considering that we are in the higher earning wage bracket and I wonder how the majority of first time buyers would be able to get on the ladder at all at the moment.

I bought my 1st house completely on my own saved up for 20% deposit myself by working very hard and being lucky enough to have a really good job and bought my house at 19, then had lodgers throughout university to pay the mortgage, which I also paid for myself. I worked hard and was also lucky (cheap house I did up and eventually made a profit on).
My parents couldn't wouldn't help me out, even when the sale nearly fell through due to a cock up by the solicitor where I had to find £250 at the last minute my patents didn't help out (convinced my boss to advance it )
My DH was helped out by his dad but we've paid that back....
It's just one of those things , I don't know if it's as common as it's played in the media tho, with our friends more aren't helped out by parents but they are generally buying later in life

I was helped out by parents so am massively lucky and grateful.

totally agree with motherofsuburbia. we saved our cash so are finally buying after 10 years renting. DH is in top 2% of earners and I make an average salary - even with that we only bought a very average house in an area of SE London many people in our professions wouldn't consider. it still required more than 3x salary.

We are 24 and 25. Did it ourselves a few years ago. It pisses me off when people assume we had help (which they often do). But that's just a personal peeve, because we worked our ruddy socks off, and our families are both piss poor at offering any kind of support what-so-ever. (emotional, practical, financial - anything)

So your post has annoyed me , but YANBU really, as most people my age do need help. Christ knows what we would have done if we didn't live oop North...

I expect to have to help out my kids, I didn't get help myself but house brices were less relative to salaries when I got my first mortgage. I was 25 though and I think expecting to buy in your early 20s is overoptimistic. Most people I know rented for a few years first until they started to earn reasonable money.

DH and I bought our own home at 21 with no help whatsoever from either set of our parents or anyone else for that matter and we are 33 now and to this day we have never got (or expected) financial help from anyone. So no, not everyone has had financial help to get on the property ladder. My brother is 31 and he bought his first home with his fiancee last year, at 30 and they also have not received any financial assistance. My DH and I saved really hard for a 10% deposit on relatively small salaries back then...but I do appreciate that it is harder now to save for a deposit given the current economic climate / house prices and obviously the amount of deposit you need is a lot more. Also the the monthly repayments now are huge!!! We are still in the same house we bought back then and our mortgage is £300 PCM whereas my brothers is in the region of £1600 for a similar size property!!

We live in London and bought our first flat when we were 23 back in 2003 (31 now). We had trouble getting a deposit together so my parents took out a loan for 10k for us to which we paid them back £250 a month and we added 14k of our own that we had saved to that. We lived very frugally and we also had to put alot of spending on credit cards. It paid off though as within a couple of years we were comfortable and bought a house for just under 500k last year. We were fortunate to have bought at that time though as the mortgage rate went down so much and our incomes had increased, we were able to overpay on our mortgage. Friends of mine who have their own places however have received alot of parental financial support and had weddings paid for them etc. My sister is currently renting a flat in Islington and it is costing her £1600 a month for a 1 bedroom! I think thats utter madness though but she wants to live more centrally and is alot younger and trendier than I am!

The only people I know under 35 with their own homes were helped out by parents (we're in London)

YANBU. We are the only people we know under 35 who have bought property with no help. We bought our first flat in Balham in 2004 for £196k with no deposit and, thankfully, did well on it financially so were able to buy a 3 bed house in Streatham a few years later. It was a huge stretch mind you and the mortgage costs us close to £2k per month.

FWIW we are now selling and stepping off the ladder for a bit as we can't possibly afford to go up the ladder in London so we are stuck in a house that is too small and falling apart so the only way is out. Out of London and out of the property ladder.

I always wonder how some peers of ours seem to have bigger houses and/or smaller mortgages, then it comes to light that they've had help.

But firsttimemum that means you bought 12 years ago, which by my calculation is 1999. In 1999 the property market was very very different. I could have bought the house we live in now for about half what it cost us in 2009. I don't think your experience is really relevant as you bought before the property boom made mortgages difficult to get and increased house prices put the average family home beyond the means of the average family income.

26 here and only one person in our 'circle' (all professionals but only graduated at 23) has bought - they married someone 10 years older who had bought a flat well before the boom which funded their deposit.

We're working hard and taking on extra shifts while shovelling money away for a deposit after student loans/pension contribs etc. Rents are high (though we sought out a reasonable place) food and fuel is going up while there is little wage inflation. Our discretionary spending is kept to a minimum.

Disposable income for all - but especially those who rent and are recently graduates - is squeezed which makes saving for a deposit tough, coupled with the fact it's very difficult (practically impossible) to find an inflation-beating savings account.

I want security before I start a family, having lived in 5 places in 5 years I don't want to be beholden to anyone else.

I only know if one person who got help, and she is bordering on aristocracy. DH bought his own flat in Edinburgh aged 21... so it can be done, but it's hard. It is something I worry about... with a joint income of nearly 6 figures we can't afford a family home in the city we live in

We dont own ours and have had no help from parents and none of our friends have had help either.