I had just turned 25 when we signed our mortgage, it's a 35 year deal, we're in our 4th year now. I'm in South East so quite lucky location wise, because the further south and inland you look the more expensive houses are. Ours isn't huge, 2 bed mid terrace. We're going to need somewhere bigger in a few years, especially with DC1 on the way, we struggle to home all of our 'stuff' now.
It took us approximately 14 months while renting to save the £10k we did for our deposit, we were aiming to have about £20k hence the longer term we have l, but we fell in love with a rescue dog and landlord refused the dog, their house, their choice.
We put everything we could into savings, birthday money, bonuses etc, but still had a few luxuries like my OHs expensive gym membership, and my book habit, but we cut the weekend meal out to once a month and stopped having take aways so often.
I do understand it is location dependant, as I said above, we're lucky being in the South East as prices aren't too crazy, but I also hate hearing people my age saying how hard it is, sometimes you have to start small to get on the housing ladder, then you sell and use the extra money to get bigger.