First time buyers further away from owning own home
Home ownership has become even more inaccessible to first-time buyers despite the prolonged fall in house prices, figures released today by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors will show. Rics said that, while this year's falls in house prices should have helped people to get on to the property ladder for the first time, the dwindling number of mortgages available to buyers with little or no deposit has completely negated the impact of a falling market. Rics calculates that the average first-time buyer now has to find £27,738 to fund the cost of a deposit, stamp duty and legal fees on the purchase of the typical home. This represents more than 100 per cent of the combined annual take-home pay of a couple in the lowest-earning 25 per cent of the population.
Thursday, 10 July 2008 09:26