Londoners must wait twice as long to buy first home

Londoners on average have to wait 18 years and 10 months to save enough for a deposit on their first property, the Yorkshire Building Society revealed today.

According to the mortgage lender’s report on first-time buyers, Londoners must put down an average deposit of over £61,000 for an average London home which costs almost a quarter of a million pounds.

Nationally, the average waiting period for a home is eight-and-a-half-years, nabbed with an average deposit of £26,250 for a house costing £105,000. But there are huge regional variations. It takes less than five years to put down a deposit in Wales, and five years for a first-time home in the North West.

Even choosing to set yourself up in the south-east is significantly cheaper than London. It takes around 10 years and eight months to raise the £30,000 deposit for the average £145,000 home.

London house prices for first-time buyers are now at all-time highs, having recovered from their brief recession dip. In 2009 they fell to 2006 levels of some £195,500.

While prices have risen by less than 20% since 2006 though, deposits have almost tripled. In times of easy credit, first-time buyers in the capital were asked to put down just £21,500 deposit, the Yorkshire said.

Young people in the capital enjoy higher salaries than elsewhere, but this does not give them much of an advantage in terms of buying a home. The higher living costs, such as higher rents, mean that Londoners are not able to put aside much more than their peers elsewhere.

Despite the tough market conditions, three-quarters of non-home owners still aspired to buy their own home, the report said. Nesting with a partner and investing, topped the list of reasons for wanting to settle down.