First-time buyers face a decade-long struggle to own a home

If you’re single and want to own your own house, brace yourself: it takes on average over 10 years to save enough money for a deposit

It may be a buyers’ market right now, but buzzwords like those will mean little to those who want to get on the property ladder as they need to spend years saving to stump up the necessary deposit.

Research from estate agents Hamptons International shows that despite rises in incomes, it now takes over 10 years for first-time buyers to save enough money to put down a deposit to buy their own home.

Depressingly, this means that for anyone who started saving in the first quarter of this year, they can look forward to buying their own home in autumn 2028.

Using its Time to Save index, Hamptons International looked at how much money first-time buyers have to save from their incomes once tax, National Insurance, rent, bills and other essential spending has been taken out.

Couples take half the time to buy

The situation is slightly more positive for those people who are in a couple as they can pool their savings, plus slash the costs of outgoings such as food and rent by sharing the burden, meaning they should only have to save for five years to get the 15% deposits required in most purchases today.

Of course, the length of time needed to save is dependent on where you live and, as expected, those trying to save for a deposit in London can expect the longest wait – as much as 17 years for a single person and eight years for a couple.

Meanwhile, in the North East couples can expect to raise a 15% deposit in less than three years, while it will take a single person just over six years.

Schemes such as the government’s Help to Buy promise to reduce the required size of deposit to just 5%, thereby reducing the time needed to save, although in London a single person would still need to save for over five and a half years.

Aneisha Beveridge, an analyst at Hamptons International, said:

“Saving a deposit is still the biggest barrier to buying a first home. It takes a single person more than a decade to save up in the current climate. But the additional support from Help to Buy brings down the time it takes to raise a deposit by over six years for a single first-time buyer.

“Slower house price growth in the capital has meant that it’s now six months quicker for a couple, who share household spending, to save up for a 15% deposit in London. But it still takes a couple in London eight years to save up, twice as long as someone buying a home in the North.”