First time buyers counting on parents’ death to get on property ladder
Shocking - if not morbid - revelation highlighted by research among FTBs about how they plan to secure home ownership.
Young first time buyers can seem like a desperate lot sometimes as they scrimp and save for a deposit, or beg deposits off their parents.
But now a new kind of desperation has set in – those waiting for their parents to die.
Research by online agency TheHouseShop.com to find out which options offer younger people the best chance of getting on the property ladder discovered that only 10% are taking the traditional route of saving up.
Completed by YouGov, the research found that instead many first time buyers are instead hoping to take a rather morbid short cut.
Just over a fifth hoped to become home owners when their parents passed away and left them the family home, while 17% were relying on using the money left to them by their parents.
Property ladder
Also, another fifth were expecting to borrow money off their parents before they die, meaning that nearly 60% of first time buyers are relying on their family or parents in one shape or another to get them on the property ladder.
One surprising figure from the research is that the government’s Shared Ownership Scheme is obviously seen as a strategy of last resort – just 10% planned to use it.
And in one hilarious set of answers, 5% of respondents hoped to rely on marrying a rich partner to get on the property ladder.
“The idea that so many young people could be relying on the death of their parents to take their first steps onto the property ladder is indeed depressing, but if the gap between wages and house prices continues to widen, it is difficult to see a viable alternative for young aspiring homeowners,” says Nick Marr, co-founder of the TheHouseShop.
“With the substantial boom in the Buy To Let market over recent years, we have ended up with a market where young professional renters are effectively funding the BTL mortgage payments of older generations – with little prospect of the roles reversing.
“This can be particularly hard to take for the many Millennials who have seen their ‘Baby-Boomer’ parents build up substantial personal wealth from homeownership.”
