The chair of NatWest has claimed it is not “that difficult” to get on the property ladder, despite the number of first-time buyers with a mortgage falling to the lowest level in a decade.
“I don’t think it is that difficult at the moment,” Sir Howard Davies told the BBC.
Pressed about this assertion, he added: “You have to save, and that is the way it always used to be.”
His comments to Radio 4’s Today programme follow a report published earlier this week by Yorkshire Building Society, which found that the number of first-time buyers who bought a home with a mortgage fell to the lowest level in a decade in 2023.
Well yes, but also no.
The homes on the market are all being sold, and the people that buy them can afford them. The price of houses is exactly what the market can bear.
There’s just not enough homes for all the people that can’t afford the current ones. And he can’t see those because they’re not his customers.