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.
I don’t understand how anyone is expected to be able to buy a home on the wages that are now commonplace.
I work in a highly skilled technical job and I don’t earn enough money to buy a house, I can afford the mortgage repayments but I can’t figure out a way that I would be expected to come up with the required deposit. The only reason I do have a house is because the deposit was paid for by my parents. But that’s not an option for a lot of people.
So basically unless you’re lucky or have rich family members I don’t understand what you’re expected to do. Everyone else on the street is like 80 and bought the houses decades ago.