{"id":8691,"date":"2017-12-19T17:15:27","date_gmt":"2017-12-19T17:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.buyassociation.co.uk\/?p=8691"},"modified":"2017-12-19T17:15:27","modified_gmt":"2017-12-19T17:15:27","slug":"help-for-first-time-buyers-isnt-enough-to-conquer-london-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/news\/help-for-first-time-buyers-isnt-enough-to-conquer-london-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Help for first-time buyers isn’t enough to conquer London market"},"content":{"rendered":"

A quarter of London boroughs have no houses available for first-time buyers using Help To Buy, while many others offer only a handful.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of all the houses available to buy in the capital<\/a>, estate agent James Pendleton has found only 603 qualifying houses – new-builds worth a maximum of \u00a3600,000 – available for sale for first-time buyers. And eight boroughs of the 32, including Camden<\/a>, Hackney<\/a>, and Hammersmith<\/a>, have no houses at all available on the scheme.<\/p>\n

Although there are flats on the market that do qualify, as the age of first-time buyers<\/a> rises, many require a house rather than a flat as they have already started families.<\/p>\n

Lucy Pendleton of the estate agent says: “With houses making up such a small proportion of London\u2019s new-build<\/a> property stock below the\u00a0Help To\u00a0Buy\u00a0threshold, the reality is that families will be forced\u00a0to\u00a0stay in cramped and uncomfortable accommodation.”<\/p>\n

According to figures from estate agent Savills, 25.9% of properties bought by first-time buyers in the capital this year have cost more than \u00a3500,000, up from just 8% five years ago, which means that the latest stamp duty relief changes<\/a> might not be helping many London dwellers onto the property ladder.<\/p>\n

Where can first-time buyers buy?<\/h4>\n

Earlier this year, Post Office Money ranked the major UK cities in terms of affordability<\/a>, and found that Southampton came out on top, with house prices averaging \u00a3199,000 and 98% of properties considered accessible for first-time buyers. The criteria was based on the proportion of median house prices that were lower than 4.5 times the average first-time buyer’s income in each area.<\/p>\n

The next most affordable areas for first-time buyers were Norwich, Nottingham, Liverpool<\/a>, Plymouth, Manchester<\/a> and Birmingham<\/a>, while the least affordable area was actually Brighton, rather than London, where just 2% of properties are considered affordable and the average house price is \u00a3352,000.<\/p>\n

Owen Woodley of\u00a0Post Office Money\u00a0said: “Our data shows that almost two-thirds (62%) of home sales are still in areas across the country that remain within reach for those looking to take their first steps on the property ladder<\/a>, and first-time buyers can really benefit from thinking outside the box<\/a> to realise their property aspirations.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A quarter of London boroughs have no houses available for first-time buyers using Help To Buy, while many others offer only a handful. Of all the houses available to buy in the capital, estate agent James Pendleton has found only 603 qualifying houses – new-builds worth a maximum of \u00a3600,000 – available for sale for… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":8706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12],"tags":[84,33,11,341],"class_list":["post-8691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investment","category-london","tag-first-time-buyer","tag-house-prices","tag-london","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}