With a £40,000 deposit and a full-time job, Diana Dobrzynska thought she could finally become a homeowner after saving hard for the past eight years.
She’s looking for a place that she can make her own, to live in with her 16-year-old son, as well as having peace of mind that she will not have to pay rent in retirement.
But her hopes have waned since viewing two-bedroom houses around Cardiff. On a single salary of £30,000, the mortgage payments are simply not affordable.
“It’s upsetting,” she says. “I’ve seen a couple of houses I really liked. But once I sat down and did the maths I realised that I can’t couldn’t afford them.”
Dobrzynska, 43, a healthcare administrator, says she is looking for homes to buy in a cheaper village than her current location, where two-bedroom houses sell for more than £300,000.
But even with a price of £200,000, her mortgage payment would be more than £900 a month. Once household bills have been added on top, homeownership becomes too expensive.
“Single people on single incomes do want to buy a home, but it’s made impossible for us to achieve this goal,” she says.
The high cost of living means Dobrzynska cannot save any more towards her deposit and she doesn’t want to ask her parents for help. And with no renovation budget, she can’t buy a cheaper home in need of fixing up.
After her latest round of house viewings, Dobrzynska has decided to put her homeownership plans on pause for now because of the stress it is causing her.
“I work full-time and don’t have a flashy lifestyle because I save everything I can. But now I’m thinking, what for?” she asks. “I might never be able to afford my own house. I might as well treat myself to other nice things and just forget about it. That’s the internal conflict I’m having.”
Almost 60pc of renters aged 35 to 54 are unsure if they will ever own a home, or are not planning to do so at all, according to a survey by Yorkshire Building Society. Among the younger generation of first-time buyers aged between 18 to 34, this falls to 21pc.
The survey found that some of the top reasons for wanting to buy a home are to have the freedom to live how they liked, wanting to start a family and providing them with security in retirement.
But with rock bottom mortgage rates a thing of the past and house prices out of reach for many households in much of the UK, some renters are locked out of homeownership or giving up on the dream of getting on the property ladder.
This could cost them £2.6m over their lifetimes, according to analysis from Yorkshire Building Society.
‘I suppose in a way this is self-inflicted – we live in London’
Writer and comedian, Tiernan Douieb, is weighing up the decision to continue saving towards a deposit for a family home in Barnet, north London, or instead spending his money on enjoying time with his wife and daughter while they continue to rent.
Tiernan, 43, had most of his savings wiped out during the pandemic when he was unable to work, and has since been building them back up.
The couple have been living in a two-bedroom flat in Barnet without a garden for the past six years, with a six-year-old daughter Tiernan says they have outgrown the space and ideally need a three-bedroom house.
However, with two-bedroom houses priced at £550,000 on his street, he thinks buying anywhere bigger is unrealistic.
Tiernan says he would need a deposit of at least £55,000, but he’s not been approved for a large enough mortgage. This is despite paying his rent on time every month for the past six years.
“I suppose in a way it is self-inflicted, we do live in London, I’m a Londoner originally,” says Tiernan. “My family live here and they give us free childcare. A lot of my meetings are in London and my daughter is at school now so we’re stuck in the same area.
“But the houses are ridiculously expensive and we just cannot save up that 10pc deposit.”
Being self-employed and having fluctuating income has also made it difficult to get a mortgage.
The couple have considered moving out of London, but say the distance from family and costs of commuting outweighs the benefits. They are now reconsidering their decision to buy a property.
“During the pandemic, that was two years we couldn’t take our daughter on holiday and we couldn’t go away. We’re realising now that we want to get some of that time back and do things again which we can’t if we’re having to save every penny.”
Sheraz Dar, of Credit Ladder, a company that allows tenants to add rent payments to their credit file, says: “The size of deposit required remains an issue and a number of tenants are struggling to save in the current climate of high rents, bills and cost of living increases.
“There’s also the general view from renters that they’ll only be able to buy a home if they do so either with someone else or if they’re lucky enough to receive help from parents or grandparents.”
He has seen tenants using the platform stop renting and move back in with their parents to try and save up. Others have taken more extreme measures by moving to other European cities while continuing to work for the same employer remotely but enjoying a cheaper cost of living.
‘We can only buy if we inherit from a family member’
Laura Renwick and her partner Marc Trick say the only way they can get on the property ladder is if they inherit money from their family.
The couple, both 34, have rented a farmhouse in Wiltshire for the last eight years where they have enjoyed a low monthly rent of £630.
“I grew up a military child so I moved around a lot and never really had one specific place to call home which is one of the reasons I’d love to buy a house,” says Renwick, mum to Levi, 12, and Imogen, 11.
She has a dream of buying a property with land for her business, Anuveya, where she provides holistic therapies and healing, so that she can build a retreat and art centre.
They want to stay near Marlborough, Trick’s hometown, because it is near his family and his job in his dad’s garage. But the average property value in the area is over £300,000, which is pricing the couple out of the market.
The couple have around £10,000 in savings and could muster together £20,000 more if they sold vehicles and other assets. But even if they could raise £50,000, says Renwick, the mortgage payments would be more than £2,000 a month to buy a three-bedroom house with office space for her business.
“As morbid as it sounds, and it does sound absolutely awful, the only way we can realistically get on the property ladder is if someone sadly passes away and we inherit money from our family.”