First time buyers in Edinburgh need to pay £50k to get on property ladder according to bombshell report

“We would put money away each month from our wages, almost like paying a mortgage and then we tried not to dip into it”

Wayne Sproule and his partner Chelsea Youngson, both 29 years old, are celebrating as they have just received the keys to their first property

First-time house buyers are having to pay £50,000 just to get on the property ladder in Edinburgh, a bombshell new report has revealed, as one Lothian couple reveal they had to save for two and a half years to afford their first digs.

A study by the Bank of Scotland has shown the epic struggle faced by young people desperate to own their own home as the number of first-time buyers hits a seven-year low.The average age of first-time buyers has also risen from 29 to 31 in the last decade, according to the study.

Wayne Sproule and his partner Chelsea Youngson, both 29 years old, are celebrating as they have just received the keys to their first property in Wallyford, after saving for two and a half years.

Wayne said: “You always hear the classic saying, make sure you get your first house because as soon as you’re on the property ladder it’s a lot easier.

“From a saving point of view, in the nicest way possible, it was actually better for us regarding Covid because it gave us an extra bit of time living with my parents to put some money away.”

Rejected

The couple started house-hunting in October last year and viewed only two other properties before putting down a £500 early bird deposit on the four-bedroom townhouse in December.

After applying for a 5 per cent deposit and being rejected, Wayne and Chelsea had to pay the full 10 per cent with the help of their parents to secure the house.

Wayne works as a business development manager and Chelsea is an assistant manager at Costa Coffee. They don’t believe in forgoing fun to save some money and instead took the approach of being cautious, which for them meant not going on any real holidays until they could afford it again.

Wayne said: “We would put money away each month from our wages, almost like paying a mortgage and then we tried not to dip into it, but we maybe would sometimes, life is too short to cancel plans and save money.

“And obviously we worked hard to save our money, and we haven’t been on a proper holiday for two years.”

Having successfully made it on to the property ladder in Scotland’s most expensive city, Chelsea and Wayne are now getting settled.

The report states that an area is considered affordable when the cost of a house is no more than four times the local average salary. In 2010 the average cost of a first home was £108,774 but now, a decade on an increase of 42 per cent puts the average cost at £154,449.

‘Five times the average salary’

Graham Blair, Mortgages Director of Bank of Scotland said: “With properties in the Capital costing more than five times the average local salary while other areas remain affordable, the challenges facing first-time buyers are heavily influenced by where in the country they are house-hunting.”

“Midlothian is Scotland’s least affordable area, with properties costing 5.3 times the average local salary. This is closely followed by the City of Edinburgh and East Lothian, where first-time buyers can expect their first property to cost five times the local salary.”

People in Edinburgh are also putting down the largest deposits, at an average of £19,575, that’s 24 per cent of the property price. Compared to that of Stirling at 23 per cent, and Moray and the Highlands at 22 per cent.

Earlier this year figures released by council bosses, Edinburgh By Numbers, highlighted a population explosion in the Capital in the last ten years.

Between 2008 and 2018, Edinburgh’s population grew by 13.1 per cent from 459,000 to 519,000. Compare this to Scotland’s overall population which only grew by 4.5 per cent and it’s clear that Edinburgh is experiencing a mass influx of prospective property owners.

Despite Edinburgh’s soaring prices, it remains more affordable that the UK capital, with properties in Brent, North London costing more than 12.3 times the average income.

Graham Blair said: “While a number of first-time buyers were unable to take their first step onto the housing ladder during lockdown, we are already seeing activity levels growing as buyers kick off their property searches once again and look to make the most of the Government support available.”

Booming

Edinburgh experienced a boom when the property market reopened on June 29. The reopening of the market allowed for activities such as physical property viewings to go ahead.

Paul Hilton, chief executive of ESPC, said: “From the end of March to the end of June 2020, coronavirus had a significant impact on the Scottish property market in terms of sales volume and the number of homes coming to market.”

“However, we noted evidence of demand from buyers and sellers rising while the restrictions were in place. This increasing demand has grown even more apparent since restrictions were eased with the volume of viewing requests, Home Report downloads and web traffic in recent weeks well exceeding pre-Covid-19 levels.”

The easing of lockdown restrictions also meant that surveyors were able to get back to work and create Home Reports, which resulted in a significant increase in the number of properties going on the market in the weeks immediately following lockdown.

A little bit of good news has come out of the report, stating that for a first-time buyer in Scotland, the average deposit is a third less than the UK average.

The average age of a first-time buyer is 31 according to the Bank of Scotland, this number has gradually risen over the last decade from 29. The city of Edinburgh is one of the areas which has the youngest buyers in the country, with the average first-time homeowner a youthful 30-years-old. Alongside Edinburgh is Falkirk, Angus and South Ayrshire.

The oldest average age of first-time buyers in Scotland is 32 and can be found in Dundee, Perth and Kinross and the Scottish Borders.

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