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First-time Buyer

It would take 121 years for average Londoner to save a flat deposit

Joanna Faith
Written By:
Joanna Faith
Posted:
Updated:
28/10/2016

Londoners on an average annual salary of £34,320 will have to save for 121 years before they have enough for the deposit needed for an average priced flat in the capital, according to a new study by Property Partner.

The residential crowdfunding platform said the average London flat now costs more than £457,000. The deposit needed to buy the property, assuming the first-time-buyer secured a mortgage of four times the average London salary, would be a whopping £320,505.

If they were saving 10% of their net annual salary towards a deposit, it would take more than a century to have saved enough, without any financial help from the ‘bank of mum and dad’.  Putting aside 20% of net income a year would take 60 years and saving half their salary would still mean a 24-year wait.

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It’s unlikely many first-time-buyers would choose to buy in Kensington and Chelsea, but if they did, it would take 389 years to save the £1m deposit needed. Even if you were able to save half your salary after tax, it would still be 78 years before you had enough cash to put down as a deposit for an averaged priced flat of £1.16m.

Dan Gandesha, CEO of Property Partner, said: “It’s staggering that if you have no help from family or friends, and you hope to buy on your own, it’s now almost impossible to afford anywhere in London. Even in the 10 most affordable boroughs you’d need to be saving an ambitious 20% of your net annual salary to stand a chance of getting the deposit together before you reached middle age.”