Young first-time buyers face toughest time since financial crisis, says UK housebuilder

The boss of Britain’s largest housebuilder has warned that it is the most challenging time to be a first-time buyer since the financial crisis, as the dream of home ownership moves increasingly out of reach for many young people. A combination of rising interest rates, higher levels of student debt and the squeeze on wages is making it “challenging, very, very difficult” for young people to get on the housing ladder, according to David Thomas, the outgoing chief executive of Barratt Redrow . “Certainly it’s going to be close to where we were post the great financial crisis,” Thomas said in an interview with the BBC . “That was probably more to do with lending coming out of 2008-2009, but I think it’s very, very comparable for first-time buyers, particularly when you look at areas like London and the south-east.” Thomas said higher levels of student loan repayments were making it harder for younger people to get a mortgage. “Once people are earning a certain level of salary they have a requirement to repay student debt, and therefore their available earnings as assessed by the bank for mortgage purposes will be lower, so inevitably the pool of people that can afford [it] is reduced by that underlying debt position,” he said. As a result, he said the average age of a first-time buyer was increasing, which is among the factors leading “towards generational inequalities”. …