Housing crisis: Young people willing to be guinea pigs to buy own home

Young people in Britain desperate to get on the property ladder are going to extreme lengths to amass enough cash to buy their own home.

One in twenty-five 18- to 34-year-olds admit they have taken part, or are considering taking part in, medical trials to scrape together enough money for a deposit, new research has found.

A poll of more than 2,300 young people found there is a growing sense of dissatisfaction at the Government’s failure to tackle the housing crisis.

We simply cannot afford to ignore the concerns of younger people and just accept the fact that they will be considerably worse off than previous generations.

• David Orr, National Housing Federation

The poll, by YouGov for the National Housing Federation (NHF), found that more than one in 10 (12 per cent of) respondents had taken on, or were considering taking on, a second job to raise funds for a deposit.

Today the average first-time buyer needs a £30,000 deposit, almost 10 times the deposit required in the early 1980s, according to data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

David Orr, chief executive of the NHF, said young people are “not being listened to” by the Government.

The NHF said it would call on the next government to produce a plan within a year of taking office detailing how it would commit to ending the housing crisis within a generation.

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