Should anyone under the age of 25 bother with a mortgage?

It’s a tough time to be a first-time buyer. The days of buying a first home in your early 20s, stepping up the housing ladder throughout your working life and then downsizing in retirement feel like they have long gone.

Instead, high rents and high house prices, coupled with graduate debt for many people in their 20s, can make it a real struggle to save any money, let alone an emergency fund or mortgage.

In many other countries renting is normal and home ownership isn’t as fixated on as in the UK.

In France and Germany, for example, renting is the norm. However, those countries do have a lot of protection for tenants. For example, in Germany tenants rarely face eviction and children can even inherit tenancies from their parents.

Many countries cap rent increases, including France, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Norway and Ireland.

So, here in the UK, should people in their early 20s be trying to buy or at least saving to buy by their mid-to-late 20s? We asked some 20-somethings what they think.

‘Owning a home makes me really happy’

Pippa Park is 29 and bought her first home in her mid-20s. She says: “I’m so glad I did it, it’s my most prized possession and I’m obsessed with doing it up beautifully and love spending money on it. I get so much happiness from being home now!

“When my boyfriend and I choose to buy something together in a couple of years, we’ll be able to get our dream home as we both have a foot on the ladder and are likely to make money on both of the properties. I can’t recommend investing in property enough!”

‘I can’t afford to buy where I want to’

Elizabeth is 27 and lives in London. She’d like to have bought a home already, but high rent and high house prices make that seem out of reach without a significant life change. She tells us: “I’m pretty desperate to get on the property ladder as at present I feel like all my income goes into paying my rent.

“I’m married, and my husband and I would love to live in London, but for our money we think we would be able to buy more in Manchester or somewhere similar. I would love a cat-friendly house with a garden and that doesn’t seem likely to happen in London.

“At the same time, leaving behind London feels like leaving behind job prospects. There’s so much going on here. I feel more affordable parts of the country miss out on these.”

‘It’s a long-term commitment’

Of course, it’s not just buying a home that can feel like a stretch. Continuing to service a mortgage can be a struggle, especially if you have to also pay back a Help To Buy equity loan. After all, you never know what the future holds.

Melissa Hamblett is 29. She and her husband bought their first home at 25 back in 2014.

“We used the government’s Help to Buy scheme as our only way onto the ladder,” she explains. “Even as two working professionals, we had to move back home with parents (separately) as newlyweds for four months in order to get the deposit together.

“It was horrible but we are very grateful that we were able to get on the ladder at all as just 6 months later we would have been priced out of the market. That said, we’re now coming up to our five years interest free and owe the government about £15,000 more than we borrowed (because our house has gone up in value so much).

“We’re hoping we’ll be able to re-mortgage and pay off the government next year. If we can’t borrow enough though, we’ll have to sell and be back where we started, except this time with a toddler, and potentially having to rent again.”

‘It’s just unaffordable’

Mollie was fairly blunt about how unaffordable it feels. She told us: “I’m 25 and don’t think I’ll ever be able to afford a house and I am not saving accordingly.”

She’s certainly not alone in that belief; a recent report from the Resolution Foundation suggested that one in three millennials will never own their own home and half will still be renting in their 40s.

So, should under-25s bother with a mortgage?

The buyers and would-be buyers in this article had lots of important insights into buying a home but what about financial advisers?

What advice do they have for anyone in their early 20s who is considering buying their first home, or beginning to save for it?

Scott Gallacher, director of financial planners Rowley Turton, says homeownership is a sensible goal at any age:

“Long term, owning your home is a key step to financial independence. Otherwise to cover the cost of renting in retirement you’d need an even greater pension.

“For example, to cover a £700 monthly rent, a single person aged 65 would need a pension fund of around £276,000. They’d be better to have bought the house and would then have an asset and the option of equity release in later life.”

On terms of getting on the housing ladder save, save and save, using a Lifetime ISA to give your savings a 25% boost.”

But Lesley James, director of Simplified Money, has a slightly more relaxed view: “I am all for people buying their own home if they want to. I have bought mine after all. But it was very hard work up front and tied me back to a location and house (and costs) I didn’t want when I needed to move during a recession.

“We do get carried away because our grandparents, those who could afford it anyway, did very well from house prices. But I do like to reassure people that rent that it’s not all positive in favour of buying. Don’t feel bad about not buying, if you can’t afford to do that yet.”