First time buyers and what help and issues they face

First time buyers and what help and issues they face, firstly a lot depends on location off were the first time buyer wants to buy their first property. I have been in the mortgage industry since 1999 and currently run an online conveyancing portal and I am based in the Greater London area in the early days of my mortgage career first time buyers made up 40% of all the cases that came in for a mortgage and at that time property prices were much more agreeable to fit the first time buyers income at the time. Currently my mainstream business is running an online conveyancing portal and introducing mortgages to a broker friend, the percentage of first time buyers I now get is less than 4 percent in the Greater London area, this is mostly due to the extremely high price of properties in the Greater London Area making it difficult or totally impossible for first time buyer to get on the property ladder in Greater London.

As the conveyancing portal covers the whole of England and Wales, I get a good proportion of first time buyer cases in Wales and Northern England this is due to the Income to property price ratio being far more agreeable. When talking to the brokers in Greater London they actually fear the possibility of trying to help a first time buyer buy a property in Greater London as a lot of first time buyer’s that approach them have no Idea of how a current mortgage works so a lot of time is spent educating them how mortgages need to go through tough affordability calculators only to find out they have an income or a joint income that does not get anywhere near qualifying for a mortgage for the property they want to buy . 99% of the brokers and estate agents who use my portal focus their efforts on home movers and buy to let investors as these are the people that have more chance of getting through the mortgage process
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On the flip side of the issue in Greater London I still get APX 40% of first time buyers from Welsh and Northern Agents and mortgage brokers buying properties in the 70 to £150k pricing range. One of my northern based Solicitors invited me to a clay pigeon shooting day in a village near Oldham, there was a selection of Northern brokers and Estate agents and even a northern Property developer. When speaking to them I learnt that none of them suffered the issues we have in the Home Counties around London or London it’s self. The estate agent said they were getting a healthy amount of first time buyers through the door and were getting properties completed with them to a decent degree. The mortgage brokers were positive about them and didn’t fear them and actually welcomed them through the door as in a vast majority of cases income fit the property they wanted to buy. The property developer actually had a good marketing scheme for first time buyers and didn’t see an issue with them.
First time buyer can get some help from govt schemes https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/help-to-buy-scheme-everything-you-need-to-know

Parents can help their children https://www.moneysupermarket.com/mortgages/guarantor-mortgages/