For someone looking to buy a house for the first time, the past few years have presented a daunting task. High interest rates make those first repayments look worryingly high, and rising inflation meant money tucked away as savings might have been losing real value anyway.
Yorkshire Building Society estimated that first-time buyers were up last year to about 390,000, but that’s still below the post-Covid peak of 405,000, which included those buying with government support and on super-low interest rates.
