Goodbye to the property ladder
The idea of the ‘property ladder.’ buying a starter home, then trading up over time to larger ones, was a huge part of UK culture from the late 20th century through the early 2000s. It has not disappeared entirely, but for many people it barely functions in the way that it once did.
The average property now costs nearly eight times the average income, making it one of the toughest financial challenges of our time. According to the Resolution Foundation, it now takes the average first-time buyer about nine years to save for a deposit, and more than half of all first-time buyers under 35 rely on family help, the so-called ‘Bank of mum and dad,’ to enter the property market.
Barclays research from 2025 found that many first-time buyers are no longer perceiving their first home as the start of a journey, but as the final destination. This suggests that the traditional multi-step ladder may be collapsing into something much shorter. Rather than moving up from a starter home to a family home to a forever home, many buyers are simply aiming to buy once and stay put.
The rental market is also changing in ways that prevent a ladder. About 93,000 landlords left the market in 2025, with potentially 110,000 more leaving in 2026 as tax changes and new regulation squeeze small-scale landlords. This is reducing the supply of rental homes, pushing rents up and making it harder for people to save. And at the back lies the infamous Town and Country Planning acts which exercise a stranglehold on new builds.
Stamp Duty remains a major barrier for those looking to move up, adding thousands to the cost of buying and discouraging older people from ‘trading down’ to smaller properties and thereby freeing up living space.
The property ladder used to work because house prices generally rose faster than wages, mortgages were easier to access, and deposits, as a percentage of income, were smaller. Now first-time buyers now often need 10-20% deposits. In places like London, that can mean £40k-£100k-plus, and saving such a sum while renting is very difficult. And mortgage rules have tightened since the 2008 financial crisis, and lenders apply stricter affordability checks. People cannot borrow as much relative to income as before
The concept of a property ladder depended on house prices continuing to rise, so that over a five or ten-year period, people would have more money to put down a deposit on their next, bigger and costlier, home. People can no longer put faith in that continual rise, and be confident that the value of what they buy into will rise.
For renters without savings support, younger would-be buyers in expensive cities, single-income households, and those without parental support, there is a property cliff, the big gap between renting and owning, rather than a ladder they can put their feet upon.
Madsen Pirie