'Buying together means we both get a toe on the ladder'

With house prices hitting nine times yearly pay, many of us despair of ever owning. Albert Toth meets buyers clubbing together with friends and family to secure their first home

- Albert Toth

Housing costs have spiralled for everyone in the UK over the last few years. Whether you own a home or rent, bills have gone up, with mortgages and rental prices both reaching record highs. For many young people, the promise of home ownership has become an unattainable dream, as house prices approach nine times the average annual salary.

It’s led some aspiring homeowners to look at non-traditional ways of achieving their goals. Research from Lloyds Bank shows just over half of young people would be willing to buy with a friend or sibling – a trend that’s been picking up in recent years.

Jack Robinson, 27, and Gemma Griffin, 28, are two friends living in London. After renting together for seven years, they decided to get a shared mortgage, splitting the cost of the deposit. “Renting was getting far too expensive for us,” said Ms Griffin. “It just felt like every time we had a promotion at work or there were inflationary salary increases, it was just being offset by the amount that rent was going up.”

The pair say their rent went up around 40 per cent over the last five years they were renting. This is not unusual for London, where rents have risen nearly 50 per cent since 2021. The average rent in the capital in April 2024 was £2,121. “We looked at the idea of getting a flat together, and it was actually cheaper for us to have a mortgage, and have that money going into an asset as well,” Ms Griffin said.

The pair now live in Woolwich, a neighbourhood in south London with recently much-improved travel links in to town. Their two-bed, two-bathroom new-build, by developer Fairview, cost £440,000 and needed a 10 per cent deposit of £44,000. Mr Robinson and Ms Griffin split this equally at £22,000.

“Rather than waiting around for us to individually be able to buy, or wait until we could do it with a partner, we figured it’s just better to get off the rental market right now and do it together,” Ms Griffin said.