Soaring house prices and interest rates are forcing first-time buyers to take on record levels of debt to get on the property ladder.
Figures released by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) show that the average amount borrowed by someone buying their first home in May was 3.37 times their salary, the highest level recorded. It is up on April when the average amount needed to borrow was 3.33 times income.
It means that a first-time buyer is paying an average 19.1 per cent of his or her income in interest, the highest level since 1992. The figure is likely to rise further because the latest statistics do not take account of the last two rises in interest rates.
The increasing financial hurdles faced by aspiring homeowners are compounded by the fact that record numbers are now paying stamp duty. During May, 60 per cent of first-time buyers were liable for the tax, compared with 52 per cent a year earlier.
First-time buyers now account for just 35 per cent of all mortgages. The average first-time buyer earns £35,000 and borrows £117,000 with a 10 per cent deposit.
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Michael Coogan, director general of the CML, said: “For anyone wanting to get a foot on the property ladder or move house, each month affordability is becoming worse. The record number of borrowers who are now paying stamp duty makes a difficult situation even worse, despite the financial windfall to the Treasury. This needs to be addressed urgently.”
For homeowners, the average person moving house borrowed a record 3.03 times their income during May, while interest payments now account for 16.6 per cent of their pay, up from 16.3 per cent a month earlier.
Unsurprisingly, stretched homeowners continued to turn to the security offered by fixed-rate mortgages in a bid to insulate themselves from further rises in interest rates. Just under nine out of ten first-time buyers and 73 per cent of home movers took out a fixed-rate deal during May, up from 88 per cent and 72 per cent respectively in April.
But the average interest rate on a fixed-rate mortgage reached 5.55 per cent during the month, up on the 5.02 per cent it stood at last year and the highest rate since February 2005.
Mr Coogan said: “Taking out short-term fixed-rate mortgages may provide some reassurance, but eventually the loans will revert to a variable rate and the risk of a payment shock is real.
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“Planning ahead for higher payments is as important as the initial decision to shelter from the risk of higher borrowing costs.”
Oliver Gilmartin, a senior economist at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, said: “First-time buyers should not assume that rates are at the top of the cycle. Any evidence that inflation pressures are persisting in the economy would see rates move higher for longer than currently expected.”
The figures come as Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, said that he planned to shake up Britain’s mortgage market and planning system to tackle the crisis in affordable housing.
He said that ministers would soon issue proposals to boost the supply of long-term fixed-rate home loans, amid concern that lenders were offering only shorter-term mortgages so they could repeatedly charge high arrangement fees.
He added that more fixed-rate loans of up to 25 years were needed.