With lenders calling for urgent government action as 3.5 million households remain locked out of homeownership, and new data showing solo buyers face nearly a decade to save for a deposit, there’s a growing shift in how first-time buyers are actually getting onto the ladder.
Buyers are no longer simply saving, but assembling increasingly complex, multi-source deposits. Family support, still proving crucial to getting onto the property ladder, is effectively creating a two-speed housing market, compressing timelines for some, while introducing greater verification complexity for lenders and advisers managing multi-account deposit trails.
A challenging market for first-time buyers
First-time buyers remain one of the most financially challenged groups in the property sector. And a growing number of lenders are starting to take note and demand change.
The Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association (IMLA) estimates around 3.5 million households have been blocked from buying a property and are still waiting to do so. The industry body has supported a report from the Yorkshire Building Society that calls for the Government, regulators and the mortgage industry to come together to remove unnecessary barriers to homeownership.
While home ownership remains an aspirational high, confidence in actually achieving it is low.
The bank of mum and dad as a market divider
Parental financial help is no longer a nice-to-have, but often an essential piece of the home buying puzzle. For previous generations, working hard, building a career and saving carefully often led to buying a home. Unfortunately, the system is not working as it should, creating a divide between those with financial help and those without.
While high loan-to-value mortgages and first-time buyer products are available, they are not a solution to decades of house prices rising faster than wages.
Further complexity arises when financial help comes from elsewhere in the family, making some lenders more cautious about where the money originated. While not all lenders take the same approach, we often see cases where buyers with wealthier parents have a smoother route than those relying on financial help from more distant relatives. The problem is two-fold: for lenders, family-funded deposits can introduce extra compliance checks and a more fragmented source-of-funds trail; for homebuyers, they widen the gap between those with a financial safety net and those without.
Saving is no longer simple
In response to ongoing affordability pressures, first-time buyers are increasingly assembling deposits from multiple sources rather than simply saving over time.
Armalytix data from 2026 shows just 23.9% of first-time buyers use a single account in the source-of-funds process, while 44.4% use three or more, and over a quarter of buyers (26.2%) rely on some form of gift(s), averaging over £50K, to fund their deposits.
This reflects a broader trend in which the route to homeownership is becoming more fragmented, with savings, family gifts, and transfers across multiple accounts all playing a larger role than a single savings pot.
However, that makes first-time buyers materially more likely to face a fragmented source-of-funds picture than repeat buyers, with 37.3% having just one account and 35.9% having three or more, according to our 2026 data.
The hidden cost of complexity
Even when buyers have the money, proving where it came from can slow things down and add stress. Affordability and affordability checks are only one part of the modern barrier to entry.
For lenders, that can lead to greater operational friction. For one, it can create a verification burden as multiple accounts, gifts and transfers create a longer audit trail for case handlers and compliance teams. Additionally, missing or fragmented evidence can delay offer progression even when the borrower is otherwise mortgage-ready.
When it comes to managing the customer experience, those repeated requests for documents can frustrate buyers and reduce broker confidence in the process.
Why clearer processes and early verification are needed
With first-time buyer cases involving multiple accounts and gifts becoming a routine part of homebuying, firms need processes that can handle more layered funding stories. Where there are multiple accounts, separate checks create avoidable friction. In these cases, verification should be started earlier to reduce duplicated requests and improve the client experience.
Ultimately, better visibility on deposit composition can support both compliance and faster decisions.
Modern home ownership increasingly relies on how a deposit is built, not simply whether it exists. Many first-time buyers rely on family support, multiple accounts, and gifted funds as wages and house prices remain out of sync. For lenders and other property professionals, this can create greater complexity and more fragmented evidence trails. However, a more joined-up process that captures the full complexity of a deposit’s composition helps lenders, brokers and buyers by cutting duplication and giving compliance teams earlier visibility.
