Women go solo as they climb the property ladder

Mortgage lenders are noticing the new trend among those buying alone as the gender pay gap narrows

On Buckingham Street, just off the Strand in London, an elegant Georgian townhouse with a storied past is on sale for £3.25 million. Its blue plaque marks it as the former headquarters of the Women’s Social and Political Union and the place where the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst once stood at an upstairs window, addressing the crowd below. “We are here, not because we are law-breakers. We are here in our efforts to become law-makers,” she declared, her voice carrying down to the River Thames.

Pankhurst was speaking to a crowd of women who would not have been able to get a mortgage to buy the house she was speaking from, no matter how much they earned. In Edwardian Britain, women were barred from taking out a mortgage or any form of credit without a male guarantor.

It would be another 60 years before that changed. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the landmark law that outlawed discrimination in employment, credit and services on the grounds of sex or marital status.

For the first time, women could open bank accounts, apply for loans and take out mortgages in their own names. “The change in women being able to have access to a mortgage in their own name is within my lifetime,” says Helen Pankhurst, great-granddaughter of Emmeline and convenor of the women’s rights campaign group Centenary Action. “And we know women still struggle with the motherhood penalty, the gender pay gap, and the pension gap.

Charting a century of progress, from suffragettes to independent homeowners  

Something so fundamental as financial independence took decades to achieve, and it reminds us that the fight for equality is far from over.” Half a century later, the evidence of that hard-won independence is no longer written on placards, but on property deeds. Skipton Building Society processed 11.5 per cent more solo female mortgage applications than applications from single men in 2024.

Skipton also found that 37 per cent of women planning to buy a first home intend to do so alone, compared with 35 per cent who plan to buy with a partner. The proportion of female-only mortgage applicants has risen from 36 per cent in 2020 to 41 per cent last year, according to the broker Mojo Mortgages.

The numbers show that more and more women would prefer to buy on their own terms than wait until they are coupled up.  ‘I need to support myself’ For Jess Pursey, 33, a customer operations manager, that resolve took root this spring when she bought a 40 per cent share of a new house at Dorchester Living’s Heyford Park development near Bicester, Oxfordshire. Her share cost £162,000 of the £405,000 full market value, and she put down a £16,200 deposit through the part-buy, part-rent shared-ownership scheme. She finally felt she had “space to breathe”, she says, and a garden for her cats, George and Winnie. “It’s challenging to buy a home on a single income,” she says, “but it’s all about adjusting your lifestyle. It was important for me to lay these foundations for the future because nothing in life is guaranteed. I might be single for the rest of my life, or I might be the breadwinner even if I did meet a partner.

Relationships and marriages don’t always work out, but that house will always be mine.” Pursey’s determination to buy alone was shaped by experience. “The house I bought with my ex-partner was in both our names, and we split the mortgage 50/50, but he paid the deposit and always said it was his house. You don’t forget things like that,” she says. After their split, she moved in with her father to save rather than rent, determined that the next time she bought, it would be on her own terms.  “There’s a lot of propaganda suggesting women should prioritize finding a partner over their careers,” she says. “But I refuse to settle, and in the meantime, I still need to support myself.

While I could live at home, at nearly 34 that wasn’t what I wanted for myself. “I prefer to budget monthly so I can return to a home filled with my belongings, a place I’m proud of. I may not have children, but I have pets to care for, and they help make my house a home.” ‘Owning a flat in London is a dream’ For Fionnuala Carr, 31, buying her own home was about finding stability after years spent navigating London’s volatile rental market.

Carr works as a data analyst in Canary Wharf, east London, and in March bought a two-bedroom, two bathroom flat at Springfield Place, a Barratt London development in Wandsworth, south London, for about £600,000. She saved £60,000 on her own over four years for her 10 per cent deposit. “Owning a flat in London is a dream, and I knew it would be a good investment,” she says. “You get better value for money in London than in Dublin.”

She had been renting with three other women in Balham, southwest London, her rent almost as high as her mortgage, but saw that many of her female friends were starting to buy on their own. This gave her the courage to approach a financial adviser to see whether she could do it too. “He said there was never a good time to buy, which scared me, but he also said there’s never a good time to sell either. If it’s right for you and you can afford it, go for it,” she says.

Not ready to live entirely on her own, she looked for a two-bedroom, two bathroom property so she could shelter a friend from the stormy rental market to help her pay for the mortgage. She says, “I’m not under pressure, wondering if the landlord will sell or if we’ll be asked to move. I can decorate as I want and choose who I live with. I remember a friend complaining about her housemates not putting out the bins, and I just can’t deal with that any more.” ‘

Shared ownership was my best option’ For Victoria Broomham, 32, affordability was the hurdle. When she and her partner separated, she sold their jointly owned house in Maidstone, Kent, for £272,000, using £15,000 of equity as a deposit to buy a 48 per cent share of a one-bedroom apartment at David Wilson Homes’ The Poppies development, also in Maidstone, in May this year. “I spoke to a mortgage adviser who told me it would be impossible for me to buy outright,” she says. “If I didn’t want to rent, shared ownership was my only option.”

She now pays £652 a month for mortgage and rent, plus about £140 on energy bills, and has stayed close to her job as a pharmacy technician at Maidstone Hospital. “It wasn’t like I was moving out on my own; I still had Buddy (her miniature dachshund) with me, so I’d have to find somewhere where I could rent with him,” she says, “but I wanted to stay on the property ladder if I could. “For the first time, everything is solely on me.

There are moments, like finding a really big spider, that make me wish I lived with someone else, but mostly I absolutely love it.” ‘I crave independence’ If Broomham’s story illustrates how shared ownership keeps women on the ladder, Georgia McGregor’s experience shows the persistence it takes to climb onto it.

The 29-year-old insurance underwriter is still searching for a one or two-bedroom flat in southwest London. She has lived with family to save and, with an inheritance from  her grandparents, has a larger budget than she expected. “I was surprised by how much I could borrow,” she says. “But it feels as if I’m being dismissed, with the assumption that I’m not a serious buyer.

Some [estate] agencies don’t seem to genuinely listen to my requirements.” She has been outbid on five properties and describes the process as demoralizing, yet remains undeterred. “Buying your own place gives you independence, and that’s what I’m craving,” she says. “I haven’t got a partner at the moment and I don’t want to wait. If I buy by myself, my security is on me and I’m not dependent on someone else for somewhere to live.”

McGregor has seen friends caught in break-ups that turned property into a battleground. “Some of my friends bought with partners and their relationships ended, which led to messy arguments over who gets what,” she says. “Others bought with friends, made clear agreements and now they’re using that equity to buy individually.”

She also plans to take a lodger for extra financial breathing space once she finds the right home. Fifty years ago, a single woman applying for a mortgage might have been asked for her husband’s permission or have been required to bring a male guarantor.

Today, lenders are actively courting female buyers, and developers are tailoring homes with second bedrooms suitable for lodgers, secure entry systems and shared amenities such as co-working spaces, residents’ lounges and gyms that appeal to solo occupants. Back on London’s Buckingham Street, the townhouse where Pankhurst made her stand has been modernized with a vaulted kitchen, marble bathrooms and a small terrace overlooking Whitehall Gardens.

Grant Bates, the selling agent, says the property’s history adds to its allure. “It’s a house of significance,” he says. “It was a place of activism, and now it’s ready for a new chapter.” A century ago, the suffragettes rallied under the slogan “Deeds, not words”. For this new generation of women, those deeds come with a mortgage offer attached.

Source: The Times

UK House prices beat forecasts before budget

House prices rose more than expected last month in a further sign of resilient demand despite the possibility of property-related tax reforms in the budget. Average prices rose 0.3 per cent in October after rising by 0.5 per cent in September, mortgage lender Nationwide’s latest house price index showed.

Year-on-year prices were 2.4 per cent higher, up from a 2.2 per cent annual increase in September.

Economists had forecast no change over the month and a 2.3 per cent increase over the year.

Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief Martin Strydom economist, said: “Against a backdrop of subdued consumer confidence and signs of weakening in the labor market, this performance indicates resilience, especially since mortgage rates are more than double the level they were before Covid struck and house prices are close to all-time highs.

”The figures come after Bank of England data on Wednesday showed that the number of mortgages approved by lenders in September came in higher than expected. Mortgage approvals totalled65,944 during the month, the highest figure since December and above economists’ forecasts of 64,000.

The data are at odds with other measures of the housing market which have suggested a slowing in price growth in recent months, attributed to caution among homebuyers before the budget on November 26.

A report by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors published in October quoted Timothy Shaw, of Vincent Shaw estate agents in Cambridge as saying that the housing market was in a “state of semi-paralysis”, with agencies reporting another fall in inquiries, sales, new instructions and prices in September.

It said the autumn slowdown, brought on by speculation about potential reforms to property taxes, has “become more firmly entrenched of late” .Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has said that “higher taxes on the wealthy …will be part of the story” in the budget, with some form of property tax seen as a possibility.

Ashley Webb, UK economist at Capital Economics, said that data suggested that “homebuyers may not be as fazed by the threat of tax rises in the budget on November 26, potentially on property, as it first appeared”.

Elliott Jordan-Doak, a senior UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said that while house prices had remained subdued, they were likely to continue rising slowly over the coming months.“ Some homebuyers are taking await-and-see approach to the budget, which is weighing slightly on sentiment in the market.

“But the activity indicators holding up better than their survey-based signals suggests to us that demand remains robust,” he said. Nationwide said housing affordability was likely to improve modestly if income growth continues to outpace house price growth. It also expects borrowing costs to ease, bolstering buyer demand.

Goldman Sachs said this week that after a sharp deterioration in economic data, it expected the Bank of England to cut interest rates by a quarter point to3.75 per cent next week.

Source: The Times

Which generation had the worst property deal?

UK Buyers today will have to spend seven times their salary on a home — but those in the 1970s faced double-digit mortgage rates.

Much debate rages around which generation actually had it worse when it came to getting onto the property ladder. Many baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, remember the painful days of mortgage rates as high as 17 per cent, while today’s first-time buyers are contending with comparatively higher house prices.

The estate agency Hamptons looked at the data to try to work out which generation had the worst deal. Here is what it found.

Whose homes lost value?

Despite an overall rise in house prices those Generation Z first-time buyers who got on the ladder in 2020 would be the first to have experienced real-terms property values fall during their first five years of ownership. Average prices have dropped 3 per cent when adjusted for inflation, accordiong to Hamptons.

A typical millennial (those born between 1981 and 1995) who bought their first home in 2011 in their mid-twenties made an average real-terms gain of 13 per cent over five years. Whereas a Generation Xer (born between 1966-1980) who bought their first home in 1996 enjoyed 44 per cent growth in real terms over the first five years.

Hamptons said that a baby boomer first-time buyer in 1979 benefited from average real-terms house price growth of 35 per cent in the first five years. Someone of the so-called silent generation (born between 1928-1945) who bought a first home in 1968 saw the value of their home rise 106 per cent in real terms in the first five years.

Having struggled to get on the property ladder, the youngest homeowners now face being stuck on the first rung.

Whose house prices boomed?

In April 1968 the average house price was 4.29 times the typical annual salary, according to the Office for National Statistics. This, apart from two spikes in the early 1970s and late 1980s to early 1990s, remained largely constant for the rest of the 20th century. An average home in April 1979 was 4.29 times the average wage, and 3.8 times in April 1996.

But a period of sustained house price growth followed, with the average property rising 173 per cent between 1995 and 2007 in real terms, causing the gap between wages and property values to widen.

In April 2011 the average home was 6.58 times the average salary. In April 2020, this had increased to more than 7.69, hitting a peak of 8.23 in September 2022.

David Fell, an analyst at Hamptons, said: “House prices have risen much faster than wages over the last couple of decades mostly thanks to falling mortgage rates. Since interest rates were reduced to rock bottom levels in response to the 2007 house market crash, buyers could generally borrow significantly more money than someone earning the same salary 20 or 30 years ago, pushing prices up.”

Whose payments were highest?

Between the mid-1970s and early 1990s the Bank of England base rate, which influences mortgage rates, was often in double figures, hitting a high of 17 per cent between November 1979 and July 1980.

In response to the 2007-08 financial crisis it was cut to 1 per cent in February 2009 and remained at this rate or lower until June 2022, when the Bank began raising it in an attempt to tackle inflation. It hit a high of 5.25 per cent in August 2023 and is on the way down again now — this month it was cut from 4.25 per cent to 4 per cent. The average mortgage rate offered across the market is 5 per cent, according to the analytics firm Moneyfacts.

But Neal Hudson from the property market researcher Residential Analysts said that lower mortgage rates only tell part of the story.

“Yes the rates were higher in the 1970s and 1980s, but these people were borrowing much lower multiples of their income,” he said. “Buyers are now borrowing nearly double what they were back then, so it takes a much lower mortgage rate to create the same level of pain.”

Someone paying the average house price of £213,000 in January 2020 would have paid £73,900 in mortgage payments on the average rate of 3 per cent. Hamptons based its calculations on someone with a 10 per cent deposit and a 25-year mortgage term.

A homeowner who bought in 2011 — when the average house price was £234,000 and the base rate was 0.5 per cent — would have spent £48,700 on their mortgage in the first five years, assuming they had the average mortgage rate of 1.7 per cent.

Yet someone who bought at the start of 1979, when the average house price was £13,800 and the base rate was 14 per cent, would have spent £41,500 on their mortgage in the first five years of homeownership, assuming the average 9.6 per cent mortgage rate and adjusting for 2025 prices. The 1979 average house price would be £55,100 in real terms today.

Fell said: “Millennials faced higher purchase prices than the previous two generations but much lower interest rates, while the boomers and Gen X paid higher interest rates but the prices were lower.

“Gen Zers, however, are being hit with relatively high prices and relatively high interest rates now as well.”

Who has the least equity?

Sluggish house prices combined with higher borrowing costs will also make it more difficult for those looking to move because they will struggle to build up enough equity to fund a switch to a bigger home.

Hudson said: “Previous generations have benefited from house-price growth to allow them to move into larger properties, whereas these days, it’s much harder and so you’re seeing people moving much less frequently.”

Using Bank of England data that predicts mortgage rates up to 40 years in the future, Hamptons estimates that the average homeowner who bought in 2020 would pay about £191,000 across the first half of a 25-year mortgage term. Over the second half of their term, they would pay £208,000.

It is a far cry from the experience of older generations. The typical baby boomer first-time buyer paid £93,900 in real terms in the first half of their 25-year mortgage, dropping to £64,700 in the second half. Those belonging to Generation X paid an average of £112,294 in the first half, falling to £75,697 in the second.

Recent increases in mortgage rates have also caught out millennials. Hamptons forecasts that this generation will have to pay £185,600 on average in mortgage payments across the second half of their mortgage, well above the £117,500 they paid the first half.

“In previous generations, homeowners would have climbed up the career ladder and inflation would have made the second half of their mortgage easier financially,” Fell said. “With millennials and Gen Z likely to see their mortgage payments rise, it will erode that feeling that their loans are getting more manageable.”

He said this was likely to mean fewer members of those generations paying off their mortgage early — a key milestone for anyone wanting to retire early.

What about the renters?

Those waiting to buy their first home generally need to either live with their parents or navigate the rental market, where costs have never been higher.

The average monthly rent in July 2025 was £1,373 a month — 47 per cent higher than ten years ago. It cost more than three times as much in real terms to rent in the last five years than it did for someone who started a five-year tenancy in 1979.

Someone who started renting in January 2020 would have paid an average of £86,750 over five years, having been caught up in the post-pandemic boom in rents. Someone who started a tenancy in 2011 would have paid £74,283 over five years in real terms, while someone who started renting 1979 would have paid £23,740 in today’s prices.

Higher rental costs make it more difficult to build up enough savings for a house deposit, exacerbating the challenges of getting on the property ladder amid inflated house prices.

For boomers and those in the silent generation, renting was cheaper than paying a mortgage. the average tenant who started renting in 1968 would have paid £6,500 over the first five years in real terms, compared with £7,990 in mortgage payments. Rental costs for someone who started a tenancy in 1979 were £23,740 for the first five years, compared with £41,470 in mortgage payments.

But the pendulum swung the other way for the first time in October 1992, the month after Black Wednesday, when the pound crashed and Bank rate was cut. Since then, monthly rental payments have mostly remained higher than mortgage costs, according to Hamptons.

The average buyer who bought in 2020 and paid mortgage payments for five years would have paid £12,900 less than the average renter. “This has created a bit of a financial cliff edge between those who bought and those who didn’t, in a way which didn’t exist for older generations,” Fell said.

Source: The Sunday Times