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Are first-time buyers using the bank of mum and dad? How will Your First Home change that?

ended 05. October 2026

One Newspager, has shared figures, from 5 Oct 2025 to 4 Oct 2026, showing 34% of first-time buyers used a gift or an inheritance towards their deposit. That's in line with the government's English Housing Survey 2024–25, where 31% of recent first-time buyers had help from family or friends.

Where family money was used, it made up a median 59% of the deposit. It covered more than half the deposit in 57% of cases, and effectively all of it in 23%.

Without the family money, 71% of those buyers would still have had at least a 2.5% deposit of their own, the Your First Home minimum. 62% would have had at least 5%, and 28% at least 10%.

Across all first-time buyers, one in ten (10%) wouldn't have had a 2.5% deposit of their own without family money.

Buyers with family help put down a median deposit of 17% of the price, against 12% for those without.

Younger buyers were most likely to get help: 44% of under-25s, 39% aged 25–29, 36% aged 30–34, 27% aged 35–39 and 22% aged 40+.

Single buyers were more likely to have had help than couples (37% vs 31%), and London buyers more than those elsewhere (41% vs 32%).

  • Are first-time buyers using the bank of mum and dad?
  • How will that change with Andy Burnham's Your First Home?
  • Will Your First Home work?

Responses by tomorrow.

12 responses from the Newspage community

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Jamie ElvinVerified
Director at Strive Mortgages
For too many first-time buyers, the most important financial qualification is having parents with money. Two people can earn the same salary and pay the same rent, yet one gets the keys while the other spends years saving. Your First Home could help close that gap. People who can afford mortgage repayments but struggle to save while renting deserve a realistic route into ownership. But a smaller deposit won’t fix everything. Buyers still need affordable repayments and a clear understanding of the equity loan’s long-term cost. If developers simply absorb the extra buying power through higher prices, the scheme could end up helping their margins more than buyers. The test is whether it makes ownership sustainable, not simply whether it gets more people through the door. Your first home should be the start of financial security, not the end of it.
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Matt CoulsonVerified
Founder at Heron Financial
Yes, and heavily. Roughly a third of first-time buyers lean on family, and where they do, family money tends to cover most of the deposit, often all of it. For a lot of young people, whether you can buy has come down to whether your parents can help, more than what you earn. That's where Your First Home could make a difference. By dropping the deposit to 2.5%, it targets the barrier the Bank of Mum and Dad exists to solve, and on these numbers most would-be buyers could clear that bar on their own. If it works, it loosens the grip family wealth has on who gets to own a home. The catch is two-fold. It only applies to new-build from signed-up developers, so it's far narrower than a gift that works on any property. And the deposit was only ever half the problem: a smaller deposit means a bigger mortgage, so at today's rates the monthly payment still decides whether people can afford it. Fix the deposit and the payment together and it helps. Fix only the deposit and it falls short.
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Tony SanchezVerified
Founder at Bridging Loan Directory
The figures shared with Newspage suggest family money is doing more than helping buyers reach a minimum deposit. It can also reduce the mortgage they need and their monthly repayments. Having 2.5% saved does not establish that someone can afford the remaining borrowing.

Your First Home could reduce reliance on parents for eligible buyers whose main obstacle is the deposit. But the income and local price caps, mortgage affordability and eventual equity-loan costs will determine who benefits. Family help may still be valuable even where it is no longer essential.

Through Bridging Loan Directory’s reporting, we also see how delayed sales can tie up developers’ equity and hold back their next project. I would judge the scheme by additional completed purchases by buyers without family support, and whether it helps deliver more suitable homes. Take-up alone would not prove it had widened access.
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Harry GoodliffeVerified
Director at HTG Mortgages
Your First Home fixes a problem most first-time buyers don't have. 7 out of 10 buyers who leant on family would have cleared the scheme's 2.5% deposit on their own anyway. What family money really buys is a bigger deposit, 17% vs 12% deposit, and with that a cheaper rate and a mortgage that fits within the income. A 2.5% deposit does the opposite, leaving buyers on the most expensive borrowing with the same affordability ceiling they hit before. It will help the one in ten who can't scrape the minimum, and give the Government a headline. And because it only applies to new builds, it won't be the kick-start the wider market so badly needs. The bank of mum and dad carries on as before. This is an incentive for house builders, dressed up as help for buyers.
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Stephen PerkinsVerified
Norwich Mortgage Broker and Managing Director at Yellow Brick Mortgages
A 2.5% deposit could reduce how much some first-time buyers need from parents, but it doesn’t remove the affordability problem. Family help often does more than simply get somebody over the minimum deposit line; a larger deposit can reduce the mortgage required, improve the loan-to-value and potentially open up better pricing.

Your First Home could make the biggest difference for buyers who don’t have family wealth behind them, which would be positive. But a smaller deposit requirement only solves one part of the problem. The monthly mortgage still has to be affordable once the buyer moves in.
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Craig FishVerified
Director at Lodestone Mortgages
Over a third of first-time buyers are leaning on the bank of mum and dad, and among under-25s it's closer to half. In London it is 41%. Yet for most the money isn't the difference between buying and not. Seven in ten of those helped already had a 2.5% deposit of their own, and only one first-time buyer in ten would have missed that bar without family cash. What the gift mostly buys is a bigger deposit, a median 17% against 12%. Your First Home won't close that gap. It hands buyers without family support a 20% equity loan they must repay, then limits them to new-builds, so the housebuilders get a fresh queue of customers while the buyer carries the debt. A loan dressed up as a leg up is still a loan. If ministers want to level the field, scrap stamp duty for first-time buyers and let them choose any home that suits them, not the one a developer needs to shift. Will it work? For a narrow group it may well open a door. For most, it swaps one kind of help for a debt with strings attached.
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Justin MoyVerified
Managing Director at EHF Mortgages
This is nothing new, the Bank of Mum and Dad has been a Top 10 lender for the last 10-15yrs, but with changes in how inheritance tax is charged, parents are certainly looking to be more tax efficient and releasing money from their estate earlier, giving children a better chance to have enough deposit to buy their first home. There is approximately £4 trillion of unmortgaged property in the UK, which will eventually have to pass through the family, but the timing of that inheritance is becoming much sooner in the cycle, given the need for more support now, minimising IHT, and looking to see the benefits of that wealth share before death.

I don't see too many restrictions on the deposit within a YFH case, as long as it is from immediate family, but for those with much larger deposits, it may be better not to have the YFH scheme if normal affordability allows you to do so.
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Richard DavidsonVerified
Mortgage Advisor at onlinemortgageadvisor.co.uk
Those lucky enough to have the bank of mum and dad are using it, but there are still plenty of first-time buyers who can comfortably afford a mortgage and simply don't have that option. Some parents may hold back a gift that would be a real sacrifice, but anyone who looks properly at the numbers will see that a smaller mortgage still makes sense, and if it works like Help to Buy, families could plan to keep that money back and use it to clear the equity loan at the five-year mark.

It is possible to be cynical about these schemes, but I think it will broadly work, because its real job is to take risk off house builders so they keep building, and a lack of homes is the root of the problem. The worry is that it becomes a licence to build cheaply, with homes that are out of keeping with the area or sold on poor leasehold terms, so the rules need to make sure buyers end up with something worth owning.
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Tracey DixonVerified
Buy-to-Let Mortgage Specialist & Owner at Pure Mortgage and Protection
Replacing the Bank of Mum and Dad with another loan does not give buyers the same financial safety net.

These figures show family money often covers most of the deposit. A gift can reduce borrowing without creating another repayment obligation. A government equity loan must eventually be repaid.

Your First Home could help some buyers overcome the deposit hurdle, but saving 2.5% does not mean they will pass a lender’s affordability assessment.

I remain cautious. Buyers need to understand how they will manage the mortgage, future equity-loan charges and eventual repayment, particularly if their circumstances change.

Family support may therefore remain important even if the minimum deposit falls. Until the full terms are published, it is too early to declare this a solution. Getting someone into a home is only a success if they can afford to keep it.
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Nouran MoustafaVerified
Practice Principal & IFA at Roxton Wealth
The Bank of Mum and Dad is not disappearing just because the government introduces a 2.5% deposit scheme.

The fascinating part of these figures is that 71% of buyers who received family help could already have produced a 2.5% deposit themselves. So family money is often not getting someone from zero to homeowner. It is helping them build a much bigger deposit, access better mortgage pricing or buy the home they actually want.

Your First Home could reduce how much parents need to contribute, particularly for buyers struggling with the initial deposit. But it will not solve income affordability, nor the advantage enjoyed by someone whose parents can add tens of thousands to their deposit.

The scheme may shrink the Bank of Mum and Dad cheque.

It will not abolish the Bank of Mum and Dad.
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Malcolm DavidsonVerified
Director at UK Moneyman
It had started to feel like buying a first home was becoming like hoping to be a professional tennis player - in other words not very likely without wealthy parents, so any scheme designed to change that ought to be welcomed.

When it comes to Bank of Mum and Dad however, I think “Bank of Family” will overtake this phrase in due course. Many parents in their 40’s and 50’s are not in a position to help their kids onto the ladder, whereas the Baby Boomers one generation above can be, either with unused savings or property wealth via Equity Release.

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James BlacklerVerified
Managing Director at Oakstead Finance
Single buyers needing more help than couples, and London buyers needing more than the rest of the country, tells you everything about how skewed this market has become, and it's exactly what we see day to day advising clients in that are based in London. A 59% median contribution from family money isn't a top-up, it's effectively the deposit, and that's before you even get to the 23% of cases where family covered almost the whole thing. Your First Home will help at the margins, particularly for buyers with decent income but no savings cushion, but I'd be cautious about overselling it. A lower deposit threshold doesn't fix stretched affordability once rates and living costs are factored in. It will shift some transactions forward, but it won't replace the bank of mum and dad as the dominant force in this market.