The findings underline just how important family financing is despite the relative resurgence the market has seen and assistance schemes such as Help to Buy and Funding for Lending Scheme coming into force.
According to the Legal & General survey of 2000 UK homeowners, 45% of UK borrowers have relied on the help of The Bank of Mum and Dad. 28% of these buyers needed family financing to buy their current home and 17% needed it to secure their first home.
The region most reliant on Bank of Mum & Dad was East Midlands with 55% of those surveyed saying they would not have bought their home without parental assistance followed closely by the North West (42%) and the South East (32%). Meanwhile buyers in Scotland (8%) and the West Midlands (19%) were the most self sufficient.
Ben Thompson, MD, Legal & General Mortgage Club, said:
“The Bank of Mum and Dad continues to play a fundamental role for many buyers and despite the wealth of positive data about the market at the moment dependence on family financing to buy our homes is still a crucial factor.”
“It’s great for the beneficiaries that some parents are able to support their children in this way. But continual house price rises are not necessarily a good thing. The more house prices stretch beyond the reach of our children, the more the Bank of Mum and Dad will have to fill in the gap between budgets and asking prices. Instead a balanced market, with significantly increased supply, is what's needed to restore lasting stability to the UK housing market.”
