Computer says no (Picture: Liberty Antonia Sadler for Metro.co.uk)

I’m in my thirties, have a good job and a decade’s worth of careful savings ready to use for a deposit.

More importantly, I’m finally in a position where I want to stop renting and actually buy a place of my own.

But it’s far from easy in London.

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Of course, I am not alone in this.


I, like many of my fellow Londoners, am struggling to get myself on the property ladder.

I don’t have parents who can just hand over a spare £50K they have lying around – it’s all down to me.



And for the longest time, I was OK with that because I was working hard to get there and deluded enough to believe that my hard work would eventually pay off.

Of course, I hadn’t banked on there being an extra layer of difficulty for me because I am – brace yourselves – single (the horror).

(Picture: Liberty Antonia Sadler for Metro.co.uk)

After going through the fun (ahem) of speaking with a mortgage broker, and realising that my mortgage plus deposit sum lands me squarely in the ‘shared ownership’ category of potential buyers, I started to investigate properties that fitted within my monthly budget.

What was I thinking?

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It would seem that none of this matters at all if you don’t fit within the expected ‘household income’ category.

I actually found a flat that I calculated I could afford but then I scrolled down to the eligibility criteria – you had to have a household income of just under £60K.

Now, I imagine two people could get that no problem but lil ol’ me cannot.

After all, the average salary in London is in the £34 to £40k range according to numerous reports over the last few years.

You’d need to be in a particularly well-paid industry to be earning £60k by yourself.

I kept looking and eventually found a one bed new build place also within my budget.

I called up for an assessment – turns out, it’s irrelevant what I’ve budgeted once again.

There was no mention of ‘household income’ this time but the end result was clear: they won’t let you in when your monthly income is under a certain figure, no matter how good you are with your money.

‘How much more of a deposit would I need to counteract that?’ I asked nervously, wondering how long it’d be before I’d be able to scrape a bit more of a deposit together.

‘£30K,’ came the apologetic reply.

When did property buying become more about your household income and less about your lack of debt and proven, reliable track record with money?

Especially within the remit of a scheme that’s supposed to help people who can’t buy a property outright.

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No credit card debt? Great! Deposit sorted? Awesome! Just the one household income? Ah, that might present a problem.



So here are my choices: continue to rent for all eternity; leave London and then spend all my remaining time and money commuting in on trains that barely seem to function; leave a job I love and I’m good at for one that pays more or isn’t in London; or find a wealthy man for his money (because that always works out, right?).

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