It’ll take young Londoners more than a decade to save for one of David Cameron’s starter homes
The government's new starter homes initiative has come in for a lot of flack – but this may be its most damning criticism yet.
Yep: new figures by property services giant JLL show if the average young couple in the capital started saving now, they wouldn't get their hands on a starter home until 2028. That's more than a decade.
Earlier this year the government unveiled its starter homes initiative, which aims to build 200,000 new homes for first-time buyers over the next five years. The homes will be sold at a discount of at least 20 per cent to market value, the government said.
Read more: Why starter homes won't help London's first-time buyers
So far, so good. But most of the criticism has been over the government's definition of the term "starter home" – it reckons it's anything under £250,000 in most of the UK – but anything under £450,000 in London. As housing charity Shelter pointed out, you'll need a salary of £76,957 to afford that. Even the House of Lords wasn't impressed by the plans.
Today's figures by JLL appear to support that argument: it said couples in their 20s earning the average London salary of £28,130 with no savings will take 12 years to accrue a sufficient deposit for a mortgage (or four years outside London).
Even those among the top 25 per cent of earners, with salaries of £35,784, will need six years to save for a starter home, or three years outside the capital.
Read more: Why Help to Buy and its ilk won't boost housebuilding
“The implementation of the starter home policy will go some way to addressing the ever growing disparity between house price and wage growth," said Philip Wedge-Bernal, residential research analyst at JLL.
"This policy provides some short term stability, in the form of a capped upper limit, for prospective purchasers in a world of ever-moving goalposts.”