Area easier for first-time buyers
North Staffordshire remains one of the few areas accessible to first-time buyers, following a period of tighter lending restrictions in which average deposits demanded by lenders have more than doubled in the last 18 months.
That's the message coming from estate agents in the Stoke-on-Trent area, which is one of the few parts of the country where first-time buyers can still get their feet on the property ladder on a relatively modest and realistic deposit.
Newcastle-under-Lyme agency Heywoods Property said that many first-time buyers across the country were missing the chance to take advantage of the recovery in the housing market because mortgage lenders were still demanding deposits at the credit-crunch levels seen 18 months ago.
But it said that the good news for first-time buyers in the area was that property in the Potteries was much more affordable than the national average. And that, in turn, meant that the problem of high deposits was nowhere nearly as pronounced.
The message comes on the back of new research by Hometrack, which found that, despite the recent fall in house prices, soaring deposits have put owning their own home out of the reach of many prospective first-time buyers.
According to Hometrack, a typical UK flat now costs 10.1% less than it did during the market peak of 2007. Yet by contrast, the average deposit has risen by a staggering 124% in the last two years.