Fast life: the UK towns where first-time buyers can save a deposit in the shortest amount of time revealed in new report

Website Compare My Move crunched data on how long it takes a first-time buyer to save up a 15 per cent deposit
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The best place in the UK to be a first-time buyer has been revealed.

A new report compared how long it would take the average renter to save a deposit in the 50 biggest towns and cities.

Using average local wages, living costs and rent prices for a room in a house share, property website Compare My Move calculated how long it would take to save a 15 per cent deposit for a first home.

They also worked out how long it would take renters to save the five per cent minimum deposit needed to buy a home under the government’s Help to Buy scheme.

The Lancashire market town of Burnley was named the easiest place to be a first-time buyer.

£65,000: this three-bedroom terraced house in Burnley through Bridgfords 

With some of the lowest property prices in the country, a first home in the former mill town costs just under £70,000 on average.

The report estimated that renters would have to save for one year nine months to amass a 15 per cent deposit of £10,436. It would take just seven months to save a five per cent Help to Buy deposit of £3,479.

The second easiest place to be a first-time buyer was Dundee, Scotland’s fourth largest city.

Ranked fifth on the Wall Street Journal’s Worldwide Hot Destinations list this year, the average renter would need to save for a year and 10 months to get a 15 per cent deposit of £14,998 together.

£105,000: three-bedroom flat near Dundee city centre through NextHome

All 10 easiest towns and cities to buy in were either in the north of England or in Scotland, with Hull, Sunderland and Blackpool making up the rest of the top five.

Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston, Doncaster and Huddersfield were the remaining easiest.

Londoners can take heart that, although the capital was one of the 10 hardest places to buy a first home, it was not the worst.

That title goes to Oxford, where first-time buyers will have to save for 17 years to build a deposit of £53,105. Even those aiming to use Help to Buy would still have to save for five years and eight months before they would be able to take a step on the ladder.

Although house prices are higher in London, so are salaries, meaning savers in the capital could buy more than six years sooner than those in Oxford, needing 10 years seven months to save £63,070.

London was the fourth hardest place to buy a first home after Oxford, Cambridge and Reading.

The 10 hardest towns to buy a home in were all in southern England, with Slough, Crawley, Bristol, Poole, Swindon and Southend-on-Sea making up the rest of the chart.

Compare My Move's Dave Sayce said: "In many cities it’s a race against rent to save a deposit as a prospective first-time buyer. In cities and towns where rent greatly outstrips the national average, it can take more than a decade for renters in their twenties to save up a 15 per cent deposit."

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