First-time buyers in the UK are facing record high prices as the housing market recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic and increased borrowing costs following last year’s mini-budget fiasco.
The average price tag on first-time buyer homes—houses and flats with a maximum of two bedrooms—hit a record high of £224,963 ($279,830) in April after edging up by 0.2 percent month-on-month, according to property website Rightmove.
The website said that the first-time-buyer sector has been “leading the recovery to pre-pandemic sales levels,” with sales volumes now 4 percent higher than in March 2019.
By contrast, the sectors with larger homes—the second-stepper and top-of-the-ladder sectors—are still 4 percent and 3 percent behind the 2019 levels, respectively….