Maybe things are better in the US but here in the UK it stinks. Deposits of 5% are irrelevant because you still have to mortgage the rest. Median house prices

Maybe things are better in the US but here in the UK it stinks. Deposits of 5% are irrelevant because you still have to mortgage the rest. Median house prices in the UK are something like 8x median incomes, and banks will only lend a maximum 4-5x earnings. This means average Joe need to save something much closer to 3/8ths, not 5% As a real world example based on my current circumstances: - At rough ballpark property prices, with ~15% down, market mortgage rates are about 3.5%. - At 3.5%, with most I am comfortable paying every month (about 40% more than my current rent), I can only borrow around ~60% of what I need to buy the kind of home that I want (and rent now). On paper this means I have to save 40%. - However, reality is somewhere in the middle. If I have 25% to put down, mortgage rates drop dramatically to 1.5%, allowing me to afford the same home. So the long and short of it is you realistically need 20-25% here in the UK.