Editor’s Note:

This article is part of Entralon Hub’s Leadership View series, where senior contributors examine the structural forces reshaping access, participation, and long-term stability in global housing markets.

In this feature, Dr Farid Zadeh Bagheri, CEO & Founder at Open Estate, examines why first-time buyers are no longer able to enter the housing market, not only because homes have become genuinely more expensive, but because rising prices and tightening liquidity now reinforce each other, shutting down entry.

Homes Are Genuinely More Expensive

Why price pressure is real, not perceived

The first problem facing first-time buyers is straightforward: homes genuinely cost more than they used to.

Across major cities, housing prices have risen far faster than wages. In markets such as London, average home prices now sit around £500,000, meaning a standard 10–20% deposit requires £50,000–£100,000 upfront, before any mortgage is even considered.

For a household able to save £4,000–£6,000 per year; already an ambitious assumption after rent and living costs, accumulating that deposit typically takes 10 to 15 years of uninterrupted saving.

This is not time to buy the home, but simply time to qualify to enter.

A generation ago, deposits were measured in a few years of saving. Today, they absorb a large portion of a working decade, often extending well into the years when homeownership once began naturally.

During that time, prices continue to move. Even disciplined saving struggles to close the gap, as deposit targets rise faster than accumulated capital.

This is why price pressure is not a perception issue. It is a time-to-entry problem.

And it forms the first structural barrier that delays entry long enough for many first-time buyers to never meaningfully reach it.

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Investor Lens:

When deposits require a decade or more to accumulate, rising prices transform entry from difficult into structurally inaccessible.

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Higher Prices Trigger Tighter Access

How cost inflation turns into exclusion

As prices rise, the capital required to enter the market rises with them. Larger deposits, stricter affordability tests, and higher debt-service ratios follow naturally.

In response, lenders tighten criteria. Borrowing capacity shrinks faster than prices fall, if prices fall at all.

At this point, the problem stops being price alone and becomes liquidity: who can still mobilise capital under tougher conditions.

Those without existing assets, family support, or prior equity find themselves unable to qualify, regardless of income stability or effort.

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Investor Lens:

When prices rise faster than access expands, liquidity becomes the binding constraint.

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Why Prices Stay High While Buyers Disappear

The liquidity split inside the market

Crucially, higher prices do not affect all buyers equally.

Cash buyers, equity-rich households, and liquidity-secure investors remain active even as borrowing becomes harder. Their continued participation stabilises prices and transaction volumes.

First-time buyers, by contrast, rely almost entirely on financing. As liquidity tightens, they disappear from the market — quietly, without a crash.

The result is a split market:

  • Prices remain elevated
  • Activity continues
  • Entry collapses
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Investor Lens:

Price stability can coexist with collapsing access when liquidity is unevenly distributed.

Ownership No Longer Functions as a Pathway

Why effort no longer closes the gap

In earlier systems, rising prices were offset by time. Buyers entered earlier, leveraged moderately, and allowed equity to compound.

That mechanism no longer works.

When prices rise faster than savings and liquidity tightens simultaneously, time stops helping. Saving longer does not close the gap; it often widens it.

Ownership shifts from a pathway you build toward to proof that you already qualify.

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Investor Lens:

When time no longer offsets price growth, ownership stops rewarding effort.
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The Structural Impact on First-Time Buyers

From delayed entry to denied entry