How Close Are You to Buying Your First Home in London? A Readiness Test for Salaried Buyers

Most salaried first-time buyers in London don’t fail because they “aren’t ready.”They fail because they measure readiness with the wrong ruler.

They look at the headline number, deposit. They compare themselves to today’s prices. They wait for a future raise, a better rate, or a “calmer” market.

But the system that decides whether you can buy rarely asks the same question you’re asking.

It doesn’t only ask, “How much do you earn?” It asks, “How predictable is your profile?” And “How much risk is hidden in your monthly reality?”

That mismatch creates a common distortion: people who are closer than they think delay, while people who appear “boring” to the system often move earlier than expected.

The goal of this article is to recalibrate your lens: not optimism, not panic; just a clearer way to assess how close you really are.

Why the Market Feels Harder (and Why That Doesn’t Mean Random)

Over the past two decades, the transition into homeownership for young adults in Britain has become less frequent and more delayed. The direction is consistent: entering ownership is harder, later, and more sensitive to the conditions around credit and household structure.  

At the same time, mortgage access is not purely a reflection of house prices. Shifts in credit supply, especially constraints around loan-to-value and who qualifies for high-LTV lending, change who can enter homeownership, and when. When constraints ease or tighten, first-time buyer activity can rise or fall sharply, particularly in the segment most dependent on deposits.  

That’s why “the market” can feel like a single wall, while in reality it’s a gate with multiple sensors.

Two buyers can face the same prices and the same interest-rate headlines, yet one is treated as a manageable risk and the other as a fragile one.

If you’re a salaried first-time buyer, your advantage is not that the system is friendly. It’s that the system still responds to specific signals and those signals are measurable.

Readiness Isn’t a Feeling. It’s a Risk Profile.

Most buyers misjudge readiness in three predictable ways:

1) They treat affordability like a ratio, not a budget reality.

A common instinct is to ask: “What percentage of my income can go to housing?” But a more revealing frame is: “What income is left after housing, for everything else you cannot avoid?”

This “residual” way of thinking changes the story. A buyer can look strong on paper (good salary) yet be fragile after housing costs because other essential expenditures consume what’s left. In practice, this is why some people feel permanently behind: their monthly life has no slack.  

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One of the most affordable projects - Perfect for First-Time Buyers

2) They overestimate how much the system rewards income, and underestimate how much it punishes uncertainty.

Credit conditions shape who can enter ownership. Deposit size matters, but so do the signals that suggest stability: consistency of employment, predictability of payments, and the absence of stress points that amplify risk.

When borrowing constraints shift, the profile that “passes” can change quickly, even if the buyer’s salary doesn’t. This is one reason why people often experience mortgage readiness as confusing: they’re watching their salary, while the system is watching the risk environment.

3) They make timing decisions based on perceptions, not facts.

Many first-time buyers delay because they believe prices must fall, or because they assume their local market will behave like a national headline. But evidence from Britain shows that people often rely on perceptions of local house price changes and those perceptions are frequently incorrect. In other words: the confidence behind “I’ll wait for a better moment” is often built on a distorted picture of what’s happening.  

Put those together and you get the core reason readiness is misjudged:

• Buyers obsess over the wrong constraint (deposit alone).
• They ignore the system’s core filter (uncertainty).
• They time decisions using beliefs that feel logical, but aren’t reliably accurate.

A Practical Readiness Playbook for Salaried First-Time Buyers

Step 1: Audit your “residual month,” not your headline salary.