Grandparents urged to help first time buyers cope with high house prices – and beat IHT – Telegraph Blogs

Grandparents urged to help first time buyers cope with high house prices – and beat IHT – Telegraph Blogs

Grandparents who have profited from decades of rising house prices should help adult grandchildren with the deposit to buy their first home and beat inheritance tax (IHT) at the same time, experts claim.

The average first time buyer paid less than £21,000 for their home in 1983 but the equivalent today is nearly seven times higher at £137,000, according to Nationwide, Britain’s biggest building society. Even allowing for inflation – which the Bank of England calculates would make £21,000 back then equivalent to £55,000 now – first time buyers today must find more than twice as much as their parents did. Tighter lending criteria have made the mortgage famine worse.