Buying your first home in London: the 2026 guide

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1:13Anna White: states.

1:25Anna White: with a long winter behind us spring is finally in the air and london's property market is experiencing one of its earliest spring surges so is now a good time to buy and where can the best bargains be found? Hi and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. I'm Tamara Kormornick. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up, buying your first home in London, the 2026 guide. Coming up, buying your first home in London, the 2026 guide.

2:06for homeowning hopefuls across london market conditions seem better than they have done

2:10Anna White: over the past few years decreased borrowing costs lower deposit mortgages and updated government schemes could turn the dream of a first home into a reality for more londoners this year for today's episode i speak to anna white a freelance writer who covers homes and property for The Standard, who produced a bumper guide for first-time buyers for the paper covering locations, pricing and borrowing options.

2:41Anna White: Without further ado, here's my chat with Anna.

2:53Anna White: Hi Anna, thanks so much for joining me on The Standard Podcast. Hi Tamara, how are you? Good, good, thanks. How are you doing?

3:00Tamara Kormornick: Yeah, I'm good today, thank you.

3:03Anna White: So, Anna, I really enjoyed your piece on first-time buyer guide, because it's quite an interesting time to be thinking about buying a property at the moment. Anna, is now a good time to get on the property ladder?

3:19Tamara Kormornick: I knew you were going to ask me that. There's probably no straightforward answer to that question. the UK housing market especially in London is just really complex and nuanced beast especially at the moment so I thought maybe we could unpack it in in different themes I mean firstly looking at prices and I think you're talking and first-time buyers trying to buy that first that

3:41Anna White: first apartment in London well really a starter home in London a lot of people are looking at

3:47Tamara Kormornick: flats let's be real yeah yeah absolutely so I took the liberty this morning of having a look at the numbers. And a price for a flat in outer London, just before COVID, so January 2020, was£312 ,000. This peaked in August 2022 at£351 ,000 in that kind of like crazy post-COVID market. And then interest rates went up, and they've come off. So it's not huge. And then the other factor you've got to think about is that housing costs have gone up. So while flats have got a little bit cheaper, everything else has got more expensive. So you might find the softening of those prices is completely negated by the fact that inflation is higher, you're paying more for food, you're paying more for energy bills, first-time buyers no longer get that stamp duty relief that they were before.

4:38Tamara Kormornick: So it's not quite as straightforward as flats have got cheaper, and therefore it's got easier to get on the ladder, or it's the best time to buy. So to try and answer your original question is it a good time to buy a flat in London it's a decent market you know if you're in a position where you've got a good deposit saved up it's going to get busier throughout the year as interest rates fall if you're in the right position to do it then now is a decent time but and this is probably the most important point we always come back to is that you should buy for your personal circumstances and don't try and play the market.

5:19Anna White: So Anna, let's talk about one of the biggest issues with first-time buyers, mortgage agreements. What are the most attractive mortgage agreements you're seeing? There's been, oh, interest rates are coming down and projected to decrease further. So yeah, what kind of deals are out there?

5:40Tamara Kormornick: Well, it depends on the size of your deposit. So if we're talking about people who maybe they've been living at home, they've just been squirrelling away trying to save that big deposit, then you're looking at interest rates, which even as a first time buyer are coming down probably into the fours. However, that's not going to apply to the majority of people living in London who do not have 50k deposit lying around. What's happening now is lenders are now offering 95 % loan to value mortgages. They're offering 98 % loan to value mortgages and they're even offering 100 % loan to value mortgages.

6:22Anna White: It's been a while since they've offered those kind of deals, right?

6:26Tamara Kormornick: They are back. And it's a different place now, right? because before they might have been there when we had historically low interest rates. Now we don't. They may not be like the 15 % that we saw in the 80s, but they're a lot higher for people. So the problem with these mortgages, although they might sound like a really good idea, there's one of the newest is called the Skipton Building Society's 100 % loan-to-value tracker record mortgage. And that is designed for renters who have not amassed a deposit. it, you can get it as a five-year fixed rate mortgage at 5.18%. What they'll do is they will track your rental payments as proof that you can pay going forward, which is a really sensible idea.

7:12Tamara Kormornick: However, as soon as you get into those higher loan to value brackets, your repayment rate is going up. So it's up in the fives, it's not in the threes, which is where I guess like like a second or third step, I would be hoping to be. There's another mortgage lender called April. They've launched 100 % mortgage, which doesn't need proof of rent. So if you've been living at home, but you want to buy, you don't want to pay rent, then maybe this is one for you. But you'd have to fix your interest rate again, and it's in the sixes. So they're starting to get higher and higher. So I find these mortgages in the current market quite worrying.

7:47Anna White: I guess there's a temptation, if you think you found a deal, to just hop on it and take it, take the offer, grab it while it's there and sort of worry about the consequences later.

7:59Tamara Kormornick: I think these mortgages, these products are always going to come because the lenders feel like they've got to make up for lack of action by the government, which is completely understandable. They're also desperate to lend, right? It's been a really slow market, like they're a business. So you've got these products which have re-emerged and the government have relaxed some of the stress testing and the requirements by the lenders. Looking at the government's helping hand mortgage, you can borrow up to six times your salary. And that last year was, you need to be earning 35 grand. Now you can be earning 30 grand.

8:33Tamara Kormornick: And I think it's via nationwide. So Home Owners Alliance is a good one to look up if you just haven't got a clue where to start with mortgages, which is a charitable organisation. I also think going to local councils is a good step as well because they're often offering mortgage schemes with their own developments. There are some really progressive councils out there like Tower Hamlets are doing a lot. Camden is doing a lot as well. The lenders feel like they can be a bit more innovative. But I think these products work if you're already in quite a good financial position. I'm not sure they're helping the right people.

9:08Tamara Kormornick: I think they work for high earners who don't have a deposit yet but are really comfortable every month so they can afford to pay 6.18 percent.

9:17Anna White: So the young professional crowd?

9:19Tamara Kormornick: Yeah so the city workers and you know obviously there's a place for that but what it's not helping is say your key workers and that's when you end up with issues such as loss of key worker talent from the middle of London.

9:32Anna White: It's funny it's almost like we've forgotten, you know, foibles of 20 years ago in the crash.

9:40Tamara Kormornick: Short memories. Very short memories.

9:44Anna White: We'll take a quick break. Coming up, I ask Anna where the best deals in London can be found this spring and her insight on whether we might see the return of the government's help to buy scheme anytime soon.

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11:27Anna White: Welcome back. Let's get back to my chat with Anna.

11:33So Anna, if you're looking for a deal this spring, where would you suggest having a look?

11:41Anna White: Is it a case of figuring out which areas have a higher number of flats or are there certain places maybe within or just outside the M25 that you think are areas that people should be considering?

11:56Tamara Kormornick: the the interesting one of the interesting facets of the london housing market now is that it's entirely fragmented so you and i can have a general chat we can talk about average prices but actually there's not really any such thing as an average now that applies across london you're looking at very different marketplaces so somewhere like stoke newington somewhere like hackney's places that people really want to be still you you're not going to get a deal you know you're going to end up against some really stiff competition and even though we haven't seen those interest rates continue to come off yet.

12:26So if you've got your eye on somewhere like that,

12:30Tamara Kormornick: which is completely understandable, then you might need to shift your vision out to the periphery of the capital to try and find those deals. There are a lot of developers who are also trying to make up for lack of activity by the government. So they might be offering you a stamp duty holiday, they might be offering you moving costs. And I would look at places like Abbey Quay, which is Barking Riverside. So sort of swathes of area are being regenerated. So if you don't mind moving into apartment blocks that are already built and there's lots of amenities but it's obviously an ongoing project then that's by a developer called Western Homes.

13:07Tamara Kormornick: One, two and three bedroom flats. Full market value for a one bed is$326 ,500. And they're also offering something called discounted market sale at 272 ,000 for a one bed. And that's if you live or work in the area. And quite a lot of the big schemes do that. So it's always worth looking at. So it might be completely counter to what I just said, you've been renting in an area that you really love and you think you can't afford to be there anymore. But if you find one of these new build schemes that do a discounted market sale for its locals, then that might be your route to stay in the area that you really like.

13:46Tamara Kormornick: Another big scheme worth a look is Brent Cross Town. It's being built around 44 acres of parkland with loads of sports facilities as indoor baseball and paddle coming, BMX Park, bouldering, just sounds like a really fun place to be. And I've looked around that as well. I think it's really good quality scheme. So that's going to be connected by Tube? It's connected by Tube and it's got a new railway station. I think that's Thameslink and that's 12 minutes to both the 12 minutes into King's Cross.

14:18Anna White: I mean, if you live close to a tube station, zone two or three in Northern Line, I mean, you are kind of laughing.

14:24Tamara Kormornick: Yeah. So they start at their studios. They're more expensive, obviously, than living in Abbey Quay. They start at 400 ,000. But I think there's some incentives being paid by the developer there. So it's worth having a look at Rent Cross Town.

14:58Anna White: The profile of a first-time buyer is actually quite different to what it was, say, 10 years ago. First-time buyers are potentially older, potentially thinking about having a family. if buying a flat isn't really what you're after do you have any tips on finding houses that are

15:21Tamara Kormornick: affordable i think one of the main mistakes that's been made by the developers since the global financial crash has been this assumption that people want to do lateral living as a family so if you went somewhere like wembley and these are schemes that i've visited um the developers were really proud of the fact that they were building for families with like three beds but essentially they're still apartments lateral living and I just I'm not sure that culturally Britain is there it's very sort of European mindset I think people still want the stairs but then I think you're looking at great areas like Sutton, Forest Hill, Southeast.

16:01Anna White: Yes some friends of mine have just bought in Sutton and they have they got an amazing deal Carl Shulton as well, yeah.

16:09Tamara Kormornick: Yeah, you're pushing on that kind of like Croydon boundary into Surrey, but Croydon's our longest borough. If you get further out away from the sort of urban scape, then you get a bit of greenery. Sutton had a big eco build years ago that was really revolutionary. So they were built to be really sustainable and really well insulated. and that's not really been repeated which is a shame so there's still some quite kind of quirky unusual homes to buy in that area as well and I think this is more expensive but if you go beyond Twickenham I still think you get quite a lot of house for your money. Bexley if you're going to go right to the other side of London a piece I wrote not very long ago it was the most affordable borough to go from selling a flat into buying a house then you get like these anomalies of areas somewhere like Bromley so Bromley is actually quite expensive but I think that's based on averages and because there's a lot of big houses so it pulls up that average but it's big and it's got a lot of variety of housing stock so again you start to see families making that move out

17:22Anna White: to the peripheries so don't get put off by average don't get put by averages go and have a look yeah

17:40Anna White: and anna this is a speculative question uh but do you think it's worth waiting for help to buy to come back have you heard any rumblings there are definitely rumors i don't

17:55Tamara Kormornick: think we're going to see help to buy in the same in the same version as we did before it's a really tricky one for labor because it's completely anti their ideology um the developers got really ripped off the back of it because it was really successful obviously they don't want to see that again what they really want is the national house building program of social housing which they want the private developers to deliver. So the problem is they've pledged 1.5 million homes they're going to build, mostly affordable and social, which isn't going to happen unless they create some kind of better first time market for the new build developers.

18:35Tamara Kormornick: A new build developer needs to sell two private sale homes for every social house they build. So for once, they are in quite a difficult position here where they just can't afford to build social housing without selling private sale homes so should we wait for help to buy I think there is something coming to create that market there are definitely rumours whether it's going to be in this April budget or that's a little bit too soon but if the government want to meet their target of 1.5 million homes they are going to have to do something and also they're going to have to do something to encourage encourage the buyer to trust new builds again.

19:15Tamara Kormornick: We've had cladding scandals. People are really scared of service charges because they're variable. So what we're finding in London at the moment is although that average flat price has gone down, a lot of that is wrapped up in the fact that the new build sector has not been selling as much. So your Victorian conversions, your Edwardian conversions, your ex-council flats, which are always a really good size, all selling really well. it's the new builds that's skewing the market so if government want to hit their housing targets especially in london where you've got like one child per classroom it works out as in temporary accommodation which is a huge problem if they want these social houses building then they are going to need to help the developer sell again to the first-time buyer

20:00Anna White: Yeah, we obviously had the£250 ground rent cap and there's pressure for the government to clamp down on kind of unscrupulous service charges. Yes. Maybe this is something positive that we can take away if you're not actively looking or you're not ready to buy a property. You know, maybe there is there's a silver lining on the horizon.

20:27Tamara Kormornick: I think it's a watch this space market. I think get your financial ducks in a row, keep saving interest rates. They're expected to carry on going down. I think we are going to see some kind of product come in from government that's going to help the new build market. So if you're nearly there, but not quite, I don't think waiting for the rest of this year, you're going to miss out too much because I just don't see prices rampantly escalating to a point where you're going to miss the market.

20:58Anna White: Well, thank you so much for all of the helpful tips and your incredible insight, Anna. Thank you for having me.

21:11Anna White: And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. If you'd like to get in touch, email us at podcasts at standard.co.uk. We'll be back here tomorrow morning. See you then.

22:18Anna White: Thank you.

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