First Home Buyers Need A Decade For Deposit

Just over one in 10 (11%) of first home buyers now need to save for more than 10 years before breaking into the housing market.

A poll of 1028 first home buyers by comparison website Finder.com indicated that would-be buyers are taking longer to reach the 20% deposit threshold as the average deposit reaches six figures amid booming property prices.

One in four need between five and 10 years, nearly two in five (38%) need between two and five years, while only 7% manager to save the deposit within a year.

According to Finder, the required deposit for an average loan had risen by 16 per cent nationally in just two years, reversing any deposit affordability gains and taking the national average deposit price to $106,743.

First home buyers in NSW require $128,469 and $113,092 in Victoria. The average deposit in Tasmania has climbed to $81,438, to $85,710 in South Australia, to $95,784 in Queensland and to $92,784 in Western Australia.

“While low interest rates mean the cost of paying your mortgage each month has come down, rising property prices are lengthening the amount of time required to save for a deposit,” Finder spokeswoman Sarah Meggison said.

Further, more than half of first home buyers (53%) indicated they are spending more than 30 per cent of their income on their mortgage repayments, a sign of mortgage stress.

Idaho is not a place that’s often associated with Medieval castles, but a pair have just hit the market for $6.25 million.

The imposing stone structures have towers, turrets, ramparts, arrow-slit windows and even a drawbridge, and might just be the most authentic-looking castles this side of the Atlantic.

“Who expects to see a castle like this in Idaho?” said listing agent Brenda Burk of Coldwell Banker Schneidmiller Realty, who brought the property to the market last week. They are, she said, “extremely unusual.”

Schweitzer Castle and Château de Melusine, as they’re known, stand within Schweitzer Mountain Resort in the Selkirk Mountains and overlook the nearby mountain resort town of Sandpoint. They take in panoramic views of Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho’s largest lake.

The pair of ski-in/ski-out homes each have three bedrooms, two bathrooms and three stories, Burk explained. They are “so authentic,” she said. “Every single stone was handlaid.”

Schweitzer Castle, she said, wasn’t built for “functionality,” but has been modernized and adapted and now has everything a 21st-century residence requires, along with a dungeon, which for some buyers may also be a requisite.

The chateau, meanwhile, has a hot tub room with mountain views, as well as a garage.

The property is being sold furnished, and will come complete with the hand-carved statues, armor, mounted swords, stained-glass windows and a host of antiques dating to the 15th and 16th centuries.

The owner, an antique collector who couldn’t be reached for comment, “is always looking for that hidden jewel and he found that here,” Burk said.

The next custodian is likely to stem from a varied pool of buyers, Burk said, that would include “the trophy-home buyer, someone who can say ‘I own a castle.’”

The property could also appeal to someone looking for a vacation home, or a multi-generational estate, and beyond that “there’s the dreamers,” she said. “We definitely try to market to people who like Medieval history or maybe do Renaissance fairs.”

The seller “really wants it to go to someone with the same passion.”

First Home Buyers Need A Decade For Deposit

With housing prices on the rise, so too are the deposit demands.

The imposing stone structures, with towers, turrets and a hot tub room, lord over the landscape near the mountain resort town of Sandpoint.