I just bought my first house at 25 — my parents gave me £400,000

Will James might only be 25, but he’s on the brink of getting onto the property ladder.

While much of his generation struggles with rents that are so high there’s no money left to put towards a deposit, Will’s situation is vastly different. In December 2025, he had an offer accepted on a £1.2 million home inNotting Hill, with 700 square feet of space and two bedrooms.

Having grown up in the area, he wanted to stay local – and after completing in March, he’ll be right in the heart of one of London’s swankiest areas, just a few minutes’ walk from the bougie Holland Park.

Will is open about the fact his parents stepped in and gifted him £400,000 to put down a sizeable one-third deposit for the purchase. However, he reckons he would’ve been able to save up the same amount in two or three years anyhow.

‘I was previously working a very high-paying, but extremely stressful, job at which I was able to put away around £8,000 a month into a high-interest savings account,’ Will tells Metro.

‘Had I been saving this money for a house purchase, I would have stuck at it longer; but given I didn’t have to, I took a break and moved into PR, which is much more fun.’

As a renter, he was tired of essentially just paying off someone else’s mortgage, and he was especially keen to buy a place after some ‘difficult and exhausting’ experiences with flatmates in shared houses.

‘I value peace, quiet, and stability (as well as things being left where I put them…) and so buying and living alone seemed like the best way to achieve those things,’ he shares.

The initial costs involved were definitely off-putting – for example, Will’s house needs a new boiler, asbestos removal, new flooring and upgrades to the kitchen and bathroom – but it’s an outlay he feels pays off in housing security.

And while the amount may be far higher than average, Will isn’t the only Gen Z to receive a parental gift for their first home either. In fact, a new Barclays report revealed that a third (34%) of recent buyers aged 18 to 34 had a helping hand from family.

The PR consultant says there a number of issues he and other wannabe first-time buyers in his age bracket (regardless of how they obtained the deposit) are coming up against at the moment: namely, a ‘lack of supply’ and ‘very high prices.’

But he recognises the privilege he has to be able to afford to buy at all, commenting: ‘The days when buying a home to live in as you begin your adult life being the normal done thing are long gone. It’s now something only accessible to the very, very well paid, or those who luckily had family help.

‘The lack of secure housing, and more importantly, places which are homes, creates real instability among my generation.

‘Constant moving between rentals is the only affordable housing option for the majority of people, which, I feel, really erodes the social fabric of the city and is frankly a little bit depressing.’

According to the Barclays data, more than a third of Gen Z and younger Millennials (those aged 18-34) are aiming to buy their first home in 2026 – more than double the figure for the UK as a whole, which sits at 16%.

Having already put aside an average of £19,442 towards a deposit, this generation of househunters is expected to put an average of £9,000 towards their goal this year alone.

But getting on the ladder today, when the average downpayment for a first-time buyer is £61,090, clearly isn’t as simple as it once was.

‘I’m very strict with my spending’

For as long as he can remember, 30-year-old Harry White has been saving for a house deposit. And 2026 is the year he’s finally getting on the ladder.

When he was little, he would count his birthday money and beg his parents to take him to the bank to pay it in. By the time he went to uni, he’d then started using cryptocurrency to invest his cash, and saving is now part of his monthly financial routine.

The designer, who lives in Hove, tells Metro: ‘I’m very strict with my spending. I pay myself £150 a week, put £100 a month away for holidays, and another £80 for emergency spending.

‘We’re very frugal. We don’t have takeaways, and we go to a budget supermarket every week and write out our meal plans.’

For Harry and his partner, splashing out means buying fancy olive oil, salt, or meat from the butchers – no globetrotting or online shopping hauls here- so it makes sense that they’ve managed to accrue a £50,000 deposit. However, they’re hoping to only use around half of this nest egg, so as to reserve a sizeable safety net.

That said, Harry has still got a few anxieties about becoming a homeowner, likening it to ‘being at the bottom of a big hill, about to take on mountains of debt and responsibility.’

Among his friendship group, he says there’s an ‘odd, taboo feeling’ of not knowing quite how each other’s getting there. And alongside ‘questions about deposits, inheritance, and salaries’ hanging in the air, it continues to seem like a ‘race’ to make somewhere their own.

But Harry’s driven to move away from renting so he can have the freedom to do things like decorate without having to worry about a tenancy deposit – and eventually get to a place where his home is fully paid off.

‘I want my rent to be going towards my overall wealth,’ he adds. ‘And one day, I also want to have no mortgage.’

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