Daughters get less help buying first home than sons
The gender pay gap might even extend to the bank of Mum and Dad, a new survey suggests, after it found sons receive more help from their families than daughters when buying their first home.
Nearly two-thirds of people who purchased their first home in the past five years had financial help from family, rising to more than three-quarters of homeowners under the age of 30, according to analysis commissioned by Zoopla.
The average amount of financial support received was £58,129, which is roughly in line with the typical UK first-time buyer deposit of £60,100, Zoopla said.
However, while daughters received an average of £51,671 towards their first property, sons got an average of £65,004.
The survey was carried out last month by Mortar Research among 1,013 people who bought their first home in the past five years.
Dan Copley, consumer expert at Zoopla, said he and his team were “very surprised” by the disparity, adding that because it was so unexpected, researchers had not asked additional questions on the gender divide.
But he added: “One possible explanation is weddings. In the UK it is traditional for the bride’s family to pay, and the average cost of a UK wedding is currently around £20,000. “While this tradition may be on the decline in modern Britain, it could, at least in part, explain the difference.”
Dan also says that Ucas (the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) data shows “females are more likely to apply to and go to university than males, and parents often support this financially,” and that could also go some way to explaining the data.
Meanwhile, the most common thing first-time buyers receive help with is a deposit – two-thirds of those who received support.
A quarter got money towards legal costs, a fifth with renovation costs, and 26% were supported with mortgage payments.