Sally Tindall

And the reality is property prices have changed so dramatically across the nation that you might not be able to afford the same area where your parents grew up or where you grew up.

And that's okay.

It's important to, you know, if you want to get a foot onto the property ladder, it's important to, you know, explore all options, understand what's available to you.

It could be that you need to look at something a lot smaller than you had envisaged.

You don't need to buy your dream home straight away or potentially looking in a completely different area potentially.

moving further away from where you work and commuting in or potentially becoming a rent investor and where you buy a property in a different location, you rent it out to someone else and you rent where you want to live.

It's all about thinking outside the square if you've got that dream of getting a foot onto the property ladder.

And this is where we come back to it's so important to work out all the different variables and have a plan, have a strategy in place.

It's never really going to unfold the way you think it might, but at least if you've war-gamed certain strategies and certain scenarios, then you can adapt it to whatever comes your way.

So sitting down and getting legal advice is an incredibly good idea.

But also just talking through what would happen if one of you lost your job and that one of you couldn't make the repayments.

Working out whether you would at that point sell or whether something, you know, you'd have some alternative plan in place.

Talking and communicating is key in these types of arrangements.

I can only imagine that some bright spark is developing that app as we speak.

Again, if you're going to do something like that, definitely go in with your eyes wide open.

Make sure you understand what happens when it goes well, but what happens when it goes south.

Because to get into the property market, you've got to take some sort of risk, but you've got to understand what they are and what the alternatives are to make an informed decision.

It is, isn't it?

And first home buyer numbers, they've been dropping since the peak in January 2021, I want to say.

It's down 37%.