Couples advised to combine salaries for a mortgage

The struggles of first-time buyers in the current property market have been well-documented, with one expert now suggesting that single buyers may be worse off than couples.

David Kuo, Head of Personal Finance at Fool.co.uk, has advised first-time buyer couples to club their salaries together in order to afford their first step on the property ladder.

'When you combine two salaries together to make it £50,000 and then … go three or four times that salary, then you are looking at something around about £200,000. Suddenly your market just opens up very, very widely,' he said.

Despite research from the company declaring that singletons are financially better-off than their loved-up counterparts, this is no help when it comes to buying a house, Mr Kuo remarked.

Properties in London can amount to ten times the average salary, he added, with single first-time buyers finding it 'impossible' to buy property in the capital.

Mr Kuo suggested that there is also a question of finding a house that a first-time buyer would actually like to purchase, as well as the necessity of affordability.