I'm 25, with my dream job and I still live at home. I can only get a mortgage because of one life line

When I left for university aged 18, I said goodbye to my parents with a heavy heart, confident in the fact I would never live full time with them ever again. 

Both my parents had left home for university thirty years ago and never returned so why would I think it would be any different for me, an outgoing, confident person who had been striving for independence since day dot?

A first class undergraduate degree and Masters with distinction later, I was straight back in my childhood room again, complete with my old teddies in the bed and movie posters on the wall.

I had left my hometown in Merseyside to study in Newcastle for three years but then left the friends I had made there to do a masters in Manchester - not knowing anyone, I had moved into a HMO with strangers.

When my masters finished, I was keen to rent with new friends in Manchester but no one else was in a position to do so and then I secured my job at the Lancashire Post/Blackpool Gazette so paying extortionate prices in Manchester felt unnecessary if I was to be based in Preston.

I had moved back home at this point and had told the editor who had hired me that I ‘of course was going to move to Preston’. But when I looked at the Preston rental opportunities I was disheartened- with my new salary, I could only afford to share with someone else but I knew nobody in Preston and had a bad experience with my last HMO.

I am fortunate in that my home life is nothing short of bliss, a comfortable sized house with friendly and laid-back parents, adorable dogs, and younger siblings that are thankfully away themselves at university, giving myself full roam of the house. It’s therefore been easier and more cost effective for me to stay with my parents for free and commute to Preston.

But then something unusual happened in my personal life as my boyfriend -who had also had to move back home with his mum after university- suffered a house fire with the pair then finding themselves homeless. 

My family of course took my boyfriend in, and we have been living peacefully (and freely!) at my parents house for over a year but I’m now 25 and have decided it’s time for us to get out there and live independently once and for all…

But it has not been as easy to do as I first thought!

Our hearts are set on living in Manchester - it’s where my boyfriend works - but the rental market at the moment is quite frankly insane. Staring at the cost of properties to rent near the city centre, we soon decided it may be more sensible to use our savings for a house deposit and spend that amount monthly on mortgage repayments.

Throughout the process of getting our finances arranged for a mortgage, one nagging thought has been present in my mind - there is no WAY I could even think about home ownership if I was single.

I have a Help to Buy ISA but my cash-strapped self at university didn’t contribute to it and now that I have more money to my name, I can’t just make up for those wasted years as my specific help to buy account is limited to £200 deposits each month - take this as warning if you have a help to buy!

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Then when it comes to my general savings account, I am fairly sensible with my money but there’s only so much you can squirrel away when your first full time job pays you less than £19k a year to start and there’s bills, a car and of course the odd holiday to take care of.

Ultimately if I emptied out all my savings, I would have enough for a house deposit but then nothing left for any furnishings or fees and if I enter my details into a mortgage calculator, I would only get a loan of around £74k- not many houses are up for less than 100k these days!

So it’s not nice to think you are totally dependent on your partner but financially it is true - there is no way I could get a decent mortgage without his contribution and it’s a horrible feeling to know that my chances of owning a home would be totally dashed if we broke up. 

When I look at my friends -all around the age of 25, with professional jobs up and down the country- none of them own a house yet. They are all either living at home with parents or renting with groups of people.

I know I am not on much money, but I am not the only one who would find it impossible to get on the property ladder without joining forces with a partner. It is a universal challenge that means hordes and hordes of people in their twenties will continue to stay at home or rent until who knows when - unless they find a partner to combine with!

So my terrible advice for anyone who thinks house ownership is impossible? Get yourself on a dating app…