Bank of mum and dad 'closing'
Parents are becoming less likely to hand out money to their children seeking to get on the property ladder.New research says that over the last decade, the proportion of parents paying their kids' deposits has fallen by six percentage points to 32 per cent.Scottish Widows bank, which carried out the survey of 3,511 adults under the age of 50, claims that parents are becoming more like a real bank and less like a charity.Today's figures claim that the average amount borrowed from parents is £12,188, representing about three-quarters of the average deposit for a graduate homebuyer."It is clear that it is becoming more and more difficult for graduates to get on the property ladder without any assistance and with rising interest rates and house prices they need all the help they can get," said Scottish Widows' head of product development and marketing Richard Clark."Even graduates who have been working for several years are forced to borrow money from their friends and family. While it's good to see that people are getting help from their loved ones, some of these loans might be leaving the bank of mum and dad empty," he continued, adding that British parents had lent their children £2.1 billion over the last decade.The problem is so acute that 38 per cent of graduates could not get on to the housing ladder without parental support, Mr Clark concluded.
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