Other first-time buyers are teaming up to take out mortgages based on their joint income. James Barnett, 25, has been saving by living at home in north London, but could not get a mortgage for a property that he wanted to live in on his salary. “Right now I can get to work easily and all of my friends are here. If I moved further afield, I would be taking a step back,” he said.

He and his brother Nicholas, 23, decided to buy together and completed on a £450,000 two-bedroom flat near Woodside Park, north London, in March. They have split everything equally and are on a standard variable rate mortgage because it gives them greater flexibility if one of them wants to sell.

Their monthly payments on the property are £900 and the rental income is £1,500. “We haven’t made a profit from the rent yet, but that’s not really why we’re doing it. For us it is much more about the potential for capital growth,” said Mr Barnett. They hope to be able to sell the property in future for £500,000, which would give them £25,000 each.

It is a tactic favoured by those who use the so-called “bank of mum and dad”. In 2016 Mark Scott, 35, used a gift from his parents to buy a three-bedroom property in Harlow, Essex, which he let out. He saved the rental profits while he lived at home.

Mr Scott and his partner, Alicia Osbourne-Carey, 34, sold up in 2021. Ms Osbourne-Carey said: “It sold within 24 hours.” They put the cash towards their first home, a £588,995 three-­bedroom detached house in David Wilson Homes’ Sawbridge Park development in Hertfordshire.