Couple save £20k deposit for three-bed house by 21 – and still splashed out on holidays to the Canary Islands, Florida and New York

A GRAPHIC designer and her boyfriend managed to get onto the property ladder before she turned 21 - without having to give up their holidays abroad. 

While most first-time buyers clamp down on spending to be able to buy a home as quickly as possible, Sophie Allan, now 24, and Will Augur, now 25, wanted to take their time and not "stop their entire lives" while they saved.

And taking it slow meant that they still had enough cash to splash on holidays to destinations including the Canary Islands, Florida and New York - although they did give up nights out to be able to afford it.

It took the couple three years to get the funds together for the £20,400 deposit they needed - but they reckon they could have done it in two years if they'd truly cut back on spending.

Still, Sophie managed to buy a house a decade ahead of the average first-time buyer age of 31.

The couple from York managed to tuck away £1,000 a month between them and bought their first house in December 2016.

They took advantage of Help To Buy schemes too and, despite the slog of saving, the couple are already eyeing up a bigger home, which is due to be built on their new-build estate.

In the latest of our My First Home series, Sophie, who also blogs about her home-buying experience at , filled us in on what it really takes to buy a house so young.

When did you first decide you wanted to buy a home?

Will works for an events management company and we met at college seven years ago.

When I was 18, we decided that we wanted to buy – renting seemed like a waste of money.

But we didn’t want to stop our entire lives to save for a house, we still wanted to be able to go out for meals and on holidays.

So we decided to save slowly, over time. That meant we could still put some money aside for our wedding in 2020 too.

We managed to go to the Majorca and the Canary Islands a few times with family and also Florida in 2015. Oh and New York in early 2016, all while we saved up.

We were able to afford the holidays because we don't really do what other people our age do, like going out drinking. Instead we put that money towards going away.

We can't afford to do that now though because we've got a mortgage to pay.

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If we hadn't gone on these holidays, we'd have saved up a lot quicker but then we'd have ended up buying elsewhere because our house wouldn't have been built yet.

We probably wouldn't have ended up in a new-build home, which might have meant we needed to do work on the property, and we weren't keen on doing that for our first home.

What’s your house like and how much did you pay for it?

It’s a three-bedroom end of terrace house on a development in York, close to our parents. We knew we wanted a new-build but not much building work was going on around here.

Our mortgage term is 30 years and we also got 1 per cent cashback. So on the £170,000 mortgage we saved another £1,700.

Why did you pick a new-build over an older property?

We knew that we could get help from the Government if we bought a new-build, which meant that we could look at slightly more expensive houses.

When we discovered our development, we registered our interest and one day we got a text to say a tranche of houses were going to be built in June 2016.

We went straight over and put down a £500 deposit to secure a plot off-plan - we knew we could get the money back if we changed our minds.

When we first saw the plot it was just the foundations and that was a bit scary as it seemed very small, but once the walls went up I felt much better.

Buying a new build was good because you could get involved too – we chose the kitchen, tiles and where the electrical sockets would go.

We even went to a welcome party to meet our future neighbours.

Moving day was on December 9, 2016 – it was lucky it was close to Christmas so we could ask for vouchers as Christmas presents to buy furniture with.

Are you looking to move anytime soon?

We really enjoyed buying a new-build and would definitely do it again.

We’ve heard there might be more houses built on the development in a few years and we would like to upsize to a detached house with a garage.

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