Singles must couple to afford a mortgage

If you're single and stuck in the rental sector, then it may be beneficial for your overall wealth to get out a little more, take a short-term hit on your pocket by buying a few rounds and then, magically, pick up a potential partner with whom several years later you will feel comfortable doing a spot of co-investing.

It's a crude and unlikely bottom-line approach to dating, but equally dispiriting is the thought that you may be wandering around flatland well past your student or carefree twentysomething days, paying somebody else's mortgage, simply because the property boom has priced single people out of the market.

Figures from mortgage provider One Direct show that three-quarters of first-time buyers are joint borrowers, most of who are presumably happily coupled up looking to climb the property ladder together. Just 26 per cent of One Direct's first-time buyers were solo borrowers. The statistic is far lower than the 43 per cent of Bank of Ireland's first-time buyers that were borrowing alone at the end of 2002.

In fact, Bank of Ireland - then confident about the strength of "singles power" among property hunters - said there had been an increase in the number of solo borrowers over the previous decade, attributing this rise to lower interest rates and taxation.

However, its study also revealed another common feature of today's property market. First-time buyers, it said, were borrowing an average of 75 per cent of the value of the property. Given that it lends up to 92 per cent of the property value, this suggested that first-time buyers were benefiting from other sources of funding: in other words, parental support.

Mr Michael Dowling, president of the Independent Mortgage Advisers' Federation, says single applicants are often backed up by their parents in the form of a parental guarantee on the loan. "There is no doubt that it is more difficult for single borrowers from the point of view of the way the income multiples are calculated by lenders. Two people will always get more than one."

This is the obvious part of the problem, he says. "There is also the issue of where the deposit is going to come from. Where there is joint borrowers, there may be two sets of parents to help."

Saving for a deposit will naturally take one person twice as long as two, pushing up the average age of first-time buyers. There is some help at hand from lenders like Ulster Bank, who will advance 100 per cent of the property value to certain professionals. The product attracts a lot of phone calls, Mr Dowling says, and people are sometimes disappointed when they discover that the offer only extends to doctors, lawyers, accountants, dentists, vets, pharmacists and opticians.

In the last five years it has become more difficult for would-be borrowers hoping to go it alone, Mr Dowling confirms, particularly in Dublin.

"Friends" clubbing together represent only a tiny segment of the market, he says, partly due to the legal and financial awkwardness that people may encounter if one person eventually does decide to marry or co-habit with someone. Single people on the cusp of affordability should act now, Mr Dowling believes.

"People who can afford to buy sometimes say that they are going to wait until prices go down, but nobody thinks that is going to happen. There is no real advantage to holding on."