So you know, our family has lived in the UK for 16 years, so I've watched Sarah Beeny's Property Ladder, Kirstie & Phil and all the rest. We purchased two owner occupied houses in the UK and then rest in the US. We started out by buying light fixers and lived in them while doing the house up, and then traded up to the next. Rinse, repeat. At your age, you might find creative ways to "house hack" and also to save for your first deposit. A possible start might be letting a house or flat and subletting rooms to friends.
After doing up the first house, we used the money we received to buy our first rental houses. At first we could only afford small houses that needed work. Often bungalows owned by OAPs are solid brick, well-built houses that need updating to modern tastes, new carpet, cabinets, etc. These are also a good size to rent out or sell onward to young couples.
We had neighbors in Suffolk who also bought houses in need of bigger repairs, and lived in the house while improving them...but he was a "sparky," an electrician, and did most of the work himself. His experience in the trades was a perfect fit for doing work on his houses, for if he couldn't do the work himself, he knew someone who could. He learned to lay tile, and does a nice job with wood flooring, while we have hired that work out. So these skills are great to learn. They have been trading up for several years and bought their most recent house at a great price. At the same time, they have been paying down the mortgages and building up equity and expect to be mortgage free soon.
So, I a certain that a trade can be lucrative if you consider how to use your skills on your own behalf. Similarly, if you go to college or uni and get business, marketing, finance or similar skills that will help you earn at a good job, and then use your knowledge on your own account. My current lender (here in the US) said his best client with highest income is a....plumber. Google Judith and Be creative!
https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/...
-Look at the Help to Buy scheme to see whether you can be assisted
-Also, read up on the Wilsons, who understand how to build a big portfolio of houses:
At times, the married couple, both former maths teachers, were buying a house every day on the estates going up around the Eurostar terminal in Ashford.
Judith Wilson said in 2006 that they built their property empire almost by accident, bidding £98,000 for a house even though they had just £10,000 in the bank. "We only found the mortgage afterwards. At the time, it was the scariest thing I'd ever done. Today I don't bat an eyelid when I buy a house."
Their first purchase became the base for a pyramid of properties bought by constantly remortgaging and using equity from rising values to put down a deposit on yet another house.
Their wealth ballooned to more than £100m but apart from a £2m-plus home outside Maidstone and eccentric Burberry suits, their main extravagance was a much derided stable of racehorses.
Wilson readily admits that his property empire is heavily mortgaged, but says the loans work out at 61% of the value of the properties. He says he pays interest on most of the loans at around 2.25%, with some costing as little as 1.65%, compared to the typical 5%-plus paid by first time buyers under the government's Help to Buy scheme.
