The Intermediary – August 2026 - Flipbook - Page 8
RESIDENTIAL
Opinion
The hidden
complexity in firsttime buyer cases
I
n today’s climate, affordability
is no longer the single biggest
barrier to first-time home
ownership. Increasingly, the
structure of deposits is adding
greater complexity to geing
onto the property ladder.
Many first-time buyers (FTBs) find
themselves navigating a patchwork of
savings accounts, gied deposits and
family support. Meanwhile, mortgage
brokers and lenders face a growing
verification burden, as increasingly
complex deposit structures create
longer, more fragmented source-offunds checks.
buy your first home seem to be gone,
as wages and house prices remain
out of sync.
Increasingly, first-time buyers
are dependent on financial gis to
get onto the property ladder and are
assembling more complex deposits.
Figures observed across UK property
transactions on the Armalytix
platform over 2026 reveal that just
23.9% of first-time buyers use a single
account during the source-of-funds
process, while almost half (44.4%) use
three or more accounts. At the same
time, more than a quarter (26.2%) rely
on gied deposits averaging over £50k.
However, that makes first-time
buyers more likely to experience a
disjointed source-of-funds picture
compared to repeat buyers, with 37.3%
having just one account and 35.9%
having three or more.
The cost of complexity
Modern deposits bring new twists and turns
The housing market is oen
considered in terms of renters and
owners. However, in practice, people
experience the ladder differently based
on where they are within it.
For first-time buyers, the challenges
are particularly pronounced. This is a
group that is more financially strained
than repeat buyers, buying later in
life, increasingly relying on familial
financial support and assembling
multi-account saving pots.
In fact, an estimated 3.5 million
households remain locked out of
homeownership, and solo first-time
buyers face having to save for a deposit
for nearly a decade. The days of
working hard and carefully saving to
6
The Intermediary | August 2026
Increasingly, the structure of deposits,
not just affordability alone, is adding
complexity to the homebuying
journey. In cases where buyers have
the money, proving and evidencing
where it came from can create a
boleneck and a fragmented sourceof-funds journey.
The frustration for customers is
clear. But this also impacts lenders
and mortgage brokers due to the
operational friction involved in
verifying the nature of gis and
multiple accounts. Teams can be le
conducting several financial checks
with long audit trails, made worse
when there is missing or fragmented
information. Repeated requests for
documents inevitably add to the stress
for first-time buyers.
A joined-up approach
The Bank of Mum and Dad is
helping buyers get on the ladder,
ALEX MANGAN
is head of sales at Armalytix
In cases where buyers
have the money, proving
and evidencing where it
came from can create
a bottleneck”
but it is also adding layers to the
paper trail. In response, firms need
to build a clearer, more structured
source-of-funds process.
Creating separate checks for
multiple accounts creates avoidable
friction. In these cases, firms should
start verification earlier to reduce the
duplication of requests. Increasingly,
compliance journeys that combine
digital ID verification, source-offunds, and fraud screening into a
single client journey are helping to
create a process that works for all
parties. With greater visibility of
deposit compositions, compliance
ultimately becomes easier.
Having a deposit is no longer
enough. Increasingly, home
ownership depends on how that
deposit has been built and how
easily it can be evidenced. As gied
deposits and more complex financial
arrangements become the norm, firms
need verification processes that reflect
the realities of modern homebuying.
Those that simplify source-offunds and other checks will reduce
compliance burdens and remove
unnecessary friction from one of life’s
biggest financial milestones. ●
