SLOUGH is home to the oldest first-time buyers in the UK, the Halifax bank has revealed, with the average age of first-time buyers in the area at 34, two years above the London average.

Slough shares the figure with the London boroughs of Ealing and Barnet, four years older than the average age for first-time buyers nationally which currently stands at 30.

The rest of the top 10 areas with the oldest first-time buyers are all in the South-east of England. The house price to earnings ratio is above the national average of 5.8 in all 10 of those areas, with the ratio at a whopping 9.9 in Slough and 7.4 in Windsor and Maidenhead.

The youngest first-time buyers in southern England are in Waveney in Suffolk and Broadland in Norfolk with an average age of 28 in both areas, significantly below the national average.

Those buying houses in cheaper areas in the north of England and in Wales are on average seven years younger than in the Slough area.

Halifax’s analysis showed a strong connection between the areas with relatively cheaper housing and the areas that younger debut buyers were choosing to live. The research showed that all ten areas with the youngest first-time buyers have prices below the national average of £200,754, and of those ten, seven have an average house price of between three quarters and half the national average.

Chris Gowland, mortgages director at Halifax, believes these statistics reflect the extent of savings needed to buy a home in 2016 and act as a warning to future generations who intend to buy.

He said: “Our latest report found that non-homeowners aged 20-45 would be prepared to save for around five and a half years for a deposit, while the average deposit paid by first-time buyers increased by 13% in 2015 to £32,927.

“With the youngest average first time buyer age dropping to 27 in some areas, this is a stark reminder of how early aspiring homeowners should start thinking about what they will need to get onto the property ladder.”

Halifax believe that government schemes and increasing parental help are likely to have prevented a sharper rise in the age of first-time buyers. The Council Mortgage Lenders estimate that 62% of first-time buyers in 2014 became homeowners either with assistance from relatives or ‘Help to Buy’ initiatives.