65% of renters are negative about their prospects of purchasing a home, according to new research by online estate agent Urban.co.uk.

Nearly half (49%) of renters don’t expect to have got a foot on the property ladder within the next five years, while 22% don’t fancy their chances of ever buying at all. 53% lay the blame for their inability to buy at the feet of the changeable job market, with 60% of tenants admitting that they’d need the assistance of the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’ to help them buy a home.

Meanwhile, 62% of those surveyed said they’d be reliant on help from family or an inheritance to buy a property. For 60% of buyers, the biggest barrier to owning their own home is the rising initial costs of buying – i.e. increasingly high deposits.

9% of tenants are turning to the government for assistance, hoping to take advantage of their flagship Help-to-Buy scheme. Many more are dismissive of this scheme, though, with 59% of respondents of the opinion that Help-to-Buy ‘isn’t much use to them’. A further 43% criticised the government for not doing enough to help people get on the property ladder.

Despite all this, 42% of people still hope to buy soon, showing that optimism is still relatively high in the face of poor odds. 

‘We believe it’s really important that tenants have their voices heard’, Urban.co.uk co-founder Adam Male commented. ‘Until you own a property, either as a homeowner or a landlord, you very rarely get a chance to speak your mind, so we wanted to give the nation’s tenants a chance to voice their opinions about the property market.’

He added: “‘There is so much data about prices and housing stock, but little about how people actually feel about their position in the market. Understanding people’s property woes and being able to address them is the only way that we will be able to address the underlying issues within the UK’s market.’