A smaller deposit doesn't have to mean waiting years.

Loan-to-value (LTV) is the mortgage amount as a percentage of the property value — a 5% deposit means a 95% LTV mortgage. Lenders generally price mortgages higher as LTV increases, since a smaller deposit means less of a buffer if property prices fall. That means a low-deposit mortgage will typically carry a higher interest rate than the same buyer could get with a 15-20% deposit.

That doesn’t mean waiting is automatically the right choice — house prices and rents can rise faster than many people can save. The true comparison is the total cost of buying sooner at a higher rate versus the cost (and uncertainty) of continuing to rent while saving. It’s a genuinely personal calculation and one worth working through properly rather than assuming either answer.

A small number of lenders sometimes offer schemes above 95% LTV — occasionally including deals with no deposit at all, often backed by a guarantor’s savings or assessing a strong rental payment history in place of a deposit. These are genuinely uncommon, not offered broadly across the market and availability changes frequently as lenders launch and withdraw them. Worth asking about, but not something to plan around without checking what’s actually available at the time.