I do own, but there's two of us, and it's a mortgage in its early days still I guess and we had the bare minimum of a deposit. It was 5%. We had no financial support from parents or other relatives, none of them are in a position to do that, and neither of us will inherit anything. What we did have which admittedly was lucky, was about £5k that my partner got back from being overtaxed on his uni fees or something ridiculous. But at the time we were doing those help to buy isas, so even without that, we 100% still would have got there on our own, albeit a couple of years later. Everyone else I know 100% got support from their parents in a massive way, and even those who aren't on the ladder are likely to inherit at some point. We knew that was never going to happen to us, so we had to go for it. But yes obviously I'm grateful for that tax refund getting us there a TINY bit quicker.
But it's a long road and it's really not been easy at all. There's still SO much to pay, the interest is disgusting, and the house is chock full of problems that we naively had no idea about and have zero capabilities of sorting out ourselves. We've had to get loans. We need more, we can't get them yet. Shit needs fixing badly. You think you're doing okay, and them bam - there goes over £2k on the boiler and you're back to square one. My partner earns more than me, but we are very average earners really, and it's the south east so everything is expensive. By the time everything is paid off, if we even get there, you often wonder what state you'll be in health wise, to the point you have to weigh up if "playing the game" for decades is really worth more than just living your life.
Definitely not knocking it, and I'm grateful for all the positives (we can do what we want to it, no one's gonna kick us out, the value might go up etc) but it's 100% not the be all and end all of life.
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