THE plight facing first-time buyers trying to get on the York property ladder was today branded "hopeless".

With average "first home" prices in the city now £100,000-plus and investment buyers cornering rentals and snapping up once-affordable homes, the situation looks bleak for young people.

Diana White, a negotiator with Stephensons, York, said: "I feel sorry for first-time buyers. There's no hope for them at all at the moment.

"Even for a couple on a good salary it's still not enough, unless they go further afield towards Hull and Market Weighton. Even in Selby house prices are soaring."

One of the few properties recently on the market in first-time buyer average income range was £75,000 in Fossway. That needed an estimated £20,000 spending on repairs.

In such circumstances, she said, the only way forward for young people would be through innovative shared-ownership schemes.

News of their plight came the day after a survey revealed that first-time buyers were being squeezed out by rental investors.

This leaves prospective purchasers with little option but to rent at about £500 a month.

City estate agents admitted two-bed rental properties - in previously popular areas like South Bank, Lawrence Street and Hull Road - were sometimes empty as the market was flooded with properties to let. However, other agents said rentals were booming and they had no problems filling homes.

Julie Martin, of Pink estate agents, linked with Hudson Moody, said: "Investors are taking the bottom level out of the market and those properties at about £100,000 are not going back into the first-time buyers' pool."

She said a glut of rental homes made prices more realistic.

Hunters director Kevin Hollinrake said the hope for first-time buyers was that they would save a hefty deposit for when they finally got a house of their own, and were more likely to avoid negative equity. But that looked like the only shred of optimism for beleaguered new buyers, now at an average age of 34 compared with 28 in the late 1980s, he said.

Mr Hollinrake predicted York prices would continue to rise this year. He estimated they would rise by 15 to 20 per cent, after a 13 per cent hike last year.

He said the York first-time buyer average was about £110,000 last year, but he expected it to rise to about £130,000 by the end of this year. National average first-time buyer prices currently stood at an average of £117,000.

Mr Hollinrake said: "The market is not really catering for the plight of the first-time buyer. This would not make things any easier."

Updated: 10:29 Thursday, February 26, 2004