CONTINUED house price rises are bad news for young people struggling to get onto the property ladder, says a loans company.

According to the Halifax index, UK house prices have gone up by 0.4 per cent in the past month and by 1.8 per cent over the year.

Figures suggest the average home is now worth £224,353 compared to £219,788 a year ago.

House prices are now 98 times more than they were in 1956, when the average home cost £2,280.

Freedom Finance, based in Manchester, says the average "millennial" now buys their first home aged 31 - four years later than the baby boomer generation who bought at 27.

The recent study it carried out "paints a depressing picture of the UK market for first-time buyers", says the online company - with would-be buyers' biggest hurdle being saving for a deposit. Almost one in three young people have less than £500 in the bank, not even enough to cover the average monthly rent in England - £679.

Forty-seven per cent of millennials surveyed by Freedom Finance said getting a deposit together was their top financial priority.

Although the rate of increase for house prices is slowing down, the Halifax report says new buyer inquiries have fallen for the tenth month in a row, the worst sequence since 2007-2009.

According to Freedom Finance's research, the ten cities with the oldest first-time buyers are:

Swansea 31.53

Belfast 31.36

Gloucester 31.29

London 31.12

Portsmouth 30.26

Liverpool 29.89

Glasgow 29.86

Plymouth 29.56

Sheffield 29.17

Birmingham 29.01.

Meanwhile, the ten cities with the youngest first-time buyers are:

Brighton & Hove 26.23

Cambridge 26.89

Chelmsford 27.04

Newcastle 27.09

Aberystwyth 27.25

York 27.27

Oxford 27.44

Southampton 27.67

Leeds 27.68

Norwich 27.74.