PARENTS are paying out £17,000 on average to help their children onto the property ladder, a housing charity has found.
The "bank of mum and dad"pours an estimated £2 billion into the UK housing market each year, as more and more young people are priced out of a home of their own, Shelter said.
It added that the younger generation's struggle to get on the property ladder was still putting a strain on parents' finances, despite recent Government schemes to give people with smaller deposits a leg up, such as Help to Buy.
More than a quarter (27%) of first-time buyers are still reliant on parents to help them raise a deposit, up from 17% in the previous four years.
