With singleness often pushing women into long term renting, is a 100% mortgage the answer to buying your own home?

If you hate renting but have no deposit saved up, a 100% mortgage may sound tempting. Finance writer Rachel Pearce urges female renters to think carefully before looking for a ‘magic mortgage button’.

When I saw that Skipton Building Society had launched a new 100% mortgage for renters, my first thought was, ‘Did we learn nothing from the 2008 credit crunch?’ It took years to recover from that catastrophe, one of the catalysts for which was the willingness – perhaps even eagerness – of mortgage lenders to extend credit to people who couldn’t afford it. Families lost their homes, the global economy fell apart…and, hey presto, here we are again, about to make the same old mistakes.