Becky Lowe was not really surprised when her father called without warning and offered her £50,000 towards the deposit on her first home.

“I was extremely grateful,” she says. “But I knew he had the money, and I knew he wouldn’t want me to rent all my life.” For even though this 31-year-old earns £35,000-£40,000 a year as a sales negotiator, without serious financial help, Lowe, like so many other young adults, did not have an earthly chance of buying the sort of place she wanted to live in, in an area she liked.

The latest government figures reveal that the average first time-buyer home costs about £137,000 — almost six times the average graduate salary of £23,000. A study by the Halifax released in January reveals the highest prices paid by first-time buyers in 2005 were, not unexpectedly, in London (£222,005), and in only two regions — Scotland (£92,880) and the north of England (£97,932) — did they spend less than £100,000 on average.

As a result, many young people now expect help to get a place of their own. A recent study by the Yorkshire Building Society has revealed that 38% of 16-21- year-olds and more than a quarter of 22-29-year-olds expect their parents to provide help. Even among thirtysomethings, 16% are hoping for a handout from Mum and Dad.

A recent Scottish Widows bank survey suggested that during the past five years, more than 500,000 graduates borrowed a total of £2 billion from their parents to buy property. And more than a third of graduate first-time buyers could not scrape a deposit together without the help of a gift or loan.

This is not modern parenting gone mad; in many cases it is the only way to get the children out of the family home, and with people increasingly concerned about the impact that inheritance tax will have on what they eventually leave their children, it looks like a clever way of shortchanging the tax man.

Phil Spencer, the Sunday Times columnist and chief executive of Garrington Home Finders, is sympathetic to the plight of the first-time buyer, but only up to a point.

“Our parents’ generation made enormous sacrifices to buy property, whereas today it has become a God-given right to own one’s own home,” Spencer says. He advocates compromise: “I doubt if there’s a first-time buyer in the land who gets exactly what they want, where they want it, but that is all part of the process.

“If you are going to insist on two bedrooms, you may not be able to afford to live in Battersea, south London, for instance. Your first home is not going to be a home forever; you don’t have to love it, it is just to get you in the market.”

He also points out that young first-time buyers need to be realistic about what effort is required to get onto the property ladder.

“You have to start saving, even if that means not going on holiday, not buying a plasma-screen telly, and not driving a nice car,” he says.

In Becky Lowe’s case, it isn’t as if she hadn’t tried. In four years, she managed to save £20,000.

“I felt I’d done my bit,” she says. It simply wasn’t enough. When she first started saving, she hoped to buy a two-bed flat in Battersea for less than the £250,000 point at which stamp duty goes up a notch. Even as she saved,extraordinary price rises took the area out of her range. So she started looking further south, in Tooting, where prices were lower. Even there, she didn’t stand a chance until her father, Tim, a retired solicitor, stepped in with a “loan”.

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