Help your kids buy a house today!

There are a number of obstacles stopping first-time buyers getting hold of their first property, but a helpful parent can make all the difference.

Don't you just love parents? As a youngster, they fed you, cleaned you, acted as a taxi service at all hours of the day or night. And now they can even help you buy a house!

Unsurprisingly, the credit crunch has led to a severe tightening in the criteria mortgage lenders set for potential borrowers.

The biggest problem in many cases has been the sizeable deposits lenders demand - 90% loan-to-value (LTV) mortgages are only just reappearing, having been in hibernation for much of the past year.

However, there are a number of ways that parents can help their offspring bypass that problem and take that tricky first step into property ownership.

Pay the deposit

The most obvious way that you can give your child a helping hand is through a lump sum to pay for the deposit, which is likely to be in the region of 10% to 25%.

There are a few obvious problems with this idea. For a start, not that many parents have thousands of pounds just sitting in a bank account. Equally, if you do hand over a wad of cash, there may be inheritance tax issues.

Have a read of How to cut your inheritance tax bill to be clear on where you stand.

Lending a hand

Of course if you do have a nice pile of money at your disposal, you have options besides simply handing it over as a lump sum.

The first is the Lend a Hand deal from Lloyds TSB, an innovative new mortgage which was launched just last month. Basically, your child can take advantage of a 95% LTV mortgage as long as you keep savings equivalent to 20% of the property price in a fixed savings account with Lloyds.

The mortgage is currently available at a very competitive 4.39%, while the savings will earn a fixed rate of 3.5% AER - not the best rate in the world, but pretty respectable all the same.

Offset your fears

There is also the option of a family offset mortgage.

These are pretty rare, because the take-up has been quite small so far, but there are options out there from a range of building societies including Yorkshire and Market Harborough.

Family offsets work in a very similar way to traditional offset mortgages, with the parents' savings offsetting the interest their child has to pay on the mortgage.

For more information on how offsetting works, and whether it is right for you, have a gander at Save a packet with an offset!

Giving a guarantee

If you don't have the money on hand to help your kids buy, but you do want to help, there is always the option of a guarantor mortgage.

These work exactly like a normal mortgage, but with the parent agreeing to pay the mortgage should their child default on their payments.

The biggest bonus with a guarantor mortgage is that the lender will take into account the income of the guarantor - i.e. you, the parent - as well as your child when looking at how much they will lend.

Obviously, you should never encourage your child to borrow more than he or she can afford, but it may be that your child is in a profession where his or her salary is likely to increase in decent increments on a regular basis, so meeting the repayments on the mortgage will not always be as difficult as it is today.

Doing it together

The final option is a joint purchase, most probably through a joint mortgage. This is no different to buying with a partner, in that both the parent and child will be named on the mortgage deed.

You can then set up the agreement so that you are either joint tenants (so when one partner dies, the other gets 100% of the property) or tenants in common, which means the ownership of the property is effectively split in half.

While the credit crunch has made life a little tougher for first-time buyers, there are still plenty of opportunities for parents to help their offspring make that all important first purchase.

After all, forking out for your children doesn't have to stop when they hit 18!

More: A false dawn for house prices | Get a fixed rate mortgage at 2.49%!