A lack of ‘first-time sellers’ is severely limiting the availability of affordable homes for first-time buyers, as those who bought in recent years cannot afford to move up the ladder, a new report says.

Property listing website Rightmove found in its First-Time Buyer Report that homeowners in their first property - who in normal times would be moving on - cannot afford to, due to a combination of negative equity, lack of confidence to stretch their finances and difficulty in finding a suitable property to upgrade to.

Almost a quarter of house hunters in 2012 will be purchasing for the first time, the research has indicated, but this figure is still well below the historic average of 40 per cent, as first-time buyers struggle to find suitable properties.

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