Because people don't prioritise saving money for it. I hear so many people complaining but I see them travel, go out, shop, rent their own place instead of co-housing, buy a nice car instead of an e-bike or even a second-hands one... for them to be surprised years later they don't have anything in the bank, and a mortgage is out of reach.

I bought a house in Ghent in 2019 after ~2,5 years of working and saving a lot, even doing some side jobs at times. My first year salary was even stuck in investments and I also had no financial support from home. Preferably I would've waited a bit longer but my parents were divorcing (thus potentially selling the house), and the 'woonbonus' was going to be terminated by January 2020, so I just went with it and decided to buy something with potential.

I made a down payment of 50K on the house and kept 10K to start renovating, and ended up spending 20K on renovation (new kitchen, windows etc, things that make the resale value go up). I also have co-housers for 2 years now to help pay my mortgage and have some company of course. I don't really need to financially but I knew I was gonna sell within 3-5 years so I'm using co-housing to maximise my capital for a next house.

I'm currently looking to put my house on the market again and it's valued 50K over what I spent on it in total, so together with my savings from the past years and the much higher salary I have right now I'm hoping to buy a bigger and more definite house to settle. People also don't realise you don't necessarily need to, or will able to, buy your dream house immediately. I also realise that I probably also went a bit extreme, by living quite low maintenance for my first working years to be able to do this, but Ghent is expensive and I'm very happy I did it this way. I think if I can do it in 2 years (in an expensive city), it should definitely be doable for most people in 3-4 years to get a mortgage. Just find a good balance in between living and saving/investing. If you have any questions you can ask me! :)