内容摘要：A woman whose house was flooded after heavy rainfall has said the water swept through her hallway "like a tide".

A woman whose house was flooded after heavy rainfall has said the water swept through her hallway "like a tide".

Paul Broadhead, head of mortgage and housing policy at the BSA, said: "Becoming a first-time buyer is possibly the most expensive it has been over at least the last 70 years, but a properly functioning housing market is dependent on first-time buyers being able to afford their first home."New thinking and radical changes are needed."

At present, buying a home required two above-average incomes, the report said. House price growth has been higher than earnings growth for some time.Separate figures published on Monday by the property portal Rightmove suggest much of the activity in the housing market since the start of the year was among large, four-bedroom homes.They will be out of reach for the vast majority of first-time buyers, but Rightmove also said asking prices were starting to accelerate again.

A number of mortgage lenders have also started the week by raising the interest rates on new fixed-rate deals.They are responding to a view on the markets that the Bank of England may not lower the benchmark interest rate as early or as often as previously thought.

The Resolution Foundation think tank recently said that the most common living arrangement for an adult aged between 18 and 34 in 1997 was being in a couple with children, but now it was living with your parents.

Half of first-time buyers in their 20s were getting help of an average of £25,000 from their parents, it said.The show at Tatton Park in July will mark the 25th anniversary of the event, which attracts about 80,000 visitors each year.

RHS director general Clare Matterson said the society was making "some of the biggest changes we’ve made to our shows in a generation".“We want to inspire current and new audiences with world-class horticulture and provide access to the UK’s best plants people to help even more people garden and grow," she said.

The RHS said its show in Chelsea will remain an annual event.It will also host a show at Badminton Estate in Gloucestershire in 2026.