The Bank of Mum and Dad is being used by vastly more second steppers than first-time buyers, research claims.

Of all the transactions needing family money, nearly nine in ten involve people moving up the property ladder. Just 7%  needing family money to fund their deposits are first-time buyers.

Giant conveyancing firm My Home Move claims that of the number of first-time buyers needing a gifted deposit has decreased 4.5% compared with two years ago.

Similarly deposits given by family members and used by property investors for buy-to-let fell by 2.5%, accounting for 4.1% of all transactions.

In comparison, second steppers and middle-movers made up 88.9% of My Home Move’s own transactions with gifted deposits, up 7.1% since 2015.

The overall proportion of purchases helped by family money, based on My Home Move’s conveyancing data, has fallen, making up 8.6% of transactions between July 2016 and June 2017, compared with 10.1% in 2015.

Doug Crawford, chief executive of My Home Move, said: “We already knew that the main beneficiaries of gifted deposits were people that were already on the property ladder, but the data seems to suggest that these second-steppers and middle-movers are in more and more need of help to make it on to the next step.

“As house prices have risen by almost 18% in the timeframe that was analysed, it may be that people are struggling to accumulate enough equity from the home that they are in now to raise a deposit on their new property.

“The average property deposit is now close to £60,000, so it’s likely that the Bank of Mum and Dad is stumping up the additional funds needed to help their children into bigger properties.

“It is clear that affordability is becoming a concern not just for first-time buyers, but for people on all steps of the property ladder.

“For now, it seems the Bank of Mum and Dad is still open for business, but with increasing house prices and stagnating wages, it’s unclear how much longer it will be open for.”