A student landlord in his 20s says there is no reason young people can’t buy their own homes – as long as they don’t ‘go drinking’ and ‘make the most out of living with parents’.

Josh Parrott acquired his first property when he was just 19 years old by using cash he saved from two jobs he did between school lessons.

The 22-year-old rent out the house, worth £115,000, while paying rent to his parents.

This saw him save enough to buy another property for £140,000 when he was 21 years old.

Stockport native Josh completed a £20,000 revamp on the home and saved vital money by doing most of the manual labour himself.

It saw that property rise in price by £60,000.

Josh now plans to move into that house soon and is already on the search for a third acquisition

He has grand plans to buy 10 properties in total, renting out nine of them and living in one, and all by the time he is 30.

Retirement then beckons for him, putting his feet up and working when he fancies.

Josh says there’s no reason young people can’t afford to buy homes — but admits his mates said he was “boring” when he said no to drinks or buying new clothes.

“There’s no reason people my age can’t buy houses,” said the trainee mortgage advisor.

“You just have to get past the mindset that there are certain things you do at certain ages. It wasn’t about being super bright or anything.

“You just need to make the most out of living at home: it’s nothing like as expensive as renting privately or through an agency.

“I just didn’t blow money on going out drinking and I spent almost nothing on clothes. My mates all said I was being boring.

“And I don’t have the expense of kids yet or anything. I was given a Ford Fiesta, which I kept, whereas a lot of my friends are buying expensive cars like Mercedes on finance schemes.

“I mean they’re nice cars but I was able to put-away up to £1,200 a month by the time I went full-time.

“I could have spent that by going out on the town. Working at an estate agent is a great job for young people and it doesn’t require any qualifications.”

Josh began working at an estate agents on a two-week work-experience placement when he finished his GCSEs in 2015. This eventually to working two nights and a Saturday every week.

He also had a cleaning job at the locksmith company owned by his parents Glenn, 55, and Anne Millen, 53, while he did his A-levels.

Josh went full time in 2018 after finishing college and banked most of his £14,000 salary.

He paid £120/month to his parents and spent £2,000 a year running his car.

It saw him save enough for an £11,000 deposit and bought his first house in Stockport for £115,000 in June 2019.

Pulling-in £30,000 a year in his job by 2020, Josh saved for his next house which he bought for £140,000 with a £15,000 deposit in Manchester in April.

He’s done a £20,000 refurbishment on the home where he plans to live, cutting costs by doing as much of the work as he can himself.

He crammed bags of rubble and a whole staircase into his Fiesta, sometimes making as many as seven trips to the tip after his day job.

Josh, who left his job at the estate agent in May to work as a case handler for a mortgage broker, said: “So long as the houses I buy keep going up in value the plan will work well.

“There are increasing numbers of people needing houses and they aren’t being built at the same rate of increase, so the need for them is going up.

“There’s always risk, but even if there’s a massive crash or something I’ll just have to keep going more slowly with savings. I’ll slow down at 30, I can’t retire completely then I’d be bored, but I’d like to get a sail-boat like my grandad and pop over to Italy for the odd six months.

“Or maybe I’ll be a stay-at-home dad. I’ll need to slow down because I can’t just do a day’s work, I always push to get more out of myself, and if I keep working like this I’ll have the body of a 60-year-old by the time I’m 30.

“I’ve pushed my car to its limits too. With the seats down I can get ten bags of rubble in my Fiesta: it’s like a Tardis.”