Unlike our continental European neighbours, ownership rather than renting takes first place in the UK.

‘Getting on the property ladder’ is something of an obsession, right up there with discussing house prices at dinner parties or trying to guess which will be the next up and coming neighbourhood.

According to some new research from Scottish Provident, the British love affair with property ownership could be waning.

Of those surveyed, only 51% believe that property ownership is critical or very important for a reasonable standard of living. This figure appears to contrast sharply with property price boom of the past 15-20 years.

In fact, it is a decrease of 9 percentage points since the last time Scottish Provident commissioned their “High Wire” report in 2003. Back then, 60% of us thought that owning our homes was essential for a reasonable standard of living.

So, what has changed?

Property ownership has always been very demanding from a financial perspective. It is a serious financial commitment.

The vast majority of us buy property financed by a mortgage; usually the biggest bank loan we will ever have. Over the past year or so, getting access to mortgages has been like, well, getting money off a banker. It’s been something between extremely challenging and impossible.

When the banks realised they were technically insolvent and went cap in hand to world governments for a taxpayer funded bailout, one of the first things they cut back on was new mortgage lending.

The latest figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders suggest that things are now improving, with the number of mortgages taken out to buy a home rising to the highest level for almost two years in October. We took out 55,000 mortgages for new purchases in October. This is the highest monthly total since December 2007.

To put these numbers into context, the lending figures in October are a 9% increase on the previous month and more than double the January 2009 low of 23,000 mortgages.

It is interesting to note from the Scottish Provident research that it is those in the 55-64 age group who have experienced the greatest change in attitude towards home ownership. 44% of those in this age group see owning their own home as very important for a reasonable standard of living. This is a 17% fall compared to 2003, when the figure for this age group stood at 61%.

The ‘credit crunch’ and general turmoil in global economies which acted as a catalyst for recent property price falls might be one of a number of factors which have started to fundamentally change our views on property ownership in the UK. The concept of a ‘job for life’ also appears to be rapidly disappearing, reducing confidence that mortgage repayments will always be met from steady employed earnings.

Naturally renting property, the main alternative to home ownership, comes at a cost as well.

In the current low interest rate environment, it is easy to identify rental costs in excess of ten times the equivalent mortgage costs for the equivalent property. This depends to some extent on the mortgage deal people are able to access (or are fortunate enough to be have left with when the music stopped) but in general terms renting can look like a very expensive alternative right now.

It will be fascinating to see how attitudes might change on this subject in the future. When it comes to any form of investment, people have notoriously short memories, so give it a few more years and there is every chance that the British public will fall in love with property ownership all over again.

A crackdown on reckless lending along with the future need for both income and expenditure verification to ensure affordability should in itself make mortgages no less accessible. Those who have ‘inflated’ their incomes in the past to obtain high real income multiples on self-certification mortgages will struggle to do the same in the future, but for the majority of borrowers it will (eventually) be business as usual.

My contacts in the mortgage world tell me that mortgage lending remains both patchy and expensive. As the banks continue to rebuild their balance sheets, they remain loathe to dish out the dosh as freely as they were doing in recent years. Yet mortgages remain available to people with reasonable size deposits, a good credit history and realistic expectations about borrowing levels.

Whether you are a first-time buyer or simply looking for a competitive remortgage deal, here are our six steps to getting the best mortgage:

1 – The bigger, the better (when it comes to deposits)

Big mortgages on low incomes might be a thing of the past, but size really does matter when it comes to your deposit. When this credit crunch started, average deposit requirements shot up quickly. Gone are the days when a 5% or 10% deposit will give you access to the best deals in the market. Lenders today are looking for serious commitment from borrowers in terms of a big deposit.

Whilst saving for a bigger deposit might take longer and be less fun than spending the money on other things, it does benefit you in some others ways as well as getting you access to favourable rates. It means you have to borrow less. During these times of relatively low interest rates (which have not necessarily filtered through to mortgage interest rates, yet) this might not be much of an issue. But when rates start to go back up, you will be glad of a smaller loan.

Secondly, a bigger deposit gives you more of a safety net should house prices fall again. There are some indications that the UK property market has stabilised a bit in recent months, but there is no guarantee that it will be all smooth sailing from here. Think of your deposit as a buffer between equity and negative equity. The bigger, the better.

2 – Keep it clean

Banks and other mortgage lenders price their products based on risk. Someone with a clean credit history represents a lower risk to a mortgage lender than an applicant with a record of missed loan repayments and maybe a County Court Judgement or two thrown in for good measure. With a limited supply of cash to lend, guess which borrower is most likely to be on the receiving end of a competitive mortgage deal.

Your credit rating is extremely valuable. Wrap it in cotton wool and do everything you can to keep it clean.

The first step to ensuring a good credit rating when getting a mortgage is checking your credit file. You can do this with any of the main credit reference agencies, including Equifax and Experian. Checking your file at least once a year is good practice even if you are not applying for a mortgage. Use this exercise as an early warning system to spot fraud, including other people taking out credit in your name.

3 – Get independent advice

The mortgage market today is much smaller than it was at its peak, but it still pays to shop around. You can do this yourself if you have the time on your hands and the financial experience to compare different deals. Alternatively, you can engage the services of an independent mortgage broker.

Some brokers offer mortgage advice for ‘free’ (they receive a procuration fee from the mortgage lender, paid out of charges, when they place the recommended deal) but increasingly they charge a fee for this service. This is partially because many lenders now offer their most competitive deals directly to the public, to cut out the expense of the middleman. This makes sense in a restricted lending market where the demand outweighs the supply. Paying a fee for mortgage advice will ensure that the broker acts in your best interest, recommending a direct deal if most suitable, even though they will not receive a separate procuration fee.

4 – Think about the future

When you get a mortgage, it is easy to focus on the first year or two. It is equally as important to think longer term and consider what will happen in year three and beyond.

Something typically happens to your mortgage interest rate once the introductory offer expires, and the direction of travel is usually up. This leaves borrowers with a couple of options – either go through the expense of remortgaging to a new deal with the same lender or a new lender, or stick with a more expensive interest rate where you are.

Given the FSA proposals on restricting self-certification of income in the future, I imagine that some people who took advantage of this loophole in the past will now find themselves effectively trapped in their current mortgage product for a long time. The mortgage market can change at a rapid pace, so never assume that you will simply be able to remortgage to another lender and another deal in a few years time.

5 – Consider the total cost

The cost of a mortgage is more than the interest rate on display. Always consider the total cost of a mortgage, which includes the arrangement fee.

Many cheaper looking mortgage deals now come with hefty arrangement fees, often in excess of £1,000 for the cheapest interest rates. This pushes up the total cost of borrowing, particularly in the early years.

When taking out a mortgage there is a trade off between a low interest rate and a low arrangement fee. Sadly it is now rarely the case that both will be low within the same product. Mortgage lenders need to get their profit from somewhere.

6 – Club together

If finding a good mortgage deal continues to be elusive and your dream property remains just out of reach, remember to consider all of your options. Your borrowing power could increase if you team up with someone else to buy a property.

Assuming you do not have a close friend, relative or work colleague who you want to live with, there are plenty of ways to find a suitable co-buyer. A number of websites have sprung up in recent years to make the task of finding a mortgage buddy even easier.

Joint ownership is something to consider carefully and you should always seek professional advice from a solicitor who specialises in property law before signing contracts. Do not let the prospect of becoming a home owner cloud your better judgement. As well as having to live with the other person, you will also have a major asset and liability to share. It’s an option, but take your time to make a big decision like this.

Martin Bamford is site editor of BrilliantWithMoney and a Chartered Financial Planner at Informed Choice. You can follow him on Twitter @martinbamford.

In short, it was (and still is to some extent) a real mess, and we are all dealing with the consequences.

Economists and historians will tell you that these things come in cycles. When Gordon Brown promised an ‘end to boom and bust’ in his previous role as Chancellor of the Exchequer, you could almost hear the chuckles in the hallways of the London School of Economics.

Yet somehow this time feels a bit different. Whilst nobody can accurately forecast when this recession will come to an end, there are important lessons we can all learn from recent events.

The ‘rules’ of money appear to have changed. In fact, maybe they haven’t changed at all. The following principles could have all applied equally as well before this global financial meltdown. It’s just that following these ‘rules’ in the past would have meant going against the flow.

Here are my six rules for our relationship with our money in the new world of finance.

1 – We cannot rely on property.

In the old world it was so simple. We would put down a minimal deposit, take out a big mortgage and buy a house. Property prices would go up and every couple of years we would take out a slightly bigger mortgage.

How things change.

Falling house prices combined with a particularly brutal credit crunch brought this always unwise financial strategy to a grinding halt. We all feel poorer as a result. The frequent remortgaging before was subsidising our lifestyles. Directly or indirectly, you probably felt wealthier as a result of this money being dragged out of growing property values.

In the new world, we cannot live like this, with that source of cash gone for the foreseeable future. We need to reassess the way we choose to live our financial lives. It is never popular to suggest that people spend less, because spending less often equates to doing less. Yet only buying what you can really afford to buy is one of the most important financial foundations you can create.

2 – Cash is (still) king.

Yes, interest rates are incredibly low at the moment. If you are one of the people who rely on interest from savings to supplement your retirement income, you may be thinking that cash is the last place your money should be.

But cash remains king for several important reasons. It is still the only asset class to offer capital security. Assuming you stick to the limits of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSSC) even a failing bank or building society will not result in the loss of your dosh.

Having a healthy reserve of cash means not having to take on expensive debt in an emergency, assuming said debt is even available when that time comes.

The often quoted concept of building an emergency fund of three to six months typical expenditure is more important today than ever before. Economic recession means uncertainty in the job market which could continue long after world markets start to recover. Having a cash emergency fund is a necessity against this backdrop.

Whilst you might have been able to borrow your way out of financial trouble when an emergency struck, now you would be lucky to find a sympathetic lender. Your cash savings are the only safety net you can rely upon in the future.

3 – It is cool to know about money.

In the old world, financial ignorance as generally acceptable. You could get by comfortably in most cases without much in the way of a financial plan. As long as you continued to earn money and keep up the minimum payments on any debt, the world was your financial oyster.

Today, financial ignorance is about as cool as your drunken uncle dancing at a wedding. To get by these days you need to be money savvy.

The media is lending a helping hand when it comes to meeting this challenge. Thanks to Robert Peston and his colleagues, it’s not considered strange to know the protection limits of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme or to be able to explain the intricate mechanics of quantitative easing.

Taking a healthy interest in this sort of stuff and understanding the bigger economic picture is great, but what really matters is your ability to convert this global overview into meaningful action for your own financial planning.

The press loves to talk about the bigger picture. They regularly throw around figures of billions of pounds and we are supposed to get excited by this. In reality, the billions matter much less to you than the hundreds or thousands which make up your own bank account, mortgage, pension fund or credit card. Practice selfish financial planning, at least until you are fully in control of your own money management, and then you can start looking at the global picture.

4 – Complex financial products suck.

Until the current global financial crisis struck home, it was fine to invest in complex investment schemes promising high returns with limited or no downside potential. In a rising investment market with plenty of cash sloshing around the system these things can work. When the supply of money comes to a sudden stop and the markets begin to crash, the shortcomings of these products is exposed for all to see.

The criminal actions of Bernie Madoff, who ‘made off’ with around $65bn of investor cash, may have been the very worst example of these things going wrong, but many investors have seen promised investment returns fail to materialise.

The simple rule now, as it should always have been, is that if it is too good to be true, it probably is. This includes so-called ’structured products’ which use complex financial instruments to offer capital protection with full exposure to risky investment markets. A guarantee may turn out to be any but a guarantee if one of a handful of factors goes wrong.

This leaves us with a financial world where it makes sense to shun the complex stuff and stick to the basics. There are four main investment asset classes – cash, fixed income securities, equities and property. The rest is all a distraction for 99% of investors. And don’t kid yourself that you somehow fall into that 1% who need to access to the ‘exciting’ alternative investment types.

The overwhelming majority of investors can get by with an appropriate mix of the four main investment asset classes. It is how much of your money you expose to each of them and for how long that counts, and not investing in a Guatemalan hedge-fund offering 28% a year returns with ‘no risk’ to your capital.

5 – We have to take personal responsibility.

The government used to be able to provide for you. You may not have had a particularly good lifestyle in retirement if all you had was the State pension to tide you over, but you could at least retire at age 60 or 65 without the fear of being consigned to abject poverty.

Now, the State cannot provide. An ageing population combined with increased life expectancy and a government in so much debt it makes Argentina in the mid-1990s look wealthy have all put paid to the ability of the State to do much more than keep you from becoming completely destitute when you get older.

We are all going to have to work for much longer if we plan to rely on the State for our retirement income. The State pension age is already scheduled to increase to age 68, for men and women, from 2044, but in practice it could be a later age from an earlier date. The latest thinking is that age 70 will become the minimum retirement age within the next couple of decades. By the time you retire, assuming you are young enough now, it could be even later than that.

What this all means is that taking personal responsibility for retirement planning has become essential. The continued demise of company final salary pension schemes means a combination of personal pensions and non-pension investment assets will be the preferred strategy for anyone planning to avoid a retirement merely surviving rather than thriving.

6 – Substance takes preference over style.

This is where things appear to have shifted quite radically over the past couple of years. If the boom times were about keeping up with the Jones’s, the bust times are about growing your own vegetables, and the waste hierarchy of reduce, reuse and recycle.

A change in attitudes towards consumerism were appearing long before the world plunged into this recession. Any link between personal happiness and buying stuff was weak at best, and it took the removal of easy access to cash to tip an already growing anti-consumerist movement over the edge into mainstream culture.

It is now considered ‘cool’ to make do and mend. Holiday destinations are judged based on their eco-credentials rather than hours of guaranteed sunshine. Demand for allotments has gone through the roof and vegetable seed companies have reported massive sales growth. Charity shops have benefited as our view of the world has been adjusted.

Whilst the great British love affair with shopping may not have been killed off for good, there has been a major attitude shift that could well continue past any economic recovery. People who for so many years were the embodiment of all style, no substance have largely had their day as a new way of living and being takes over.

Martin Bamford is site editor at BrilliantWithMoney and a Chartered Financial Planner with Informed Choice.