Can you invest in property when you don’t have any money of your own? Your gut response to that question probably depends on when you came of property investing age.

If you started investing in the heady days of 2002-2008, you might find it an almost offensive notion that you might actually need money to invest. The current lack of self-cert loans and same-day remortgaging are a temporary aberration, and there must be a way around the letter of the law.

But if you were investing before or since that golden era, the opposite answer is obvious: how can it be “investing” if you don’t put any of your own money in?

So let’s put aside the fiendishly complicated and very dubious “no money down” schemes that a few men in shiny suits are still trying to sell, and look at some legitimate ways to get started when you don’t have any money.

Save and wait

Let’s just get the not-really-answering-the-question answer out of the way first, shall we? Because it just so happens to be a pretty good option.

Radical as it sounds, you could always save up until you’ve got the money. After all, property is an investment — you’d not consider investing in shares, wine or vintage pornography without having any capital, so why should property be any different?

The good news is that the loan-to-value offered by lenders is finally coming down again — it’s likely that you’ll be able to put down just 20 per cent of the property’s value and get a buy-to-let mortgage for the rest.

Saving that much of your income might sound insane, but plenty of people do it:

• Move to somewhere smaller or a cheaper area to save on rent;

• Use The Birdy (Personal finance software for budgeting your spending) to track what you spend day-to-day;

• Earn more. Start a microbusiness to bring in an extra couple of hundred per month, whether that’s selling handcrafts or doing the same as your day job on a freelance basis in the evenings;

• Cancel stuff. Sky TV can run to over $500 per year. A gym is easily $600; and

• Set up a regular transfer to automatically transfer 1/3 of your wage to a savings account as soon as you get it. If the money’s not there, you can’t spend it.

Depending on your situation it might be impossible, but it’s probably a lot more possible than you think. If property investment is important to you, be prepared to be uncomfortable for a while in order to make it real.

While you’re saving, read about property every day and meet as many people as you can. It’ll make you a better investor when you’re ready to start, and it’ll keep you motivated through all those sportless (no Sky), flabby (no gym) winter nights in Grimsby (cheaper area) knitting funky hats for ferrets (extra income).