How does anyone ever afford to buy a house? (slightly ranty, sorry)

TBH a lot of it iss location: we are looking in Belfast and could get soooooooooooo much more for our money in the suburbs. A lot of our contemporaries who own houses already are on 100% mortgages and quite heavily in debt.

I am very lucky in that Mr P is extremellllllly frugal, and has sizable savings to use as a deposit.

I managed it via shared ownership - is this an option for you?

I think parents, a lot of the time. It's crushing, isn't it? If it weren't for 100% mortgages I would never have been able to afford a place of my own.

I think the same about people who have bigger houses than we have. I guess I should be grateful we bought at the right time and actually have a home of your own. We didn't have any help though.

R-A I sympathise, we have ben saving our butts off to get our own place and it's now not enough money deposit wise.

I wish I knew the answer......

WSS. There are shared ownership schemes popping up all over the place now.

We're planning to move in with my Mum when our contract on our rented flat comes to an end. Even paying her a bit to cover additional costs she'll incur by having us there, we should still be able to save a little over £2k a month. That should give us a 10% deposit by this time next year.

Parents or 100% mortgage, I think.

One possible idea I've heard discussed is to buy a flat somewhere cheap (so you need a smaller deposit), let it out to cover the mortgage (while you continue to rent elsewhere) then sell and use the capital gain to fund your own deposit. It relies on a lot going your way though, not least a good rental market and rising house prices.

Thanks SLD, that's interesting to hear (esp as you're not a million miles away).

I've only ever heard negative things about shared ownership, has it worked out OK for you?

I think I probably qualify as a key worker?

One thing that puts me off is they tend to be new builds, don't they? H works from home (musician & music teacher so v. noisy) and for the short periods of time we've rented in new builds the walls seem to be much thinner and we pissed off our neighbours much more....

<sigh>

I know why 100% mortgages were A Bad Thing for the economy, but... but... what other way is there?!

Don't live in London? ?
Flats/terraced houses round here are well under 100K, but then it is a shithole!
I presume there's a corresponding drop in salaries too. I've never had a high paid job, so don't know if equal jobs would pay less up here or whether there are just fewer of them so average pay is less?

I honestly think that its luck of the draw in two ways - location and when you want to buy.

We got together November 2001 and started househunting January 2002. When we moved in together we found a gorgeous cottage, not in a chain that we bought with a 100% mortgage. Our second house was in a chain so the deposit went up the chain. We still own that house and rent it out and we bought out 3rd through a process of re-financing and mortgaging.

We live in the North though so house prices lower

It had to be the shared ownership route for us too.

When we were buying we needed a decent deposit but as quick as we were saving, house prices were rising so we were never actually getting anywhere. Its annoying that by going down the shared ownership route, we still pay out the same in mortgage and rent as we would have done in just mortgage if someone had been prepared to lend us the full amount. Unfortunately,at the time, the most we were offered was £28k. I couldn't buy a shack with that ?

We are in the same boat at the minute. We have submitted an application for a morgage, for a momentum scheme they are running here (we're in n.ireland, its scheme where the builder pays the deposit) but the bank has phoned and because I go into my overdraft, they may refuse it. I earn a good wage as does hubbie, and we dont have any other debts. I think that reason to refuse would be ridiculous but such is the current climate.

But even for 100K you need 15-20k savings??

I get paid just under 1.5k/yr more than junior docs everywhere else in the country. Which is absolute peanuts compared to the actual extra cost of housing here.

We saved damn hard for 2years to get a £20k deposit for our house and £5k for fees. Likewise we saved £13k in 18months to pay for our wedding outright. Luckily we were able to get overtime for MrKB and a bonus through my work. No such thing now though.

We managed with parents a States loan (cheaper rates) and buying a complete wreck and living with my parents for a year whilst my dad and Mr G renovated it. Then when we moved again we were lucky to get some money out of selling the first house and the second house needed renovating and enlarging as well.

So here it's all down to luck and having a dad who can do building work! If we didn't have that there's no way we would have been able to afford it, scary really ☹️

Yes it definitely has worked out for me - in November I will have been here for two years. I haven't heard any bad stories myself - what kinds of things have you heard?

All schemes have different criteria but if you're either already a resident in the area in which you wish to live, or if you have a job (particularly a keywork role) in the area in which you wish to live then you're unlikely to be turned down. They don't ask for a massive deposit either - in fact judging by current advertisements in the Metro and the like, they are being very flexible in that regard at the moment, with some places giving you cashback and others requiring a very small deposit.

They do tend to be new builds - mine is - but some are refurbished older properties too, I think it's a case of looking around to see what might be in your area. For what it's worth, I live on the fifth floor of a low rise (the penthouse suite, ha ha!) and I don't hear noise from either neighbour. In fact on one side they have just had a baby and I've only heard it cry once and that was very, very late at night when there's no background noise from the street and so noises are more pronounced IYSWIM?

The good thing about my new build (although couldn't say this for all, just my personal experience) is that they are building them to meet high 'green' standards so they've very well-insulated, including triple glazing and cavity wall insulation, which again will help with the noise.

There's a very recent good article here: /property/house-and-home/shared-ownership-schemes-the-way-to-a-smart-city-pad-1636529.html

Take a deep breath.

House prices at the moment are not normal. They were artificially inflated because of the availability of cheap mortgages. That is now over, and house prices are now falling. You will get there. You don't have to jump on the bandwagon - you need to do what's best for you in your circumstances. Save your cash and stick two fingers up to everyone saying "buy this, buy that etc"

It is *normal* to have to save for 3 years before you can put down a decent deposit. You will get there,

I think shared ownership is a waste of time and money. All of the disadvantages of renting, none of the advantages of buying. It's only there because of insanely high house prices - years ago teachers, nurses and normal people didn't need crap schemes like that to buy a normal house on an average salary.

Yes, some people will have negative equity when house prices fall. Them's the breaks - a return to normal house prices benefits everyone in the long run.

R-A, as a key worker aren't you entitled to £50k towards a house? My mother recieved something like this as she works for London Ambulance Service. It was the only way she was able to afford her house. They did have to move within a year or something though.

Also have a look here to see what is in your local area - it's the site covering SO for London and was invaluable when I was doing my research.

For us it was saving and saving for several years, buying an ex-council house rather than a pretty one, buying a house that was practical, rather than one we loved, and living somewhere that meant i had a 45-60 min drive to work every day. And buying when 10% mortgages were more normal than now, and fixed rates were at about 4.5%. I think we were pretty lucky with the timing, to be honest.

The sort of house we chose made a huge difference - our ex-council house, on a road that was half privately owned/half housing association, was significantly cheaper than a similar sized house on the local modern estates (one estate was 10-15 years old, and quite nice, we rented there to start with but couldn't afford to buy there, one was a new build "community" that scared us in its truman show-ness ?)

Wow, that's impressive saving.

I think our problem is that we've both only graduated in the last 2 years - both with significant student debts (e.g. I graduated with a total of 55k debt: student loan + 2 career development loans + had 2 CCs, CCs now nearly paid off ?) - so the last 2 years we've been trying to make headway on clearing them, maybe when others would have been saving.

R-A I think that could be it. Before we got the mortgage we didn't have any debts, no credit cards or anything. So literally every spare penny was going into savings. Our social life really took a hit as we didn't go out at all and I hardly bought any new clothes or shoes (!) but we got there in the end. It was helped by work bonuses too.

Thats a little unfair and misguided. For some its the only option, believe me. If I'd had the opportunity to buy my house myself, I absolutely would have. We spent 3 years trying to buy a house but for reasons I don't really want to go into, it was our only option of ever getting a property of our own. We made £30K in 5 years in that house. I see that as quite a big advantage. I know the amount in rent was a PITA but in the end, it got us where we needed to be.

We saved bloody hard for about 3 years too - whilst renting somewhere cheap. We also had to rethink where we wanted to buy as the village where we rented ended up the 'Top 20 places to live' and it stuck about 25k on every house in the place. We might get back there one day, but had to comprimise at the time.

Back in 2001, I had not the faintest idea how I was ever going to get on the property ladder, what with living in my native London and having no savings to speak of - since I work in the arts, I earned a pittance throughout the 1990s.

I solved it by the cunning expedient of:

(a) moving out of London;

(b) getting engaged to someone who was already on the property ladder;

(c) applying for a joint mortgage with her when we switched from a flat to a house.

But I concede this advice might not be especially helpful for couples who aren't on the property ladder already.

Thanks for a very sensible post, S. I know you're right.

It's not the house owning per se that bothers me (though it'd be nice to have the security), it's just the impact it will have on the rest of our life: delaying sprogging etc. No room at all for a kid where we are now, plus it would take at least twice as long to save if I went on mat leave as I'm the main wage earner.

We lived in a skanky bedsit for 4 years while we put aside every spare penny we could get our hands on. I went and swept leaves / did gardening at the weekend for extra cash.

We also purchased well "below" what we had been hoping for (ex-local authority, tiny kitchen etc)

That's London for you.

Sounds interesting, was that through shared ownership do you know?

I'm not sure if junior docs count as key workers or not.

Oh R-A that's sad to read. Do you really feel like you'll need your own 'home' before trying for a baby? Is it really important to you?

My mother didn't own her own home until 2004. Before that she was a council tenant. We moved about quite a bit as I was growing up but I wasn't affected by it at all. In fact looking back it done me a favour as I know lot's of people in different areas. She stayed in her last house via the council for about 8years. It was only due to the Key Worker payment scheme that she managed to get on the property ladder. If it wasn't for that I'm pretty sure she'd have ended up doing a part rent part buy scheme via the council.

It wasn't shared ownership no. It was something insane like the Government giving 50k towards your first house pruchase. She had to have £x in the bank and they would give 50k to help find a mortgage. This was back in 2004.

We moved out of London so we could buy. Over here we rent our apartment and own a holiday home upstate where it's reduculously cheep. It's even more impossible to buy in manhattan as not only do you need a hefty deposit but most apartment buildings insists on you having about 2 years of maintenance fees in the bank. Even to rent you have to show 40 - 50 times the monthly rent in salary (not including bonuses) or else have a guarantor.

It casued the loopy situation of people paying a years rent upfront as although they earn millions it's almost all in bonus!