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

? god I really feel for people trying to get on the property ladder, house prices have just been ridiculous. We bought our first house in 2000 for £66k and put down 10% deposit so had a mortgage of around £60k, we sold it last year for £138k. No way would we have been able to afford it if starting out, our salaries haven't doubled in line with the house price!

Another in the 'just saved bloody hard' club. We did also have some help indirectly from family, as H remortgaged the house he owned before he met me, which he'd bought with the help of a loan from his mum.

Whenever I grumbled about not being able to buy anywhere, my mum would always wheel out her speech about how our generation has forgotten how to save, expects to be able to have everything as soon as they want it etc etc etc. And it's true, my parents did save for a long time before they bought their first place - but it cost £12k! (in west London!) Obviously they earned about £4k each at the time, but it's nothing like the ridiculous gap between earnings and house prices of today. Especially now lenders are demanding huge deposits, the amount you need just seems insurmountable.

We saved up, and didn't buy anywhere til I was 29 I think and H was 31. We rented dives before we lived here ? We live in a v small house but its lovely. It sounds like you're in London though, and houses in Swindon are under £100k for a 2 bed terrace in town. It depends on what compromises you make I think. You're young though R-A so keep on saving and just be patient! By the time you have a deposit then houses might be more affordable, and your salary will have gone up as you progress in your career.

Psychologically, no (although we'd need another bedroom for starters) but practically yes. The only chance we have of getting a mortgage even with a deposit is for me to be earning as much as I possibly can, as H is self-employed and earns significantly less than I do. So going on mat leave (and working PT which is what I would ideally want to do with a small child) would massively reduce the amount anyone would lend to us, and also really prolong the amount of time to save a deposit. ☹️

(accidentally gone a bit BT sorry! don't know how that happened ?)

Yep CB, I could have written that post. I so believe in saving, not living beyond your means etc etc. But the average house price has gone up so much more than wages, it's just not comparable to when my parents (earning less in real terms than me and H now) bought their first flat with a young child a mile down the road (incidentally now worth 350k, if only they'd not sold it, we'd absolutely love it!).

In many ways we are very lucky: 2 salaries, mine is pretty much guaranteed (famous last words!) and will increase yearly. It's very difficult to explain to my grandma and my mum why two graduates are at least 3-4 years off being able to own our own place.

R-A, I sympathise, it sucks big style. We only managed to buy in 2001 with a 95% mortgage, and that was juuust before house prices went loopy. However, we're also now stuck, as the next step up the ladder is about £50k out of our reach (unless we want to live in a grotty area, which I'm too much of a snob to do).

Don't forget though - the prices being advertised are only asking prices, and a lot of sellers are still trying to squeeze as much as they can out of their properties. It might be worth having a check on the Land Registry website or similar and seeing what they are actually selling for.

I'm not too sure how you come to this conclusion either?

We can do anything to our place, short of knock down walls, without having to get permission. The sorts of caveats that are in the lease are exactly the same as the ones I had in the flat I owned outright 10 years ago. The upkeep of the communal area is far superior to anything I've ever lived in before and, because it is non-profit making, the rent and service charges are very reasonable. We don't have any parents nearby to move in with and as H needs to work from home we couldn't rent a studio flat for several years in order to save enough money for a deposit. We need to live in London owing to our jobs, and as H's freelancing sometimes requires people to come to our house, moving out of town was not an option for us. The mortgage, rent and service charge combined on our flat are still £250 cheaper than the rent on our previous place, and it is much bigger too. The bills are also much lower, as it is so energy efficient.

With regard to soundproofing etc, again as SLD says our new build has the highest energy efficiency rating possible so everything is triple glazed, double lined and extra thick. Our neighbours both above and next door have newborn babies and we've not heard them at all. We never hear vacuum cleaners, washing machines or the like. The only time there is noise is when someone does DIY and drilling or hammering is involved. Even then it is very muffled.

I have to say that, for H and I, it is. Having been forced to move twice in 13 months because our landlords sold the properties we were living in, we both feel we need the security of a property we know we can't get turfed out of on the whim of a third party.

R-A, the £50k loan is called the Open Market Homebuy Scheme and there's more information on it here. H and I applied at one point (I'm a key worker) but we decided against as we decided we weren't going to be staying in London long enough to make buying feasible.

Thanks D, I know that's true, and maybe I'm hoping for too much to be able to own before 30 anyway. Will keep on plodding on. ?

Thanks very much Mel. I'm apparently not a keyworker (which makes me cross, why not?) but might be eligible under the first time buyer thing.

We bought using the Homebuy scheme (which has changed now) but its worked really well and we got to buy a house of our choice in the area we wanted to a certain value and whilst we only own 75% we don't have to pay rent on the rest. Definitely worth investigating if you are a junior doctor as I am sure you will count as key workers.

It is hard, especially because renting often means you have little left over for saving. When I started being constantly ill after having C, it became apparent that we'd be living off one income for some time. Buying just wouldn't have been an option, full stop.

H went into the pub industry and we will continue to live above the pub we're running until we can afford to buy a house. This means we don't pay anything for our accommodation (bar an extra bit of tax) and the flats are often quite big. It's not ideal; there are plenty of pitfalls. But it means we can get a house deposit together for in a few years' time. We did consider buying a freehold pub last year as a compromise, but the mortgages ended up being silly rates and we just didn't feel comfortable with being self-employed in the end.

I don't regret having C before we bought a house, though. Even when you own property, these days, your job often isn't as secure as you think and you may end up having to move anyway. That's not to say that you shouldn't plan financially for a child - we did - but it didn't turn out anything like how we'd envisaged.

I am pleased that C will be able to remember the day when we move into the house that we own. She'll be able to see how exciting the process is and how hard her Daddy has worked for it (and me too, if I ever finish this novel!). I hope she'll grow up with a greater appreciation of just what goes in to buying a property; it's not an entitlement or something that everyone just 'has', as people are often made to feel.

Sadly not, according to the website http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/HomeAndCommunity/BuyingAndSellingYourHome/HomeBuyingSchemes/DG_4001345

We might be able to apply as first time buyers. Glad you've had a good experience.

R-A if I hadn't met MrRache who had had help from his parents to buy a flat in greater London (he was in his early 30s when he bought for the first time) I wouldn't be able to buy even now, at 32. I graduated with huge loans (not quite as much as yours, but not far off, and I graduated in 2000) for the same reasons. The only reason I'm in a house today is that MrRache paid my debts for me, and so we had a desposit from the sale of his flat, and no debts.

I have friends from medical school who work in London who are still renting and who are having to move to very unfashionable pasrt of London even to rent, to get a 2-3 bedroom house big enough to bring up a family whilst being close enough for work. There's a reason why so many medics move out of London (have you noticed the ones who stay around all have wealthy spouses?). A junior docs salary is fabulous in the cheaper parts of the country as it goes so much further.

My house is shared ownership and I was able to buy on the open market - no restrictions on the property as long as it was within a particular price range. So you don't necessarily have to live on particular developments with all the schemes.

TBH I forget it's shared ownership 90% of the time, there aren't any restrictions on what I can do to it, it's my house to all intents and purposes.

The reason I am so anti shared ownership is it perpetuates high house prices that got us into this mess in the first place. I bet most people here can look to their parents who, with fairly average jobs, managed to save and buy a house for their family. That's not the case at the moment, and hasn't been for a few years now. All shared ownership does is contribute to helping prop up unsustainable house prices, by realising the demand for houses at stupidly high price levels - sure, lots of people want to buy houses, but without the availability to buy (usually in mortgages, "gifted" deposits etc), there is no real demand. Rather than enabling people to buy houses, or part share in houses at stupidly high house prices, it would make far more sense to ensure that house prices never took off in the first place.

Anyway, that's much of a muchness. Problems I have had with some shared ownership schemes (note, I know this may not be applicable to all)):

1)Agreement of housing association required to sell

2) Valuations of house at mercy of housing association, no real opportunity for free market valuations

3) Restriction of mortgage choice

4) Valuations of % fix owned by housing association unchanging in £ terms - so their 25% stake valued at peak market prices can stay at a fixed amount in £ terms, whilst the value of the house may have fallen to make that £ share a much greater proportion of the house's true value. Also - someone mentioned that they made £50K on their shared ownership property which rather gets my goat - surely the whole point of these (goverment subsidied) schemes is to encourage affordable home ownership? By making £50K, surely that home is now even further out of reach of the average worker?

R-A - I have thrown my toys out of this particular pram (re: buying property, everyone else has a house, I want one too etc ?) more than once. I'm getting better at accepting it now! I know plenty of people who have kids in rented (usually far nicer rented places than they could afford to buy) properties and are thriving - it was a bit of a mental block for me, but it is perfectly possible to have kids and not be a home owner!

I know you're still quite young - so put it this way, by the time you are 30, you could potentially have a good deposit and a more stable career and combined with a falling property market this will really work in your favour. Put it this way - you could have taken out a 125% mortgage on a property and now be in negative equity...

Th\at's interesting PL, do you have any info on that scheme?

I do understand your points Seraphina, it's difficult.

We moved out of London in 2002 into a tiny flat in a fairly crummy area , with only 3k deposit. We've managed to move on now , but really that's only thanks to a growing property market a few years back.

It is very tough , but my stepdad always used to remind me that everything is relative and even though he bought his 4 bed detached house for £9000 at the time that was a huge amount of money and he had to work two jobs to save the deposit.

We bought our first house in 1998 - it "only" cost £50,950 (2 bed character cottage in Devon) and we had the deposit because H had received a small inheritance otherwise I don't know how we would have done it.

But shared pwnership has been around for years, it's not a new phenomenon at all. Where I grew up there were lots of trusts around offering shared ownership housing. It is also not true to say it offers none of the benefits of buying. It offers pretty much all of the benefits of buying - when you sell if your property has gone up in value, you will receive a propertion of that. You cna generally do what you want in a shared ownsership property.

I bought my first flat under a shared ownership scheme when I was 18. As it happened, we could have bought an ex council house in a different area for roughly the same price, it just enable us to live somewhere a bit nicer.

I would definitely recommend it as a way of getting on the property ladder.

I think it is more the availability of 100-105% mortgages that has pushed prices upwards. There has been no need for people to save to get a mortgage for a long time

L
xx

My H bought his flat in 2002 for £99k with a 10k deposit that his parents lent him. At the time I could've afforded a small house but decided to carry on living with my parents.

I then moved into the flat with H and supported him whilst he was training for his job. In the 5 years we lived there we managed to get the mortgage down to £92k and the flat was worth £120k, unfortunately we couldn't sell it so remortgaged it for the deposit on our next property, a house costing £225k and gave his parents the £10k back that he borrowed. We now rent the flat and the rent covers the morgage on it.

My H qualified and got a very good job which has afforded us the house. I have also improved my job (become a nurse), this, coupled with the fact that we got a brilliant tracker mortgage deal just before the rates dropped, means we have saved £400 per month on our mortgage.. so we are currently paying this extra off our mortgage - if that makes sense?

Hopefully, in a few years' time, we will have reduced our mortagage greatly, enabling us to put a deposit down on our next move up the ladder house.

It's so hard. I actually think though it was harder for people a couple of years back when prices were higher than they are now...

Anyway, the way we afforded it - we had both been at work for 4-5 years, we moved out of London and had hideous commute in, we got 100 per cent mortgage. As we were paying silly money for rent (850 quid a month for an absolute hovel of a studio flat) it made sense to get a 100 per cent interest only mortgage at about 500 quid a month.

however, we got totally screwed as we got an endowment (1999 this was) which is totally underperforming. so even though we've been paying 10 years' worth of mortgage at daft fixed rate prices, we've had to start all over again last october with a 25 year repayment which means we won't be paying off the mortgage until we're in our sixties, instead of early 50s as it should have been - we'll have been paying a mortgage for 35 years rather than 25.

we certainly didn't have help from anyone, parents etc - although most of our peers did have support from their parents.

we looked at shared ownership too - the notting hill housing trust - and this was 10 years ago. but we moved out instead and got a tiny semi for about 40k less than a dodge flat in London would have cost.

re babies, it's all about psychology really. I felt I needed to be in the 'family house' and have savings and a good career and we waited to TTC until we got there in 2003 (although immediately we bought the house I was unfairly dismissed from my job and my earnings have gone down by about a third, we've since downsized and moved out of London to give us a hope in hell of me being a SAHM - and that has backfired due to interest rates going higher last year, when we fixed, only for them to come crashing down the same month)

It's hard whichever way you look at it. we have a smaller house than is ideal, I have a huge commute (2 hours each way) and yet I'm still going to have to go back to work, which was never the plan. So in some ways I wished we'd just thrown caution to the winds and got on with having a family rather than waiting for the perfect time - because that perfect time didn't last too long.

Thats how we bought ours. It was for sale in a high street estate agents so there was no scheme to join or be accepted on. We just put an offer in as usual, it was accepted, we moved in.

We saved a bit, borrowed a bit for the deposit and got a 95% mortgage. No help from parents. We bought in '05. Although we can easily afford our mortgage repayments now, at the time the mortgage calculators told us we shouldn't have been able to borrow as much as we did. Luckily i was promoted just in time.

We're not in negative equity yet, but i can see it happening by the end of the year if things don't turn around.

Save up for your deposit and see how the market is in a couple of years. Best of luck.

We bought our first house a couple of months after graduating with lots of help from my in laws. We are probably in negative equity now though but not planning to move in the immediate future.

My friend has just bought her first house with a company called catalyst- I dont know all the details but I know they leant her 100k which was counted as a deposit- and then when she sells the house she has to pay back a certain proportion or something to them.

"Catalyst Housing Group provides more than 14,000 affordable homes in London and the South East. Our work includes general needs housing, regeneration schemes, sheltered and special needs housing, residential care homes, low cost home ownership, and key worker accommodation."

https://www.chg.org.uk/

As I said I dont know much about it though- whether it is a good deal or not, but might be worth investigating at least.

Christmas opening and emergency cover

Catalyst Communities HA
Kensington Housing Trust
Fortunegate Community Housing

My friend lives down south and had a shared ownership home just north of Brighton. She and her partner started earning a bit more and they decided to enquire about buying the other 50% of the house, but the problem was it was based on the current valuation (which had sky rocketed) so they couldn't afford it. If you do go into one of those arrangements be sure to check the small print, I'm sure you will though.

We're having the same problem R-A, we need to save for a deposit but that's proving difficult at the moment - I'm also not very patient so that makes it harder!

We probably do have (just) enough for a 10% deposit but there's not that many mortgages around at 10% at the mo. Also, I'm really conscious that wherever we buy needs to be somewhere we'll be happy to be for a while (and will fit kids etc) so we're stretching ourselves a bit to get to the next step of the ladder rather than a typical FTB house.

Things have changed so quickly and so drastically, that's the thing really I think. Only just over a year ago we could have got a 100% or even 105% mortgage so no need to save a deposit - now we're faced with needing at least 10% if not 20% deposit. I guess we all just need to shift our expectations a bit.

We bought a terrace oop north in 2002 for £42000 - incredibly lucky, prices sky rocketed about 6 months later. Our deposit (10%) came from some inheritance. Mind you its not an ideal location for the bairns as its a busy road and a bit of a pants area for schools. We can't afford to move somewhere a bit more salubrious as our salaries wouldn't cover the increase in mortgage so we'll just have to make the best of it.

Mainly because I'm ancient and bought my first house 14 years ago. That was a 2 bed end terrace in the SE for £52k, so it wasn't too hard to cobble together a few grand for a deposit and to cover costs.

I have much sympathy for younger friends who are wanting to buy but who's only option is renting instead.

For me and my sister there would be no way we'd have been able to afford our houses if it hadn't have been for our parents. They have given both of us the 10% required for our deposits and money that we've saved ourselves has gone on furniture and things like that.

We had to move from London to Manchester to be able to afford anything at all. I had some inheritance money from when my dad died, and H`s parents gave him his share of the deposit. Saying that, we have lost most of the deposit we put down, as the prices started dropping pretty much the day after we moved in ?