To ask how you afforded your next home

[Junosmum]

We bought our first home 6 years ago, 90% mortgage. Bought as we had good (for early 20s) salaries and house prices were pretty cheap yet you could still get mortgages. Used all of our meagre savings and a gift from parents for the deposit. Furnished with donated furniture.

All great, nice first home etc. But I can't see how we will move on from here. We've overpaid the mortgage and its gone up in value by around 20k so now own about 35% of the house. We have a bit in savings and our salaries have gone up but only by about 6k each.

Our friends are now buying their next homes- either with inheritances or help from parents again, neither of which are options for us.

How did you make the next move? Is an inheritance or lottery win necessary?

(Assuming that you want/need to move on).

[BendydickCuminsnatch]

We made money on our flat just because house prices went up. We moved out of London, so a much cheaper area. Still Surrey though. Bought 3 bed house for 10k less than we sold our 2bed flat for. Also DH's salary had gone up a bit.

[fiorentina]

We saved for another deposit but I had worked my way up the career ladder in that time with better paid jobs and bonuses. I also benefited from property price increases. Same with most of our friends.

[Originalfoogirl]

Beans on toast and a longer mortgage 😄

[chelle792]

I've been in this place nearly seven years. If I'm honest, I don't think we will be moving to our next home. Prices around here are so expensive that we'd have to take on at least another 100k mortgage to even be able to consider it. That's just not feasible on our income. In fact, the only reason we own is because we both bought young. We couldn't do it now.

We are going to prioritise paying the mortgage down and will then look at our options in ten years or so. We just have accepted that this will be the place we have our kids

[WutheringTights]

Similar story to you when we first purchased but no help from parents. We bought a wreck, worked our way up the career ladder, borrowed more to refurbish and extend, overpaid the mortgage and made a lot when we sold due to market movements and the improvements we'd made. We then had a huge deposit and took on a much bigger mortgage, which we could because we'd had promotions and salary increases. We owned our first house for 12 years and had to wait 6 before we could afford to do the work it needed. We couldn't even afford carpets. You probably need to wait a bit longer before moving up.

[Junosmum]

Chelle, that feels like us.

Wuthering, yes, I think so. We have made improvements, but any more will cost more than we'd gain iyswim.

[YaySirNaySir]

When we bought three beds were only a few grand more than similar two beds, so we went for the three bed. So we stayed longer in our first house.
Then overpaying, pay rises and savings helped us buy the four bed in a nicer location.

[Yoghurty]

I'm not sure that we can.

I bought my flat 10 years ago, 3 months before I met my now DH.

Every time we consider selling and moving, something (woooooo?) stops us We looked again last year, but we live in London, and it would cost us at least another 80k to add another bedroom! Even though we have decent salaries, the mortgage would be huge and I'd worry about overextending ourselves.

Until we win some money, or our situation drastically changes, like we decide to move away from London, I don't see us moving on to our second (first together) home for a long time.

[WutheringTights]

Trouble is, a generation ago, most people could rely on inflation to shrink their debts in real terms, and salaries generally kept pace with inflation meaning that it was relatively easy to move up the property ladder. Today salaries aren't even keeping pace with normal inflation, let alone property inflation, so debts aren't shrinking and people can't move up the property ladder without help from parents, good luck, or a career that allows progression to more senior roles (and hence higher salaries).

[itsbetterthanabox]

What's wrong with your home? Why do you need to change it?

[Chaby]

Overpaid our mortgage by as much as we could afford, which was manageable as we did not overstretch ourselves in first place. We were lucky that we were in an area where prices went up, moved out of London to get a bigger property at a better price. No financial help from family. I grew up in central London but had to accept its not affordable to buy there, which is sad as we have left many friends behind and now have a long commute. But I have 3 bedrooms and a garden for my son in a nice area with good schools.

[VanellopeVonSchweetz99]

House prices went up a little bit in our area, both our salaries went up slightly + we received some modest bonuses, saved like mad when the kids were babies (no holidays or going out for 3 years), small gift from dh's parents + estate agent said I made about 15k by doing the following:
Cleaning the old house like you would perform surgery in each room (or like a pedantic serial killer lived there, as dh said).
Doing up front + back garden as nice as possible with as little money as possible.
Getting rid of/putting in storage at least 50% of all our stuff, including home electronics, the insides of wardrobes, cupboards, book shelves, thus creating the illusion of space.
'Styling' bedrooms & bathrooms boutique hotel style, ie iron duvet covers and put up brand new (cheap-o) towels before every viewing.
De-personalise everything, change to neutral colours where possible ('clean slate' etc).

It was a pain but in hindsight totally worth it, have recommended it to all my friends with similar results. Apparently it gives the buyer the feeling 'even if this is not to our taste & a bit tired it's totally liveable, we could move in tomorrow and then change things gradually.'

[branofthemist]

I bought a house that needed work, slowly did it up. By the time it had been finished, it's was worth 30k more. We did over pay the mortgage at that time too. Took about 5 years.

[CPtart]

No inheritance or lottery win here. But the value of our first property went up almost £100k in nine years, so we made a nice profit.
Any pay rises were cancelled out by childcare, but now the DC are older we have more disposable income and due to large mortgage overpayments we should be mortgage free in 2-3 years. Don't plan to move again.

[nonline]

Must vary terrifically by area.
We moved last year after being in first home for ten years. Sold for more than we paid - but only by as much as we put into improvements.
We overpaid each year - save well and don't spend much on big things like car/holiday - so that we had choice of paying off house or putting equity into (hopefully our only) move.

Most of my friends (in London and outlying) have either not or only just bought houses for horrific amounts - we just couldn't/wouldn't if we didn't live in a cheap, undesirable town ;-)

[PurpleCrazyHorse]

Our 1st house went up in value so we walked away with about £30k when we sold it. We weren't earning much more but moved and bought our 2nd home in a cheaper part of the country. We also saved another £10k too.

We bought a bigger house (okay area) for about £25k more than we sold our small 1st home (nice area). It was the only way we could afford it.

[SerenityReynolds]

We couldn't do it without an inheritance or unless we moved out of London. We put down a 33% deposit and have manageable repayments, but although the value has increased, the gap in price to the next size up locally (plus stamp duty, fees etc), would stretch us further than we are comfortable with.

We plan to have a loft extension in the next 5-10 years which will give us a 4 bed, 2 bathroom property - plenty for us and 2 DC. We'll pay off the mortgage quicker if we stay within our means, which hopefully will give us more options around retirement etc later. I would only consider moving again if we could buy outright, or significantly lower our mortgage.

[theluckiest]

We're in exactly the same position. This was always meant to be our first time buyer house as I was vastly pregnant and desperate for a place of our own. The plan then was that once we had got on the ladder we would move onto somewhere bigger later on...

Except we bought in 2007 just before the housing dip. Bugger. Luckily, it's a 3 bed house and we like it. Kids are happy at local good school, family nearby. Only reason to move is space. I am on double the income that I earned in 2007 but we too would need to add £100k to buy up and I really don't want to do that.

So we're making space instead - building an extension which we can now afford...is this an option for you?

I must say, once the decision that we would stay and just make the house exactly how we want it has been really refreshing. All those 'little jobs' (and bigger ones) are being ticked off to make the best of what we've got.

[theluckiest]

Meant to say, judging by this thread, the only way to move up to a considerably bigger property is to start in London then move somewhere else!!

Or, as you say, the lottery is another option...

[WorraLiberty]

I'm still in my first home 21 years later.

I remember saying I'd sell up and move after 5 years

[Purplehonesty]

I bought my first home at 21 with a 5k deposit from my dad

Our second home was bought using the profit we made on that

Third and final home was a barn given to us by my dad but we spent all our money (and then some) doing it up.

Won't move again it's our forever home

[DuvetDayEveryday]

We 'made' £100k on our first flat (dh bought it when he was 22), increased our mortgage from £50k to £150k based on our dual income, to buy our first family home. Six years later after several hefty pay rises for both of us we doubled our mortgage, had an extra £50k equity and utilised the help to buy scheme for a further £100k and bought our dream home.

Both previous properties were wrecks when we bought them and we did a lot of work. It's been so lovely to move into a brand new shiny luxury house. The mortgage is slightly eye watering but we get by, although we don't have foreign holidays or flash cars.

[wherearemymarbles]

We stayed in our flat as ling as possible and moved from a smarter area to a less well healed one. Our old small 2 bed fLat currently worth a out 200k less then our 5 bed semi. Bonkers of you think about it.

[Babettescat]

Bought first home two years ago for 169k with 90% mortgage

Sold first home this month for 198k which paid off remaining 150k mortgage on it and left 40k surplus with which we put down 28k deposit on new house worth 275k and have 12k left over to do a garage conversion, laminate floor whole house and put 4K in bank

[Babettescat]

Bought first home two years ago for 169k with 90% mortgage

Sold first home this month for 198k which paid off remaining 150k mortgage on it and left 40k surplus with which we put down 28k deposit on new house worth 275k and have 12k left over to do a garage conversion, laminate floor whole house and put 4K in bank