High cost of buying a house - how has it affected YOU and your family?

[rumtumtigger]

There is a story in the news that people are having fewer children and later in life due to the high cost of buying a house.

I am interested to see how it has affected us all - I am sure some people have benefited hugely from this phenomenon whilst others have found it a nightmare...what's your story?

[ruty]

definitely true for us. We are dying to have a second child but live in a very small flat and hope to move. Looked at a two bedroom terraced house locally that had snail trails on the carpets and very scruffy and it was 325 grand. near a very good Cof E primary school. Who can afford that? If we had been able to buy in the nineties then of course we would have been onto a huge profit. the govt really doesn't seem to care. for us it seems the only way we'll ever be able to buy a house is to buy abroad, altho ironically it is British buyers who are pushing prices up abroad too.

[Flamesparrow]

We've just done it the other way round - the children were more important to us than owning property. We are pretty miserable about the fact that we are probably spending more on rent than we would be on a mortgage, and the it is the same as burning money as we get nothing at the end of it. :(

House prices + our wages though means that we could possibly afford a bedsit.

[ruty]

it does FioFio. But thats the point, many people having children now didn't have the means to buy in the nineties [or the wherewithal] i mean now i wish i could have borrowed a deposit from my parents and bought when i was a student or when i started work, but they didn't have any money anyway. No where else in the world have prices risen so ridiculously high in such a short space of time. Greedy estate agents i suppose, but don't know why its not the same in other countries. there is no chance now of getting a mortgage for a house on an average salary as there used to be.

[Flamesparrow]

Yup - we missed out by about a year or two... if we'd decided to buy somewhere when we'd first gotten together, it would have been possible, and we would be sat in our own house now. But because we insanely decided to see if we liked eachother first , its now impossible.

[colditz]

Unless a huge amount changes, we will never own a house. I am 25, so by the time I was old enough to buy the property boom had started, and by the time it occurred to me, it was too late.

[katzg]

We were very lucky and bought our first house in 1998 for 28.5K!! when we were 20, we sold it in 2001 for 43.5K and bought the house we now own for 85K, which is now worth approx £160K, if we hadn't bought when we did then there is no way we could afford to both work part time, have 2 children and a 3-bed house, with garage and garden.

The only sting in the tail for us is that if we'd not sold our first house and had held onto it, which we could have afforded to do, then it would be worth £115K now!! and we would be mortage free!

[LIZS]

We first bought in 1990 - 2 bed flat for 67.5k, but got stung by the price crash and actually had negative equity to pay off when we sold it in 1994. Then bought our present house for 100k, which was in a less expensive area, so more for the money, but really need to sell it now and move somewhere a bit bigger but market is not so buoyant as it was a few years back so time is passing by. Would have moved 5 years ago had we not gone abroad and hung onto it to keep in the market. Even so we probably then wouldn't have moved to the right area for the kids' present school so would probably be in the same boat.

[coppertop]

We have no chance of buying our own house. Even if I went back to work full-time and we miraculously found free childcare it still wouldn't be enough to qualify for a mortgage.

[hulababy]

We were not in a position to do particualrly well from the housing market, although did manage to get on the ladder before the really big rises. Since though we haven't really made huge profits in our house choices as we have tended to move too soon to do so. However we have been lucky that DH's salary has also risen pretty well in that time, enabling us to now have a nice house in a lovely location, where we are very happy. However there are some constraints due to that decision, albeit not big ones. Our decision to only have one child, although finacial issues come into it, are not just because of money and not because of our mortgage either.

[BettySpaghetti]

We were very lucky in that we took the plunge onto the property ladder at the right time about 10 years ago (although at the time we obviously didn't realise it was the "right" time - it was a big step commitment-wise as I had to take on the 4x earnings mortgage in my name alone as DP had only just gone self-employed).

We also sold and moved house about 4 years ago making a substantial profit but put this into buying and renovating a bigger house in a different area. Our mortgage therefore isn't that big.

We often talk about the fact that if we hadn't have done it then we would be stuffed now (like so many friends who can't afford to buy). No doubt it would have had a knock-on effect re:having children too. As it is we had DD 6yrs ago and now have DS too and I'm currently a SAHM as we can just about manage our mortgage without me working.

I think its awful that so much of it is down to pure chance in that if you're not in a position to buy at a certain time it becomes more and more difficult/impossible.

[ruty]

why has it happened here and not in the rest of the world tho?

[katzg]

Fio - the mortgage on our first house was £190 a month! to rent the same house next door would have cost us £450!!! WHY WHY WHY did we sell?

[GDG]

Fortunately it hasn't affected us. We first bought in 1998 with a 100% mortgage, pre marriage and children. Sold and moved out of London after we married, where our accumulated deposit allowed us to buy even more. Stayed in next house for 5 yrs and all 3 children were born while living there. That house would have been fine for us but we've just moved to a much bigger house - helped along again by a large deposit from the old house. We really don't need to move from this house now so although we have a large mortgage, it's affordable and we shouldn't need to upgrade again. Will do lots of improvements to this house though.

Feel very sorry for those struggling to buy or upgrade with todays prices, although the hike in prices has been a good thing for us.

[expatinscotland]

I'll never own property in this country until my father dies. Hopefully that won't be anytime soon.

But there is absolutely NO way we can afford to purchase a property here.

As it is, rent is so high we've only got space for two kids - b/c ours are the same sex. We can't afford to have anymore b/c of space and not being able to afford to rent anything bigger.

I think the price of property here - and the way it's been allowed to get out of control - is ridiculous and one of our chief reasons for considering leaving.

[Caligula]

I moved out of London, my home town where most of my friends and family live. I had to decide whether the support network outweighed the mortgage costs, and it just didn't.

Bummer.

[Uwila]

The high costs of childcare and rent prevent me from buying a house. Oh, and then there's the debt.

[suzywong]

I live with my MIL

enough said

[CountessDracula]

When we bought our first house in 1997 we were scoffed at as apparantly it was the top of the market

Have bought and sold twice since then and now have a nice house in a great area that we can afford, with room for growth if we have more kids (fat chance ). We do both work though, we could still afford on one of our salaries but would have to cut back a lot on luxuries.

[rarrie]

We didn't do too bad. Bought in 1998 for 90k, sold three years later (2001) for 130k. Bought second house for 150k, it is now worth 220k.

Trouble is with second baby on the way, we really need an extra bedroom, but now that I work part time, it will be a stretch getting a bigger mortgage. Ironically, as our mortgage is due to finish when I'm 48, we'd like to extend the number of years on our mortgage and extend it by 15k - which would buy us a bigger house. That would reduce our monthly payments by about £100 a month, yet the mortgage companies won't do it, becuase I don't earn enough! Grrrr!

[expatinscotland]

I don't think it's even the high cost of buying a house, but high rent as well. I mean, we couldn't afford to rent a three-bed house, much less buy one.

[Uwila]

Rarrie, could you increase your hours for just long enough to get the mortgage and then go back to part time?

CD, I take the venture down IVF is not going well? Sorry.

[Flamesparrow]

Yes, Half the time I wonder what mortgages the landlords are paying (if any). My plan if I won the lottery was to buy somewhere for us to live, and a couple of family homes - then rent them out at something stupid like £50 a month... and give another family a chance at saving some money to get their own place. (No point just giving the houses away - that would only help the one family, renting gives the chance for more people to benefit from it).

[Uwila]

So what do people think the answer is? More housing? Who would fund it?

And what is going to happen to the pension situation when people are retiring and don't even own houses to live in? Where will they go?