Pulling out a house near to exchange

12 months? If that was necessary nobody would ever buy a house. Don't be so silly.
Better to buy than be at the mercy of a landlord and the fickle rental market! Renting with kids isn't much fun - can't decorate their room, hard to find new places near school when a landlord fucks you around.

So much wrong with this.

If you're close enough to be buying a house and thinking of having a baby then money should be all joint.

Paying a mortgage is what you are doing now. Why not pay your own.

Nothing is guaranteed in life. Think about what you'd be more upset to lose.

Chances are you'll be stuck renting if you don't make the move now before you have a baby and give up work even if short term as then you'd have to prove you can afford a mortgage. Even though many people's mortgage is cheaper than their rent, banks still make it very difficult.

It's like people who say they can't afford to get married but have a child. How many ever marry. Really they mean they can't afford the big pointless tens of thousands wedding as a marriage can be achieved in a couple of hundred quid.

On balance, buying is a fixed or 'known' cost.
Continuing to rent is out of your control, (rent rises/landlord could sell etc)

Yeah mine was £1500 eventually when I sold a flat in London in 1997. Started much less than less 4 years previously

I am hearing a lot of “hopefully” in your posts and personally I don’t base financial decisions on hope. I base them on worst case, ie, one of us loses our job, you find you desperately want to be a SAHP after DC is born etc. Do you have 6-12 months expenses saved etc? How are you going to manage nursery costs if government funding doesn’t happen, you don’t get pay rises and you get pregnant right away etc. if that math doesn’t add up then I would not buy. I would buy something cheaper and suck it up.

Currently not living in our dream house and on paper could afford a way bigger mortgage but we don’t have the cash savings for 12 months expenses with that size mortgage and won’t compromise on long term pension savings rate etc so we’re staying put. I don’t want financial worry that keeps me up at night.

I’ll only have £200 disposable income after all bills, petrol and food, and other half £500.

So £325 disposable income each? If you are planning to have a baby together I really recommend insisting on fair finances now, since your income will be the one taking the hit over mat leave and if you return to work part-time.

Your better off buying now before you have a baby

if you try to buy when you have a baby a mortgage company will take into account nursery fees
the fact that you have a dependent child
you may also be part time

so you may not be able to borrow as much

the same will happen when you remortgage but at least you will have made repayments into your home

If it’s a new build as long as you aren’t moving in the next five years or less as you pay a premium for a new build which you rarely get back if you try to sell within a few years

Bought a new build around 6yrs ago. FTB and had the same wobble about money as you. We pay around £20pcm management fees - they have only increased around £3pcm in that time. We started TTC when we bought the house and have only just been blessed with our first. Yes it’s a worry but buy the house, you never know how long TTC will take anyway and if it’s the right house, money will have a way of working itself out, even with added childcare costs (at least that’s what I’m reminding myself now 🤣)

We've lived on a private road with fees more than that for over 20 years. Yes they can put the amount up but they never have. Also no one pays them.

There's a bank account with a fair amount of money from when people used to pay them though, money is just sitting there.

It's because British housing rises in value so much.

Our first flat, in four years has risen 60k in value. So in four years, paying the exact same as we were paying in rent, we've made 60k through doing nothing. More actually, as we've also paid some of the mortgage off through our monthly payments.

Admittedly houses rise the most in London/South East - but across the UK you generally make a lot of money by buying your home.

If it's truly disposable income then you'll be fine. Budget for childcare though, even with the new free hours it isn't cheap. Buy the house!

I’d wait a little as it’s likely rages to come down a bit in the next few months. 5% for 5 yrs is a very high rate (without time value over 20 yrs you pay double of what you borrowed).
the numbers aren’t stacking up and if I were you I’d hold off TTC - just have a read on here about the costs of a child (especially if you don’t have much grandparent childcare).

The service charge between my sister & I when we owned a flat in London was £1500 a year 😱. It’s probably gone up by now! We didn’t even have a lift. I know that’s London & it’s always more expensive but £150 per annum sounds very reasonable to me.

Your pay will drop with mat leave if you decide to take the full year.... be sure to claim tax relief on your childcare by opening a childcare account once you return to work but also check if universal credit can help first as they pay upto 85% and tax free childcare only give you 20%. Buy the house if you love it, you can always tighten your belt if things go south but I understand your reluctance completely.

We have paid about the same low management fee for our shared car parking for about 10 years now. I worried too but it's never gone up.

If you are in England there is no penalty for pulling out prior to exchange though you will still pay your solicitor and any surveys etc
@HappyKite2067

You’re just having the normal wobble before completion. We’ve all been there. £700 is really not a bad disposable income figure- £175 per week to spend on whatever you like after food etc?

The only thing I’d say is your partner having £500 and you having £200 seems unfair. In my opinion you should contribute a percentage so you both end up with the same disposable income, or it all goes into one account.

I’ve bought a few new builds, they get a bad press. It’s carefree home ownership for a few years with building warranties etc, it helps knowing you won’t have any unexpected building costs. We bought an old house last year, 2 months after moving in- £2.5k on a new boiler!

Good luck!

I might be more laid back about it because I had less than that when I was a single parent to 2 and I brought my old house post divorce. It all worked out. And when I sold I made a tonne of money that I invested here. ( our mortgage went up £1k a month in December and we’re still making it work!) So it was scary. But it was all ok. I did get promoted so my money rose but a good budget and a low maintenance house and you’ll be good. Any issue with the house won’t be your problem to sort.

As a non-Brit I'm always intrigued by the "renting is dead money" argument. Yes it is, but so is the interest paid on a mortgage (as opposed to repayment of principal), and given OP would be paying more than her current rent she'd also be missing out on, for instance, dividend payments generated by an alternative investment for that amount of money.

OP I'd be looking VERY carefully at the basic math of buying. As far as investment advice goes, the smart thing is to calculate the price to rent ratio, meaning you figure out how many annual rents you'd have to pay to buy an equivalent property. If houses are more than 20 annual rents advice usually is to stay well away and to invest an equivalent amount in other appreciating asset classes instead to come put ahead.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-to-rent-ratio.asp

What will the £700 need to cover?

If it's just holidays, lunch out, Christmas gifts etc, the you'll be fine.

So long as you've got all the essentials covered (mortgage, insurance, commuting, utilities, food, council tax, car maintenance, pension, rainy day savings), I think you should go for it. You're never going to feel completely financially secure. Be sensible and don't go wasting £thousands in furniture village on new sofas etc!

Is there a reason you're ttc right now? Would it be wiser to wait until you've been in the new house a year to rebuild a little savings pot?

Just get on with it OP. These are natural worries for all first time buyers. You wouldn't have secured the mortgage deal if it was unaffordable.