I feel on a different planet to other mumsnetters in terms of budgets for purchasing homes

[Faith50]

Dh and I are discussing whether we can live comfortably if purchasing a house for £450k. We would have to seriously tighten the reins.

On the property forum I regularly read threads where MN are deciding where to live with a budget of anything from £800k to £1.3 million. What kills even more is when they receive advice that their budget will not stretch to particular roads in a given area. At this point I think "shoot me now!"

my first house cost 87.5k in 2014!

our house bought in 2018 was 142k and that felt like a lot to us!

I think you are on another planet.

I'm disabled, need a wheelchair to get out the house and only able to work part time. I've no chance of getting a mortgage, never mind being able to buy a house which would fit my needs. You clearly needed the reality check you've been given here if you're that ungrateful. Your budget would have me housed for life, several times over.

Gosh, tightening your belt for a £450,000 house. You poor things

Haha what a laugh I had 50k budget and was lucky to buy 40% of a house, reckon my top budget in a few years will be 150k when I'm qualified.

Try 120k. That's our budget (NW)

I'm always bemused by the 'come to Scotland it's so cheap' posts... Scotland is quite a large and varied place! It's not London or the SE but Edinburgh, St Andrews, Linlithgow and loads of other places are pretty expensive. Of course houses in less desirable or more remote parts are quite cheap because there is much less demand for them.

Perhaps I just feel strongly about it because we had to move out of Edinburgh to buy the kind of family home we wanted, despite an extremely healthy budget! We weren't even looking in the traditionally posh parts of the city.

There was a post a few months ago where the OP was choosing between two houses in Cumbria, both about £500k. They were massive and beautiful and way better than anything on offer in/near Edinburgh at that price point.

Well just look what 1,200,000 gets you where I'm from

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-70698052.html

My budget is £100k! Currently saving to buy.

I can get a 2 up 2 down for that in my area which is all I need. Never been fussed about having a big house though.

@Bookworm4 - I want to see my kids! People in my office do that from Cardiff, Scotland, the NE, but it's not a life I'd want.

Everyone has lots of people much richer and lots of people much poorer than them. Why are you comparing? Especially since you have a well above average budget yourself!

£450k is a good budget for many areas of the country but the property market in the U.K. is seriously skewed by region or even parts of regions so it's really not worth comparing

We bought for £550k in rural NE and our London friends were astonished by what we got (huge house, lots of land - lots of work but worth it)
My brother sold his grotty 3bed(ish) Bristol flat (in a newly gentrified area) for way more money than it was sensibly worth and at a similar value to our previous Northern City naice area, house which was in perfect condition and more than twice the size.

Our budget was 150k

We have shared ownership due to house prices in the area we live, worked out great.

Half our budget goes on the house but we manage our finances well. Paid for our car with cash, no sky tv, no membership fees except Netflix, only two beers a week, no smoking etc only one takeaway a month...

We just work our what we can afford and do that, the rest is saved or goes on our child.

Making a spreadsheet and taking 30 mins a week to keep track of it (online banking and spreadsheet skills help automate it).

You have to be ruthless and cut anything that doesn’t deliver value for money.

Very true @Cherryblossomtrees we had to move down from Aberdeen to be able to afford anything at all really. Plus side is we're near my family.

HappyParent2000 only two beers a week would deeply depress me. With £100 a week were able to feed our family of 5 plus dog and cat and have more than two beers!

@inwood unfortunately these are the choices that are made. Better finances but less time with kids, I’d rather travel than pay for a ludicrously overpriced house.

shoot you!?shoot me first then op becuse that amount is in my wildest drems.i have 75p.so i cant even afford the gun.
do you think we could ll pool togther somehow to buy the loch loman place.

Might as well shoot all of us while you're at it.
Asking for the thread to removed is a bit ott though.

Will you be tightening your diamond shoes too?

Hopefully the more robust replies have given you some perspective and now you can appreciate your good fortune and be grateful rather than comparing yourself unfavourably to the minority.

My son rents in a fairly expensive area of outer London where he can't afford to buy but neither could we! We could get a 1 bed flat there for the price of our detached property in west Wilts. Madness, but you just have to accept that's the way it is.

Considering we are in the south this is a relatively inexpensive area. Pretty much everywhere I've thought I might like to move to is outside my price range for a property broadly similar to mine.

kateandme

I’m in...
MN retreat in Loch Lomond. We just need 1.25m MNetters to subscribe about £1.20 each to cover the purchase price and fees etc.

It means absolutely nothing though. If my house costs 2m because it’s in London and the same place would be 1m in the SE outside London and 500k somewhere else, what exactly can you be jealous of?

I of course do the game of “what could I buy elsewhere in the country with how much my house is worth?” but then I remember our salaries would go down like 70% if we left too.

Comparison is the thief of joy!

Everyone has a different budget, and lives different lives.

We've just sold a 4 double bed Victorian house with a garden and garage for £500k and are buying a 3 bed basement flat for £750k- completely different areas of the UK. We've got friends with budgets from 250 to 1m, everyone is different.

And by that I mean the house won’t be any different but the cost will be.

I’m jealous of people with huge houses and loads of grounds. Those houses might be worth what a normal house in London is worth but they have a much higher standard of living.

Nobody is being unreasonable to be horrified at UK house prices and how owning a house is out of reach for many of us, especially young people. We also build tiny houses compared to the rest of Europe.

When standards of living decline from generation to generation of course many of us are dissatisfied.

Start a go fund me page, you poor love.