Does anybody else feel sad about never being able to buy a house?

[Curlyhairedbrummie]

I will probably never be able to buy a house and this does make me feel upset. I am wondering how anybody else in the same position feels? Do you get upset too, or have you accepted it or are you not fussed?

For context, I live in London and work in the public sector with my DP who has a relatively well paid job. We have one DS. Because of where we live we just can't afford a deposit. We're stuck in the limbo of paying expensive rent and unable to save for a deposit. We have talked about moving away but that would mean moving from our family and friends.

I think I feel resentful at the moment as we've just been given notice on the second property we've been in in the last two years. Both contracts we've entered have been 'long term' but both owners decided to sell up.

I just want to feel secure, feel at home and put down some roots!

Must you live in London forever? I know that may be a stupid question due to your jobs, families, communities, schools etc.

But you may be able to afford a home in a cheaper part of the UK.

I agree with Noodles. Properties could be in your price range if you moved.

Move to a cheaper area if you can.

Thanks for your response. We would be able to buy somewhere else probably in the north and we could easily get new jobs it's just that out network of family and friends are around us at the moment and we would be very isolated by moving away!

I couldn't afford to buy a house in my area as a first time buyer so I moved (only by half an hour but still). When I divorced I couldn't afford to buy a house in my area, so I went another half an hour further and bought shared ownership.
Instead of concentrating on what you can't do, why don't you see what you could do if you either moved area or changed your expectations, think genuine starter home or flat needing some tlc rather than a top spec 3 bed semi with garden.
I know someone who could only afford a 1 bed flat but they updated it and flipped it and moved up the property ladder slowly.

Why not buy a house somewhere else and rent it out? Or i have friends who rent in a VERY expensive country and have bought a holiday and a future retirement home in France.

Same position. Not London but an expensive area generally. Yes we could afford to buy if we moved 200+ miles away, but I’m not convinced we would be happy 200 miles away. We are saving for a deposit and hopefully one day (years) we will get there. In the meantime I remind myself we are fortunate that we are happy generally and we are fortunate to be able to afford to rent a lovely house in a lovely area and we live a lovely life.

You would build up a new network of friends but family is a different matter.

Do you live in an expensive part of London? Have you looked at moving somewhere cheaper where you could afford to buy but with a reasonable commute to your work place?

It's easy to say "move out of London", but in reality I don't know if it would help. Yes property is cheaper but wages are lower, so overall you're not much better off. We left london hoping to be better off but work was non existent and any jobs my DH could find paid about half of a london wage.

It was easier as a couple of decades ago but we relocated away from the SE as individuals and met when working in the Midlands. Because even then London was totally overpriced. Lots of my peers moved overseas.

Have you looked at shared ownership properties? That's how I got on the ladder and I've just sold it making a decent profit, enough to buy a house (non shared ownership). This is in Brighton, so although not London prices, still pretty expensive. I know they get some bad press but I believe people do benefit by starting out that way.

We moved area
Most people I know who could afford to buy in their area moved areas of it was that important to them to own a house

I know wages are less out of London. But one of the most expensive houses near me is £750k it has an indoor swimming pool and has five double bedrooms an enormous garden, double garage and long drive you could fit probably four cars on. MIL house is worth just over half a million, twenty minutes from Waterloo. I think ours would be close to a million, up here its worth about £300k.

I'm sure you can probably buy something, somewhere in London, even if you don't live in it, but rent it out.

I agree that London does have lots of job prospects and higher salaries; DH and I lived there for many years. We now live outside of London. Yes, salaries are lower, but so are house prices. We work closer to home so don't face 1hr+ commute. We have gained hours in the day we never had at home before. We also made new friends and new support networks (also not near family).

For us, it was important that when we do (finally) retire, we have a roof over our heads that is mortgage free. We certainly won't be able to pay rent/mortgage on our pension.

We moved out of Manchester to Cheshire. So many people are doing this as Manchester is so expensive and shit.
We don't feel isolated, we've made the effort to make friends, our family visit. We visit them

OP I really feel for you

Please don't hate me, I do own a small flat, I'm mid 40s. I totally see your point about not wanting to leave your support network and if I had been younger, I might have ended up asking my parents to convert the loft or something. Londoners being priced out of the place so extremely....I'm zone 5 btw so already doing an hour commute but now don't wish to leave elderly mother either. I don't know why people think "move away" is so easy.

Problem is unless u get bonuses u get stuck in a small house like us. We can’t move up as we can’t save enough to get a bigger place so we r stuck always in a small house, what with stamp duty and the costs of etc

Thank you for all your replies! We have been looking into shared ownership but I am a little dubious as some people swear by them and others not so much, but I guess it would be better then renting.

We've also been looking at areas that are within a commuteable distance to London, where rentals would be cheaper which would enable us to save for a deposit.

We have so much family round us though, I would be reluctant to move further than an hour away from parents, brothers, sisters nieces and nephews!

buy elsewhere & rent it out? I know a few friends who have done this.

I think I've stopped thinking about it? We are lucky in that we live abroad and tenancies are secure. I hated renting in the UK, fussy landlords that don't let you paint or put up a shelf.