How much money did you have left after buying a house?

[Knan10]

How much of your savings did you have to spend on your house deposit, legal fees etc. And how much savings did you have left at completion?

I've just paid the deposit and fees and I have £200 left but I can't wait to move, we've been renting for years and the mortgage is less than half the rent. I will save up again and hopefully overpay the mortgage.

We had about 8k left but it needed everything doing, it was only a really small mortgage though and we didn't have children and both worked full time locally so our costs were minimal so we could easily top back up the savings, when we moved the 2nd time we kept back 4k, moved into a house that needed very little work bar a new boiler and the garden however within the first 6 months we got 3 flat tyres, washer broke, fridge freezer gave up the beast from the east storm blew off some of the roof and snow leaked through, and the shower stopped working, I these 6 months we had 2 children in childcare and I was working part time so it was very difficult and only now 2 years on are we starting to get back to being able to save albeit much smaller amounts.

We bought a house significantly more than we intended initially, because overall it was much better value (much bigger, never need to move, free flooring, turf, fencing, tiling etc) which meant we had zero savings.

Then used 0% credit cards to furnish the whole house.

That was 1.5 years ago, and we will be credit card debt free next month.

Don't regret it, would do the same in a heartbeat.

I think you should buy the best house you can afford, and we did. Paying it back was easy because we had the house of our dreams.

Ours is a new build and I agree with a PP that says there are no unexpected bills for a long time.

However I am in the public sector so secure employment.

We are not quite ready to buy but I think we'll have barely anything left. Part of me worries it will leave us in a precarious position but the other half says you need to take a bit of a risk to get on the ladder. Its so hard to get a huge deposit together having savings on top can be tricky.

Thanks everyone so far

We spent basically all our savings on moving. The original plan was my grandparents were going to lend us £1000 towards solicitors fees, but as it turned out we had managed to save up the extra by the time we needed it so didnt have to borrow from them.

After 5 years we had saved up a further £20k and used that to build an extension this Autumn. We are now pretty broke but so glad we did it as having the extension has made lockdown much more bearable.

My first house left me with £3000 to sort out the hearing as it needed central heating.

Thanks everyone

Buying the house wasn’t the worst, I had savings left- i then added to them for 18 months and at that stage took out a bank loan and with the loan plus savings I did extensive renovations. They went over budget so I ended up using credit cards and things were quite tight for a while - no social life, all unnecessary expenditure cut etc. It was definitely worth it but I’m aware I’m very lucky that nothing went wrong in that time, as I had no financial reserve.

First house zero. Ending up having to use credit cards as had underestimated stamp duty and fees.

Don't regret it at all, credit cards now gone and I was pleased to get on the ladder when I did.