How do people without family help buy houses ??

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As the title says, how do people who don’t have family help buy houses ?? I’ve been saving for the last 10 years to buy a house and every time I get close, prices seem to jump again and it’s still out of reach.

Me and my partner earn decent salaries and have what I thought was a decent deposit but it just never seems enough. Prices in my area seem to have got totally out of control and 2 bed bungalows are now going up for £650k.

Everyone we know has been given significant deposits (£200k+), whereas we have no family help and it’s starting to feel like it will never happen . Has anyone been able to buy in this situation ?

It was a while ago for me admittedly but I was buying on my own so a similar challenge. I had no deposit help. I bought a studio flat in a fairly undesirable area and then stepped up in terms of area and property with each move. It sounds like you need to lower the spec as a bungalow is not the most economic starter home. Tell us where you are and we will help with the search.

I was lucky in that when I first bought you could get a 100% mortgage, which I did and took 40k equity out of it 3 years later to buy my next house. I was 27 when I bought the first property.

I've never really been able to save very much, so a deposit was out of reach. I'm now 46 and pretty much everyone I know has had inherited wealth/parental assistance to get them on the property ladder. Except for us. I think it's either that or move back in with parents and save what you would spend on rent.

We didn’t have children until after the hiuse was sorted. If you already have children then that’s probably the main reason. Renting and childcare and saving for a deposit must be difficult.

1. Be realistic about what/where you can afford
2. Accept you’ll need a large/long mortgage

Optional number 3) Take advantage of anything like Help To Buy

We’ve moved to an area we don’t like 150 miles from where we are from (it’s horrible and usually the butt of jokes), but it’s fairly cheap.

I’m 41. If I lived where I wanted to, I couldn’t afford to rent now, let alone buy. When we were priced out of the rental market where we’d lived all our lives we had to make a drastic change.

You look at what you can afford. I bought in a shabby area rather than the leafy suburb I lived in before. A friend moved to Edinburgh because she couldn't see any way of buying in London. It is tough, but there are always options.

But actually a previous poster is correct - many people just rent until they inherit. It took me a while to work this out, because it wouldn't work in Ireland where I'm from (larger families, smaller estates). But in the UK dwindling family sizes mean a lot of wealth filters down eventually.

@Waxonwaxoff0 do you mind me asking how much deposit you had and was it just a normal mortgage?
I’m a single parent and would love to own a place one day but everyone’s said it’s practically impossible on one salary.

I would assume that the commonly stated solution of ‘move in with parents and save’ is not an option when no family support is specified? - but then the well-off never recognise what it really is to have nothing, and the op’s mention of 650k houses is suspicious in that regard.

They don't buy in areas where 2 bed bungalows cost 650k. People I know who have had help or given help its about 15-25k not hundreds of thousands.

£650k sounds an unrealistic first time buy. Bungalows are more pricey than flats, sure there will be a flat (with a lift if you need one floor) or a terrace for a lot less.

I’ve been saving for the last 10 years to buy a house and every time I get close, prices seem to jump again and it’s still out of reach

Then you need to revise what you want vs. What you can afford.

Putting off purchase to save a bigger deposit for increasing prices- you’ll never catch up.

Get your mortgage in principle, add to your deposit, and buy something in that budget.

I had no help. The only thing I could afford was a two bed student flat. So thats what I bought. Rented the spare room.

Meanwhile my friends were doing what you are- saving for that house with a garden.

10 years later I had sold and moved up the ladder to that house, they were still saving.

If you want to buy, just buy. It may be a one bed flat vs the 2 bed bungalow but you buy what you can afford.

You will have to widen your net.

I don’t know anyone who started off in a house worth that much. They were (a lot) less than half of that for a first house. You will have to look at somewhere cheaper.

By living somewhere where houses are much cheaper.

A 2 bed bungalow around here wouldn't even get close to £650k

I started in a teeny 1 bed flat in a not so great area so was then able to sell for a bit more and move up. Depends if buying or living in a nice house/area is your priority.

I've just had a little nosy on Rightmove.

A 2 bed bungalow where I live is £400-600k.
There are plenty of 2 bed houses and flats for under £200k. Cheapest £125k. If I moved 10 miles,there would be even more cheaper.

Do you particularly need a 2 bed bungalow? They are expensive for the floorspace you get. Houses and flats are cheaper per square metre.

You say you can't move because of your jobs, moving even 5 miles might make a difference in what you can afford. That's cycleable if you don't drive.

A full time job, evening and weekends working in a bar, antique stall in a market all day Saturday, no holidays, no car, no new clothes, no luxury food, not much going out. Which of those are you prepared to do/do without?

Some two bed flats near me are £250,000. Zone 4 south east.
I bought in 2009 - thankfully I’d saved up a deposit - around £40,000 otherwise I would have needed to move further out.
You need to move out.

We managed it in zone 3 London by getting a small place in a cheaper area and then paying as much as possible into the mortgage.

95% mortgage as FTB and we got a loan out to bump up our deposit to make the 5% (the payments for the loan were taken off our income for buying purposes, and we proved we could afford the mortgage payment plus the loan payment).

The four of us had to squeeze into a 2 bed flat for 3 years, but the deposit for the (much larger) next place was in 3 figures because the flat went up in value in that time and we'd paid off the loan and a fair amount extra on the mortgage.

I have saved a bit of money, even if just £10 a month since I started work to put towards a deposit for a house. I grew up in a council house, knew I would not be eligible for social housing, and didn't want to get stuck renting because its expensive here, more so than mortgage payments every month. I also did so much overtime when I worked nights for the premium pay even though I hated hated hated it- glad I did though as over the course of 15 years since my first Saturday job had enough for half of a deposit. My now husband managed to save a lot by living in barracks when in the military, so when he left and we wanted to buy we had enough.

Move to a cheaper area (you say you don’t want do this but it’s part of the answer) and / or buy a wreck. We afforded a 3 bed semi with 2 bathrooms and a driveway doing this

If I were in your position I would buy somewhere cheaper and rent it out. And rent where I was living. At least you would be on the property market. And you would eventually pay of the mortgage on that and own a property.

Not condoning getting out a loan for this, but if house prices and rents are going up 5% a year, and you can get a loan at a rate of 2% a year, it kind of makes sense.

Stop looking at 2 bed bungalows that cost 650k, that’s insane.

I just bought a 1 bed flat in London completely on my own - my family is incredibly poor so no chance of help. I saved up 20k over the past 6/7 years by living in cheap house shares, not going on holiday, not having a car (I can’t drive anyway) rarely buying new clothes and not drinking much (I don’t particularly like drinking anyway). I put down a 10% deposit on a 200k flat - it’s small but it’s 5 mins from a train station that gets me into London Bridge in 12 minutes, big communal garden and nice parks. If I’d wanted a 2 bed anything as my first purchase I’d still be waiting, or I’d have had to move a long way from my job/friends/life in London which I didn’t want to do so I went for the tiny flat.

@Neondisco I'm confused as to why it needed to be asked. I doubt many people think they'll buy a £650k bungalow in the exact area they want for their first house

I know one person only who was helped by parents, the rest of us did it ourselves. We worked hard, took as many hours as we could and saved forgoing luxuries as house ownership was important to us. We didn’t spend a fortune on getting married and waited for children until after we were on the property ladder. It’s perfectly possible to do it without help but very dependent on the choices people make.