Is Our Mortgage Sustainable? Advice Needed

[Gabaru]

We are first-time buyers, and our mortgage for £575,000 has been approved. We are putting down a £11,000 deposit. My take-home income is £4,200 per month, and the mortgage repayment will be £2,430 per month.
Given the current cost of living, I wanted to ask if this setup seems sustainable.Any advice or insights from those in a similar situation would be greatly appreciated.

I would get onto doing that spreadsheet asap. Work out what your actual expenditure has been over the last 12 months on everything. Once you are a homeowner you also need to budget something for maintenance, repairs, replacing stuff. Our mortgage used to be around 40% of our take home. Do you have family abroad and want to be able to afford to visit? If so you need to factor those costs in too.

Honestly I wouldn’t do it personally, far too tight. Our household bills excluding mortgage so things like utilities, insurances, TV, wifi, council tax etc come to £1000 ish, that doesn’t include car insurance, phone contracts etc so with that added on probably closer to £1200ish.

So of your £1800 after mortgage you could be left with £600 or less after purely paying all household bills. Out of that £600 you’ve then got to do your food shopping, toiletries, cleaning products, dentist appointments, prescriptions, school dinners, school trips, new clothes/shoes for everyone, saving for christmas/birthdays and God forbid something breaks, boiler, oven etc you’d be looking at taking out debt to pay for those things.

That’s way too high. Crazy.

We rent and the rent is half my salary, which is similar to yours and bills take the rest. OH not working. We are hanging on by the skin of my teeth. I would have a bit of a rethink if I was you. It's very stressful.

'Once you are a homeowner you also need to budget something for maintenance, repairs, replacing stuff.'

Exactly. If you can only save £1-200 a month when your rent is £700 cheaper a month than these proposed mortgage costs (which I think are completely wrong anyway), how are you going to manage with these higher costs of home ownership. You will potentially be £1000 down every month. What happens when the boiler breaks and you suddenly need £2000 to replace it?

No, it's not enough. Wait until your wife starts earning and can contribute.

You can get a 3 bed for between £400-£450 in places like East Ham. Or move further out to SE London, zone 5. Good schools and easy and quick to get into central by train. A lower mortgage would give you more security.

Can you expand on why she is unable to get a job, whats stopping her?

Either you wife needs a job, or you need a decent pay rise and bonus.

Our household income is about twice yours but our mortgage repayment is much higher because we can't extend our term beyond DH's 75th birthday.

See if you can have a mortgage for 35-40 years for now. It might make your payments more affordable right now.

When your wife gets a job, overpay as much as you can afford, then remortgage for a shorter term and higher payments when your fix ends.

Nope too expensive. Look at how lots of people have struggled with the increase in interest rates. If they were to suddenly jump again you’d be screwed. Think again.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/157743539

Just an example- lots of places in Bexleyheath, Bexley, Dartford etc.

That's steep.
Are you up sizing too? If you are then that will also impact bills.
Why is your wife struggling to get a job. Can she retrain? She shouldn't really have any issues finding a job in London tbh
I think if you want to go ahead with that mortgage you need more disposable income

That's their business. They should get a place with a smaller mortgage if one salary is the life situation that works for them.

You’d only have what £1700 for all bills, food and car expenses, hair dressers, clothes, etc after the mortgage.

our bills with no mortgage are something like £850 a month, council tax, energy, water, 2 x car insurance, pet insurance, house insurance, life insurance, Netflix, internet, basic sky tv package, mobile phone bills. Your bills for what I’m presuming is a bigger house than a 3 bed semi are likely to be more.

so you’d have a max of £850 (possibly nearer £650 if you have higher energy and council tax than me) a month for food, clothes, petrol, car tax, car repair bills, hairdressers. I wouldn’t want to live like that. It’s maybe possible, I’m sure people manage on less but not a nice level. I spend £100 a week on food plus top ups for 3 people!

I'd say no, we have 2 people working and take home around the same as you, our mortgage is £650, you're paying almost £2000 a month more, that's insane!

Far too high. We take home 3.5k a month and our mortgage is £460 a month. Even that feels difficult to manage some months if we have a few big things going out aswell.

I'm going to join the chorus of asking why your wife doesn't just get a job - any job? Is there a language issue holding her back? If that is the case, perhaps she could spend some time doing intensive classes or some re-training to help her get herself back on her feet.

I would feel incredibly uncomfortable spending nearly 60% of my income on my mortgage, having to single-handedly support a teenager and another adult, and with the prospect of rising interest rates looming all the time. Is there really no slightly cheaper area of London you could move to? You earn well so you must have skills, it seems odd that you HAVE to live in one specific area of London.

The numbers don’t make sense. If £575k is 5.5 x your salary that would mean you earn around £100k

But that doesn’t match £4,200 a month. It would be more like £5,500. I earn £85k and take home £4600

Sorry but it's concerning you are asking other people on the internet if you can manage when you already have said you have rent of £1500 and only save £100/£200. Clearly you cannot continue to life how are you are and get a bigger mortgage. Only you will be able to know how much your spending on things you can cut back on.
Just because a mortgage will lend you that doesn't mean you should take it.

I do not understand how people are not able to work out if they can afford to live on X amount. Do people do no sort of budgeting at all? I know exactly what I spend each month and on what. I then can work out exactly what I spend each year. I annualise costs like the cost of having a car, so that I know what I need to put aside each month.

I really recommend that everyone budgets like this. At least it would stop the tedious, endless, 'can I afford this' threads.

OP, only you know what your outgoings, and what standard of living you are prepared to accept, so only you are able to say whether you can live on the amount you will have left over.

It does look like it will be tight though.

I don't know anything about mortgages and I'm currently living well below the poverty line, however you asking us if £1800 is enough to cover all your other bills SCREAMS to me that you should not take on this huge commitment because you don't seem to know where your money is going as it is!

You need to sit down and do a thorough budget: not just all monthly bills, but all known annual/irregular bills too; plus amounts set aside for healthcare, holidays, gifts, clothing, etc, etc; everything to do with your child; emergency fund; and savings for your child's education and your own retirement. Just for starters.

If the OP is asking for advice on their finances, it is reasonable to ask about their income and their potential income plans. If the wife is never able to work again, then that would make a different to the advice they could get.

I agree with previous posters - I think k this is too expensive. Our take home is £9k per month with the mortgage at around £2k. I wouldn't feel comfortable with more than 50% mortgage payment - I think k it will be a miserable existence and no house is worth that.

That does not sound remotely affordable, sorry.

I bought a house and moved in to find the boiler wasn’t working, cost £7K to fix. A year later we had damp problems in the rear of the house, cost £2.5k for damp works, replastering and reflooring. The freestanding bath leaked, cost around £2k to buy a new bath and have it plumbed in.

Home ownership is expensive! It sounds like you won’t even be able to manage the mortgage payments, never mind the additional costs.

My advice would be to find a cheaper two bedroom home with an affordable mortgage to build up equity over the next 5 years or so and then look towards a bigger property after that.