I’m not missing something here am I? Universal credit, renting and saving for a deposit.

[tiredconfusedhungry]

Keeping it a bit vague. I’m separated, STBXH and I were looking at figures last night and we’re not going to come out with much to put towards a deposit. We’re looking at around £15k each, I’d need a deposit of around £60k - £70k and that’s to buy a 2 bed house.

We’re in the South East and house prices here are high, rent is high. We’re already in the ‘cheaper’ part, moving further away from where we are puts us in prime commuting land and would be more expensive.

Anyway, it’s likely I will end up renting and saving for a bigger deposit. I did a calculation on entitled to (based on no savings) and I could get some help with rent, which is great. It means I could save some money each month and then hopefully buy after about 4 years.

But now I’ve looked into it further, if you have more than £16k in savings you aren’t entitled to any help. Which I do understand, but it then means that after all essential bills and costs are covered, I’d have about £200 left a month. Which doesn’t go far with 2 kids and certainly wouldn’t leave me anything to save.

So essentially I’m never going to be able to save a deposit am I?

Probably unlikely to be worth it but how much could you get minus your mortgage if you rented your current home out and then split the monthly rental money and save it between you and STBXH while you both rent separately for a few years to save more and get more from when you do sell the house?

could you rent one place and split the cost with ex and you two switch between the main home and the rental so your never in the house together but both look after the children one at a time in the main house ? Only issue with that as he’s a cheating bastard he will probably bring his side chicks to the rental property.

Depending on location and similar to above could you turn your main home into an air b and b?

could you move in with family for a few years? Massive ask of a family member though

would STBXH agree to leave and let you keep the house until the youngest child is 18? And then sell

She’s not going to be able to save the other 45k in 6 months though is she.

". You’d literally be buying your home with taxpayer money. "

I had to lol at this statement, isn't that what landlords do? :-)

I’ve not rtft so sorry if this has already been suggested but would you consider shared ownership?

Im a single parent and have gone via this route since my relationship broke down last year. I’m also in the south east and including deposit and fees and I’ve paid £12,000.

I went for smaller share (25%) as outgoings slightly less which means I can manage financially and afford to save meaning in 5 years I can buy a larger share. I would have waited longer but I’m sharing one room with my 13 year old and need to move asap! I’ve opted to pay full stamp duty now so I don’t have to pay anymore when I buy a larger share later on. This will also be about £400 less a month than if I were to rent in the area I live in.

Have you looked into shared ownership schemes?

Help to buy mortgage is your option. We took 2 jobs and saved every penny for 4 years..vote Reform to kick out the illegals and there'll ve more government money floating about to support first-ltime buyers.

Lower deposit?

Is shared ownership an option? It's not ideal but if you could potentially afford something with your salary & that deposit.
You'd still have to pay rent on the unpurchased % but more stability than private renting & you could downsize when kids move out and buy something smaller outright, or buy the rest if you are able to increase your earnings once the kids are older.

You do know that UC starts to reduce when you have £6,000 in savings and then stops when you have £16,000. When you sell a property they can disregard it for 6 months if you plan to buy a new house but if you don’t buy a new house your claim will end. You will still have the deductions for having savings though

According to Stamer there’s plenty…where I don’t know 🤷‍♀️

No unfortunately. Also they deduct money for every £250 over 6k. We definitely have it harder than so e generations.
I private rent an a old council house with my 2 children and UC pay £500 towards my £750 rent. Although my wages knock this down. It's pretty crap as it's my friends uncles house that he bought for £4500 years ago under the 'right to buy scheme' the government made up. My nextdoor neighbour is a close friend and bought her house for £105,000 a few years ago. Her mortgage is only £350 per month as she has a 10% deposit. I just wish I could save to buy a housem

It’s not called the benefits trap for no reason. The system is ridiculous. To get out of it you need to earn significantly more than £40k, which is not as easy as a lot of people on here seem to think it is.

Racists have to shoehorn racism into every subject! Brexit got rid of European workforce and we don't have enough willing Brits to fill the vacancies left behind!

This reminds of an online debate I had with some first time buyers the other day who were adamant that they should be allowed to have mortgages of hundreds of thousands in desirable areas, I kept telling them to start with something modest so that you can build equity a lot sooner and be in a better position when it comes to selling a property.

You’ve got 2 kids. Will your home be their main residence? If so you can take more than 50% of the equity in your house. See a solicitor

Really? How do they do it?

They expect you to private rent with your share and when that's all gone you can class yourself as homeless and wait on a long list for social housing. You will never qualify for a mortgage alone.

I would look at shared ownership properties. Preferably not a flat, rather a freehold house.
I did that years ago in a somewhat similar situation and was able with a smallish deposit to claw my way to finally owning my own place. Was a struggle at times but worth it.

Can a shared ownership house be freehold? I thought the housing association is always the freeholder (I may be wrong though)

It dosent make sense that the tax payer, gives up a proportion of their wage that they probally need themselves for bills, so you can buy a house. Makes perfect sense to me.

The frustrating thing just a few years ago go is that when working you could claim working and child tax credit- this was
means tested but no savings threshold. So plenty of people could claim and hoard savings( the same ones that are moaning about the change over to tax credits)

It’s right that you shouldn’t be able to have savings too high on UC but the £16k limit on savings hasn’t changed in years despite the allowances etc changing every year.
10 years ago £16k would go a fair way towards a deposit- now that’s a drop in the ocean.

Thete's 2 bed flats to rent for much less than £1200/m and much less than £240k to buy in Thanet. Look at Margate or Ramsgate for starters.

This.

And this:
It’s not called the benefits trap for no reason. The system is ridiculous. To get out of it you need to earn significantly more than £40k, which is not as easy as a lot of people on here seem to think it is.

I'm 50, university degree, have always worked where I can around health and caring issues and and can only dream of earning more than this. As a single parent I've done bloody well to be earning what I do, but I cannot see a way out. Self sufficiency feels utterly unobtainable.

Yes, it does seem to be ok to pay rent, endlessly to a private landlord and get no housing security, but not ok to buy something that would give long term security and price wise decrease effectively.

Imagine complaining you cant save to buy a house with tax payer money. Use the 16k (which is more money than a lot of people have) to improve your circumstances. But expecting to pay less and being propped up by welfare, so you can save for a house, whilst people who work all hours getting no benefit to save for a deposit, are being taxed to the hilt to fund you is being an ultimate CF IMO.