How do people in their late 30s afford £600k+ homes in the South East?

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So many people I know with jobs worse than mine have houses worth £600k+

We are in the South East so £600k+ isn’t actually a super fancy house. Of course no one talks about their finances and it would be crude to ask.

I am almost certain if you have a house worth this much then you must have had at least £300k in cash for a deposit otherwise the mortgage would be too much.

My group of friends is only late 30s/early 40s so haven’t had decades to build up equity.

Is my hunch right that they all must have been gifted 100s of grand from their parents? This seems absolutely wild but I can’t imagine another route.

If you have a house that is 600k+ tell me honestly how you managed it?

I’d guess inheritance or saving to the point of insanity- my friend’s ex boyfriend saved like the most obsessive person from when he was a child, through working from when he was 16, through an electrician’s job etc etc. They broke up because his whole world was literally overtime and saving pennies. Not as expensive a house but he does own a house outright now and plans to retire mid 40s (but she did say she laughed when she met him in the pub and he had his own drink with him like a teenager, she said he’ll never be able to retire and not count on saving the money that comes in!)

Inheritance from their grandparents is starting to filter through.

Ours was £1.3m. no inheritance or gifts from anyone , DH is a lawyer.

Early 40’s and no inheritance here from my side or my partner’s side, and we don’t earn mega money.. we met a few years ago and combined the equity from houses we had had separately. This makes us lucky yes, but also a lot of it is thanks to my 20 year old self who put getting on the property ladder above anything else meaning when it came to buying together we had a good deposit. South East here. x

They have either earned it or been given/inherited it. There isn't really another option.

People at the older end of your question will be more likely to have benefited from the rapid house price rises we have seen. Buying a £200k house 20 years ago could easily have doubled their money. So if combined with assets from a partner, £600k purchasing power doesn't seem unreasonable.

I don’t have a house worth £600k but yes inheritance / gift from parents very common. Also pretty normal to max out your mortgage borrowing ime. Some jobs - law, finance, medicine etc - also make £600k house achievable without parental help.

Probably parental help but it’s perfectly possible they’ve been building up equity since for ~15 years if they’re late 30/early 40s. Modest parental help and/or saving like mad to get their first place in their mid 20s then a few moves in between then and now +
2 solid incomes could easily end up with a 600k house now.

The same way anyone else has afforded a large mortgage in the past. Getting on the property ladder early, building some equity, working in London and commuting out. If they are late 30s early 40's their parents will only by around 60 ish so unlikely to be in receipt of inheritance yet, even if their grandparents were leaving money it would go to parents first.

There was a bit of a housing slump in 2008-2013. So if an early 40s person bought at around 25 years old they have had time to build up equity. They might have got help with a small deposit then, rather than a bigger one now. House prices in my bit of the south east, have increased 100% since 2009. (Not so easy for late 30s)

Other people live at home for free for 5 years and save very big deposits by focusing on savings.

And yes others are given them by parents or inherit from grandparents.

Im late 40s and don't have a 600k house though.

inheritance is propping up the housing bubble / isn’t it nearly half FTB? Haven’t checked

and some people just save more easily that others

A spot of social influencing or only fans

200k from inheritance, £30k of my own saved up in my 20s and bought around age 30

Well my house is worth around 300k and I'm a single parent on the equivalent of a minimum wage full time job, so I can easily see how a couple could own a 600k house. I bought mine 10 years ago for around 200k. I saved the deposit when I earned a bit more but not loads. No help.

Very good jobs, Family money or a combination of both. That was the case with those that I knew.

Not me. I am sat in a shithole in the West Midlands that me and dh had to leave London for at age 40, as we could only scrape together 175k 🤣

Haha yes. Time to start an OnlyFans OP.

My group of friends is only late 30s/early 40s so haven’t had decades to build up equity.

This can absolutely be enough time for equity to build up.
We’re 37, bought a London flat in 2019, ended up in a house with £270k equity by 2025.
It’s not overly unusual.

It’s generally a mix of buying well, parental help, and renovating plus moving up the ladder in my experience.

In our case we had no inheritance or family help. We had saved the majority of our salaries monthly since getting our first jobs and invested the savings in stocks over 15 years, which increased in value significantly. We kept rental costs low by always living in flat shares until we bought a place, and low general living costs (no car, not many holidays, simple hobbies).

We bought an £800k+ home (not in the SE) in our late 30s. We had a large deposit from some inheritance and had saved close to £200k. We had decent enough incomes (approved for a mortgage of £650k, though we only needed about £500k). Our LTV was quite low so we had a very good rate. I don’t think it’s wildly surprising.

It’s having a high income and saving. Our deposit was about £350k ish. Inheritance plus our £200k savings and we mortgaged the rest at £1700 per month.

I lived in a shared house with four other people in my early 20s and saved a lot.

Then I bought a house with a friend in my late 20s and we aggressively overpaid the mortgage by having a tenant in the spare room and using the rental income as overpayments.

Then I inherited £30k and bought my friend out.

Then I married a man in a similar financial position, we both sold our houses and bought a big one together.

My salary was under average. The tenant made a huge difference.

One of my friends is late 20’s and just purchased a home for 650k. They bought their first house 6-7 years ago and it was a shit hole. Her husbands Dad owns a renovation company so they ripped the entire house out and did it up including an extension. It’s gained almost 200k in value and obviously will have cost them a fraction of that to do. They both have pretty good jobs but I imagine they’ve taken the equity from the sale and mortgaged up to their eyeballs to bridge the gap.

This one is a doer upper as well, I imagine it’ll be worth over a million when they’re done.

I also wonder about that...

I would assume inheritance/family money.

There is no way people on regular jobs with no family support can afford these properties by 'working hard' or 'saving'. It is just an illusion.

Of course there will be some people who do well in finance, the law and medicine or by running their own business but inherited wealth is a big factor in the housing market.

I am a bit older but we bought a £600k house in our early 40s without inheritance or parental help. Combination of equity from selling a previous house and husband's gratuity from leaving the forces meant we had around £200k deposit and a stonking great mortgage.

Late 30s/early 40s is plenty long enough to have built at least a decade of equity. £600k is not FTB territory.

I only have one friend left in the SE who chose to buy there (all the rest relocated out to cheaper places).

She had a decent family inheritance, is an Oxbridge graduate, and has a big city lawyer type job. Husband earns well too. All her Oxbridgey friends have Oxbridgey jobs, their own homes in the SE too.

I’m in the south east and current house is worth over 600k. I have been very lucky as I bought my ‘starter flat’ in 2012 and am now on my third property. Starter flat which was in a bad area that got a huge injection of development which sent the price up, used the income from that sale to buy first house. Sold that in 2021 at the height of the wfh exodus out of London and used the proceeds combined with sale of my partners flat to buy current house.

what I see as the main problem here is the south east is it feels virtually impossible to get on the ladder now! Lots of new houses being built but they are all over 700k and attracting people moving out of London - not the people who grew up here and want to raise their families here

If they bought a modest house in 2010s, sold it for double the price 5 years later and bought another house. They could by now easily have about £3-400k equity.