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

[bluntscissors]

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?

Really? 5x low salaries with a small deposit. That surprises me.

@Dreamethits quite unusual to be able to borrow 5 x your salary with low salaries/low deposit.

Don't wait for a crash. If it comes, it will be because interest rates soar. People have been waiting for this crash longer than we've been alive.

Parents didn’t have to guarantee or similar?

We bought for 650k, we had 150k deposit. The mortgage is expensive.

Not a gift, equity from the flat we bought after saving up a 25k deposit.

We’re late 30s, southeast with a house around that price. No inheritance or gifts here. We saved hard in our twenties and bought our first house aged 27, a small 2 bed and prices were lower 10 years ago. We’ve overpaid our mortgage and built up equity since then and now have a decent sized 4 bed house. We prioritised buying a house over other things, didn’t travel loads in our twenties and went without new things. Furniture was second hand or very cheap. We wouldn’t be able to manage it now if we’d waited, we’ve got 2 DCs and still in the nursery few years so there’s no way we’d be able to be first time buyers in our late 30s.

Buying early has been the key for us.

Bought in early 20s through savings. Then did up the houses making more than we put in each time. As time has gone on my dhs salary has gone up but still very normal by netmums standards.
Living in the south the prices have gone up far more than what we originally paid.

We have done all the work ourselves and on one salary(child with additional needs) and lived a really frugal boring life which most people wouldn't want to do.

No chance if we was starting now.

They didn’t indicate it was unusual. All the agents seemed excited to get us our first house. We went to all the big banks and they all offered. Only one which gave a pitiful multiplier was Barclays.

In London, 2008 ish was a brilliant time to buy. A property bought for about £250k had doubled in value by the time Covid hit. I'm not sure we'll see these increases again, the market has not really recovered in 6 years. In my view, buying at the right time, in the right place, inheritances and hard saving is the key.

We bought a house worth ~£600k last year aged 30. We bought our first house aged 24 (and no we didn’t have family help) so had 6 years of equity and the house value went up by over £50k by the time we sold it. We also overpaid the mortgage for a while. Our deposit was nowhere near £300k on the new house though, more like half that. Yes our mortgage is immense, over £2k a month 😬

I see these threads about the SE a lot on MN and I have to ask, is living there worth this huge pressure financially? Is your life quality hugely different to a cheaper area? Is it safer/cleaner/friendly?

I’m in my late 30s and could easily afford a £600k house on a 90% mortgage. It would mean sacrificing our savings but definitely do able. In reality, we probably have £100k equity in our current house so our deposit would be closer to £160k. If we’d bought our first property more wisely then we could have had another £100k of equity, but that property significantly dropped in value instead of going up.

So I can easily see how someone in their late 30s could afford it without parental help. We are high earners though, but from relatively modest backgrounds.

Don't expect to buy your first place for £600k seems to be the key. Start early by buying somewhere much cheaper (and less nice), spend your 20s and 30s paying a mortgage rather than rent to build up actual collateral, rather than trying to pay rent AND save a deposit.

House is £500k in the South East but my partner (who was an only child to a single parent) Mum died and he inherited her house. Which was our deposit and then the rest was mortgage.I had saved up about £20k to be a house depsosit at the time but we used that for furnishing instead.

A friend of mine her husband had a house when she met him, he bought it for £220k it had a small mortgage due to his parents help with deposit. They sold that house and had huge equity due to parental help on original house and then lived rent free in a relatives house for approx 2 years and saved loads due to no rent/mortgage. Then they bought a house for 700k with only a 200k mortgage due all of the mentioned factors, of profit, savings and luck of no rent for over 2 years.

My BIL also had similar to above and has a house bought for 600k but built up to it due to several factors.

I know a few more people with similar stories.

High wage and low outgoings
If you get a really good wagenin your twenties 45kish and stay a home as long as possible, you can save 25k a year. If you meet someone in early 30s that done the same you can have a decent deposit

Though I am aware mumsnetters generally hate oropleboverc18 staying at home
But to me its the most sensible option nowadays if you can.

It’s tough.

This was 10+ years ago but I saved £100K from working abroad where rent is cheaper, then our first flat in London made £100K which helped us buy our second house for about 10 percent less than the figure you mention.

So many mentioned buying in their early 20s with savings

How are you having savings enough for a deposit when you're in uni?

Surely the first job isn't going to pay a lot to start out with? Maybe living with parents so no expenses?

as a born and bred Londoner
most people I know in London bought young when you could get a 1 bed flat for 80k in 100 percent mortgage. Many people I know now have kept those properties and let them out took the equity and have bought houses to live in. Plus parents have chipped in with the deposit.

Mine did, I worked at phones for you one summer and then bought a flat for 80k with my postman boyfriend on 100 percent mortgage. I’m not sure it’s as easy as that now though.

They could have bought my parents house at 23, for £200k and sold it last year for £590K 17 years later.

Are you in your late 30s?

No, but it’s close to work is easy to get into London for work related things and my family and network all live there. I would move away but then I would have no support network. I hate the house prices around London, ai hate the crime levels, and I hate the population density. But now the kids are at schools and it doesn’t make sense to move now but I will be once they move out, I will move too.

Early 40s