To think a lot of people get financial help from their parents in order to get onto the property ladder?

[DarlingDuck]

I often wonder about this. I know friends who are in their late 30's early 40's who have managed it themselves but everyone I know who is any younger has either been helped out financially by their parents or been bought a flat/house outright. AIBU to think the majority of people under 35 are helped out?

YANBU, we are the only people we know who haven't been helped. I bought a flat 10years ago with a 100% mortgage made £40k on it in 3 yeArs used it for house deposit then another house and so on. Saying that when we bought our 3rd house we had to save a fair amount too as we lost a bit on 2nd house.

However my parents gave us £12k for our wedding. They are offering my sister the £12kfor wedding OR house deposit I would have preferred it for a deposit tbh when I bought the flat but they didn't give me that option.

I will inherit half of what's left once they've paid for their old age care. Can't see it being much tbh and would rather they stayed healthy and active for as long as poss obviously.

BTW can people specify in wills how money is spent etc? My mum has always had a bit of a "thing" about my dh in that in their will I can imagine them trying to control how i spent the money and not wanting it to go on our house because that would include dh. She's v v v controlling. I once inherited £5k from a family friend and spent it on damp proof course and new roof she went mad as it was "my" money and shouldn't have gone on house repairs

Never had a penny from my parents. I find the idea really odd. Started a company young and paid off my mortgages in one year. Its thanks to them and their example that I knew from an early age that my finances are down to me.
I will expect my children to want to do the same as there will be no handouts from me.

We did our own saving, no help from parents. PIL did give us some money towards the moving in/decorating costs, which was very nice, but we would have managed without that too.

Ah, I was going to add 'unless it was a chalet or something.' Doesn't a static just lose value though?

My poor nana died to give me the deposit for my first house, a shite way of affording it :(

Possibly the case for quite a few people but wasn't like that for us.

DH & I bought our 1st house 18months ago when we were both just turned 23 - 170k (E. London), 25.5k deposit, no help from elsewhere. School teacher and secretary. I'd hate to take my parents' hard-earned money tbh

We did save like mad for years though - both worked through uni, I stayed at home until we married & put my student loan into ISAs, Tesco value everything once living together, reduced our outgoings as much as possible (eg no car, no landline, no eating out etc).

We know 3 other couples around our age who bought houses without family help too - it can sometimes be done!

Most of our friends have been helped out by their parents.

We weren't hence we didn't buy our first house until last year aged 37!

im 33 and noone i know had help

One of my colleagues is very eager to point out she had no help from her parents when buying a house, whilst not mentioning the fact that they paid 20 grand out for her wedding, bought her a car, paid for her to go on holiday every year etc. etc. Makes me smile

We bought 2 years ago with a lot of help from my PILS. At the time we could have just done it without, but would have had a much bigger mortgage at a higher interest rate. I would have had to work full time, dcs would be in nursery and dh would be stuck in a job he hated (he left to do a lower paid job he loves).
The only people I know who bought without any help from their parents did so through shared ownership schemes.

Very few of my friends are even close to buying. The ones that have (only four) have all had help from parents, or inherited from grandparents.

My parents have already said that if we got together a deposit they would add what they could to help us out.
It's just not possible to get a house for the majority, with low salaries and unemployment being rife in the 20-25 group, and massive house prices to boot.

No idea....some get help (I'm sure) and others manage to get themselves a decent job, save for their deposits and get on the property ladder.

is it true first time buyers need 20% deposit?

Yes, I know quite a lot of people who have been helped, either the parents paying the deposit or actually taking out a buy to let mortgage and "renting" it back to the child. A lot of students I know get bought flats in the latter way, likewise being given money to buy is not unusual either. My fiance's brother was given around £120,000 to buy his first flat (we got nothing!), which he sold and now lives in a £400,000 house which he would never have been able to buy otherwise.

Obviously this contributes to high house prices. It also helps create the ridiculous situation where you have students and low earners living in nicer, more expensive properties than young professionals who have scraped together a deposit and a mortgage based on 3 times their salary...which just about gets you a one bedroom flat in some areas if you are lucky.

I'm not sure about need, we are buying with a 20% deposit, we could have got away with 15% but it's start getting restrictive if you've got less than that.

We did buy our house in London without family help in our late 20s. This was only because we had been working abroad for a couple of years with most living expenses covered by the company. By living frugally we banked almost all our salary for a big deposit. I don't think it is possible for two reasonably well paid 20-something's in London to do it without some extra factor of this kind.

I have a two friends where I live who are in their early to mid 20s. They have 1 or 2 children and are married and living in a 2 bed council property. They are waiting there so they can have the right to buy. This way they get onto the property market by the time they are 30 and are saving like mad for a deposit.

It is sad that it will mean their 2 bed house with nice garden will no longer be a council property for other young families, but I can't blame them. There would be no way they would be able to get on the housing ladder otherwise.

Yes carriedababi, as does anyone in equity. Certainly last summer when we were trying to remortgage that was the case.

Pomtastic, you've done really well, and in an ideal world that's how it should be done, but most students have to live on their loans, not put them in ISAs, so it's not an option for those who end their studies in a lot of debt.

Most students seem to think that 10 hours a week lectures is a full time job, DH and I both had 40 hour a week jobs whilst at uni and still came out with 2.1's.
No unemployment for us when we finished our studies we just stayed in our shit jobs until the real career came along.

This is interesting as it seems to vary a lot. We rent our home, and have always rented since we had our son (11 in August). I got pregnant ill advisedly (in terms of life planning, not in terms of having our much loved son!) when I was in my final year at university and my partner was in his first year. Council flat for three years (I worked full time, but rent was VERY low - £235 a month!!!!), and since we both did PGCE it's been private rentals.

My parents have a 4 bed detached house in a very desirable area, mortgage free, but are now both recently retired and have no cash spare, unless they downsized, which they COULD (no kids at home now) but why SHOULD they?

I actually don't care at all that I don't own my home. If we bought it, and it is falling apart a bit and has in the last year needed new floor throughout (wood worm), a new boiler and a new cooker, we would have been absolutely screwed as living to pretty tight budget - all these very expensive jobs were landlords' responsibility.

If my son needs an inheritance - well - not to sound callous, but my very wealthy grandparents and parents will presumably not live forever, although I hope they last a good long time, so he can have that!

We bought our first house in 1998 in the South West. It was a good sized 3 bed detached house in an average area. It cost £102,500. I earned £20k and my husband earned £25k, so the house cost only a bit more than 2x our joint salary. We had a deposit of 5% - £5k. This took us 2 years to save.

Our old neighbours told us the house recently sold for £245k. However, if we were 24 and 31 again, we would be earning today about £30k and £45k in our respective positions. The house would cost over 3.5x our joint salary. A 5% deposit would be £15k, which would take a lot longer to save!

As an aside, I left university with £3,500 debt in 1994. By 1998 I had fully paid it all off. If I left university in 2006, my debt would have been more like £30k+ and I would not have paid it off by the time I was 24.

I think most 25 year olds can not afford to get on the housing ladder.

10 hours a week of lectures plus 40 hours a week in a paying job would not = a 2.1 at the university I went to...

so if you move you need 20% equity too?

i didnt know that.

It depends on the lender - our first house was bought with Nationwide, and they would have lent to us with a 10% deposit, but we couldn't get a new mortgage with another lender with less than 15% (when we bought our current house 2.5 years ago). The rates for a 10% deposit were high though.