to own a property you have to work before children

[oohlaalaa]

My cousin was bemoaning the fact her and her husband are still renting, my mum said to me after that's what happens when you have children young. She should have worked for a few years first, to get savings / mortgage.

My cousin did a degree in social work, and as soon as she graduated she and her now husband got engaged, travelled for six months, then married, and soon after that had two children. They had their first child at 23 and 24. He works full-time, but not in a very well paid job. Cousin has two lovely children and works part-time as a carer. They live in a sweet little cottage, and although they have to be frugal, always seem very happy.

Is my mum right? My mum feels that her niece should have worked and saved for a few years, before children. Mum's view is that her niece chose to have children young, and so has to accept renting for foreseable future.

My mum and Dad married at 21 and 22 respectively, but delayed children till they were 29 and 30. My parents reckon this was the best decision they ever made, as they paid off a large chunk of mortgage (my brothers the eldest and he was born in 1980).

I've been broody for years, but DH has kept delaying children due to finances. He has agreed to start TTC next year though (I'll be 29, and he'll be 34).

Do you agree with my mum, or is she being judgemental?

They are clearly not as rare as hen's teeth; go and have a look at a national property website and have a look at the prices in Northern towns. I have looked at Castleford (not where I live) for example, and you can buy a two bed terrace for 60,000. I doubt terraces are the cheapest housing - flats, former council housing etc is often cheaper.

Why would a young couple starting out in life concern themselves with the average cost of a house? Many people don't own houses, so the cost of an average house is going to paid for by someone on an above average income, not a young couple.

I finished university having spent most of my childhood in the South East. I wanted to live in the South, but couldn't afford it, so I moved to where I could afford to live.

I'm not saying that this is a good thing. People need to live in the South East and have affordable housing, and the government should move jobs North to reduce the pressure on the infrastructure in the South.

But there are still lots of cheap houses; they are just in places that people don't want to live. I didn't want to live on a main road by an industrial estate in a town hundreds of miles away from my parents when I first had kids, but it was where I could afford to buy a house at the time.

The idea that people pay out thousands of pounds for furniture and repairs when starting out in life is another modern day entitlement issue.

DS was at Secondary school when we got central heating put into our second house. DD is 10 and got a wardrobe a couple of months ago, given to us by a neighbour.

DH and I have a very spacious 3 double-bed detached house, with study, utility room, downstairs loo, garage, open fire, large garden etc etc.

But in order to achieve this we had to leave the UK, learn to speak a new language, and live-in the arse-end of nowhere.

JodieHarsh, my DH bought our property. He got his mortgage with help of his parents (gave him 5k), and having worked without a break since he left school at 16. He has his own business, earns more than me, without the university education. I don't think I'd have ever managed to save enough for a mortgage.

I sympathise with you, I have friends from uni, who are still saving for mortgages.

I added the judgemental bit in, it is probably irrelevant. Basically, my mum was not sympathising with my cousin, as she felt she should have thought about home ownership before having children.

Both my cousin and her husband have good degrees. Her husband got a well paid job with his degree, but hated it, and got a less well paid outdoors job, that he loves. Cousin works 16 hours a week as carer. They both seem happy, and have the most delightful children.

Their oldest is five by the way, so we are talking recent house prices.

We bought ten years ago, in SE London, I was 26, DH (then DP) 30, both in professional jobs. We could have just about afforded a mortgage on a 1 bed flat then but were very lucky to have family help from DH's parents which meant a smaller mortgage so got a three bed terrace.

So I fully understand how people are priced out now! Property was sometimes going up 25% + a year where we were living. Crazy times.

The housing situation is really bad. I'm not going to buy my head in the sand and pretend it isn't. It is incredibly unfair that for my neighbours to buy a house and have kids in their early twenties they have had to have two full time salaries when we only needed one. It is a bad situation.

But I am not going to go to the other extreme and make out that it is impossible to take out a mortgage and have the security that brings - not having to move because your landlord says so, not being able to have pets etc and have children in your twenties. It is possible; it just means you have to limit where you live and consequently what job opportunities you have.

Ideally either house prices will drop or the law will be changed to allow long term tenancies. But until or unless that happens, people have to make choices on the situation as it stands.

I live in Scotland, MillyR, where the average house price is also lower than the UK overall (150k) and the local economy near me would be similar to the North of England. Still no sign of houses or flats costing 60k or less, even ex-LA. If you bother to look at the link I provided, you'd see that flats on average are more expensive than terraced houses, not cheaper. If the average house prices in the UK were 120k, then your point about FTB houses being 60k might be valid but the average price is far, far above 60k so even the cheapest houses would be beyond 60k, if you can understand what the term 'average' means.

Why don't you post up some links to houses costing 60k so we can see what they're like? I don't know the North of England so have no idea where to look.

And you would easily run through a few thousand pounds on moving into a new house with solicitor's fees, moving costs, white goods etc, especially if you're so young that you have to buy everything from scratch rather than having bought things bit by bit over a number of years, as we had. You can try to borrow as much as possible second-hand off family or find stuff on gumtree etc and that'll keep your costs down but there are certain costs you can't avoid. I'm not talking about getting central heating in, just basic repairs like plumbing or a joiner to fix doors / windows, electrician for wiring etc. Most of these cheap houses you seem to think exist widely would be in a poor state of repair if they're only 60k. We could do most of the work to our house ourselves but not everyone has that ability so would have to pay.

And you still haven't explained where your teenage couple would get £12k from... how are your DCs going to afford to buy, by the way? Sounds like they're about that age if they were in secondary school recently. Will they be living with you until they're 25 to save a deposit?

Jodie, why do you need to start with a 2 bed place? Do you have kids?

There are plenty of places in London for less than 300k. They are in not v desireable areas, but they are there.

It's true that the obsession with owning the place you live in is a British obsession, but that is in part mentality, in part because our tenancy laws are a bit crap [technical legal term].

Houses in Castleford:

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/Castleford.html?sortByPriceDescending=false

Very near Leeds.

Houses in Consett, near Newcastle and Durham:

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E357&insId=2&sortByPriceDescending=false

She's being ridiculous. What works for one person doesn't work for another. And nowadays, many people could save forever and still not be able to buy a family home, or any home at all.

Big deal.

If I had waited I'd be childless.

Houses in Todmorden, less than 40 mins on train to Manchester.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E1346&sortByPriceDescending=false

I've never even heard of Castleford - boy, that is cheap!

Is it really awful?

By the way, I just looked in my local area (the whole county) for properties costing between 50-70k and there are a total of 50, some of which are garages. The average house price in the area is 'only' 140k so it's a cheaper than average area of the UK but still not many 60k properties. Of the 50 that did show up, most are in a poor state of repair and would require a good chunk of money to be habitable.

I'm really looking forward to hearing from you MillyR so we can see these amazing 60k terraced houses in areas close to cities with high wages that wouldn't require any investment in repairs!

A lot of people want to live near their family and friends though. I wouldn't like to live without a local support network with children. You can up sticks and move to a cheap area but there can be negative consequences. Some cheap areas are cheap because there are no jobs and there is a lot of anti-social behaviour and crime.

LFC, my inlaws live there and parts of it are nicer than others. My SIL's house was about 60,000 when she bought it.

Some of the schools are excellent and some are not.

It is like anywhere - you have to know where to buy and where not to in terms of the local area and schools.

I do agree with your mum - though it's not just a matter of owning property but of general finances. They were students, then travelled, then got married and had kids in quick succession. They're finding they don't have much money? Is that really a surprise to them?

That's not to say people shouldn't have kids at 23, just that lack of funds is a foreseeable consequence of this.

LFC, sorry I meant my SIL's house is worth 60,000 now according to the rightmove house prices. It was about half that when she bought it.

Quodlibet - I am probably younger than you I expect. I just did it through saving hard, living in a flat with kids and my main aim was always to get on property ladder since I was 14 (I know I was a sadcase). Our place now is worth about 130k I would say and the mortgage was very expensive but now its gone down cheap as we are off fixed rate.

There is no way I could afford a mortgage on a real house but can on a flat and the kids just have to get on with it.

On the links you provide, MillyR, the first 3 or 4 pages have properties costing up to 60k and then the prices rapidly go up. So really in the areas you've mentioned there are only about 30-40 properties out of hundreds that cost 60k or less. They all look like they need some work as well - how much do you think that work would cost? A couple of hundred pounds?

Wishful thinking on your behalf I'm afraid!

Nothing annoys me more than people who bought years ago for much cheaper prices lecturing young people today that they should go and live in the back end of nowhere in a garage and just put up with it. They didn't have to do that so why should 20-somethings now? The housing market is a joke and people denying this and being self-congratulatory is just cruel.

It's no skin off my nose. I'm no longer a broke 20-something. I worked and saved and did up our house and it's beautiful and I could happily live here for the next 20 years if I wanted to. We have no debts other than our mortgage, can afford our house on one income and live near a great city. Good for me.

But I'm not so patronising and smug that I want to lecture others on a situation I'm no longer affected by based on totally unrealistic information.

Also inmyprime my 6k deposit I saved solely on my own from age 14 except 500 pounds I was given. I worked doing paper rounds, waitressing and shop work. I was working 40 hours on top of college and didnt buy any clothes, had no tv in my room or anything fancy and saved it by 18. I had to work every bank holiday, xmas day (from age 15 - 18) and new year. It is doable if you are focused.

MillyR - I have friends in Newcastle. Not one of them is able to buy despite the lower prices. They've tried individually and together but with the limited jobs on offer in their area they still can't afford the deposit which on even a £40k house would be £8k. One friend has 2 jobs and is still struggling. Even though he works so much, he just doesn't earn enough to save £8k - he currently rents a room in a house and even though he knows he is in a much better position than anyone down South and will get there one day, he is still trying to claw the money together.
Also, I live in Wales and supposedly near these 'cheap' houses. Yes, the house prices are lower than most areas but if you can't get together 20% of the total cost of the house in loose change then they still won't give you a mortgage. We had to leave our friends and family and move hundreds of miles away just to give ourselves a better chance at saving a deposit and still aren't even close. We spent 3 years saving every penny and gave up about 6 months ago to start a family realising that we were still years away.

It isn't wishful thinking. Anybody on this thread can look at these links and see that many of these properties do now need lots of work doing on them. Of course most properties don't cost only £60,000 because most people aren't first time buyers!

I know the area I live in and I know young people buying houses. The situation is not as good as it was 10 years ago. Young people wanting to buy a house where I live would probably have to move 5 miles away to the next village, which is unfair and a shame for them and my kids who will be in that position, but not the end of the world.

DP and I bought our flat last year ages 23/24. We started saving when I finished Uni and started working full time a year earlier.

We live in an inner London borough, in an ex council flat that needed a lot of work doing when we first got it (we worked on it for about 2 months before moving in) so not exactly our dream house! We compromised on a lot to be able to buy.

Lots of our friends the same age are buying too, so it's not all doom and gloom!

OP I do agree with your Mum though that after having children it is a lot more difficult. My parents had children first and were only about to buy about 15 years ago.