To ask how you managed to buy a house?

[ditziness]

We pay close to a grand rent a month. It's of our friend's mortgages are cheaper. As a consequence it's very difficult to save. But save we must to tryand get a deposit. So we have to continue to rent

Stuck in a vicious circle.

How the hell did you manage to buy a house?

Any financial, deposit raising, mortgage getting advice welcome

[Hopandaskip]

We managed two ways. Living extremely frugally. As in 19p beans on value white bread toast for dinner with homegrown beansprouts for vitamin C and meat only at the weekend. I was a nanny and could eat at work which helped. We lived in a really grotty "flat" which was just the upstairs of an unseparated house about 6 feet from a motorway. It was cold and damp in winter and unbearably hot in summer because it was loud and polluted to open the windows.

Also we were given a small gift from my GILs to help. We could have managed without but it made it easier. We also bought a very run down 100 yr old house and spent all our time fixing it up to a fairly basic standard.

[QueenMaeve]

I bought a small house after I graduated, at my dads insistence, I rented it out. That was 14 years ago, have since sold that when I got married and bought a house with dh.

[deleted203]

Too old for it to be helpful to you, I'm afraid. My first house cost £16,000 and I was earning £6,000 p.a. This was back in 1988 when you bought a house for 3x your salary. Nowadays it is ridiculous and I can't see my DCs ever affording anything.

[BackforGood]

In a way though, people have answered on the first couple of pages, and the answer is that they made different choices from you, as you say on P4 I feel so stupid for using my twenties and thirties partying and spending. I never thought of the future, just lived.
I think you made those decisions at 18, 20, 25, 30, etc., - which was right for you at the time, but obviously means you are in a different financial position now from those who made other choices at all those other stages of their lives.
Then you've made what you consider to be the best choice for your family in the last few years, in terms of choosing the better area, the bigger house, etc., when there were viable options to choose places which would cost you less. Now, not to say any of those decisons were wrong ones, - we all decide what we are going to do when we have choices, and different options suit different people, but few of us have had our cake if we've eaten it, most of us with houses now made choices to go without at other stages of our lives.
Ultimately, you're still able to provide your family with a place to live which you don't own in the area you want to be in, in a nice home, or you have the choice to move elsewhere (including with family) and save if owning is so important to you. You still have choice, which not everyone does.
Sorry, I don't expect this is what you want to hear.

[Bintang]

I was asking to see if they could share a room pretty relevant I'd have thought as you're asking for advice on solutions to your difficulties. We could only afford to buy a 2-bed, so our children share- it's fine for small children, but obviously if you have children of differing genders there is a time limit on how long they can feasibly share for.

[Hopandaskip]

DH reminded me, they lent us not gave us the money. Really though it was living in a crappy area and sharing with an old woman who cooked really stinky food and played music loud and freezing in winter and baking in summer. Much harder with kids I know. But if you could manage the cheaper place in worse area then you could save $6k a year just from that.

Take really short showers, take baths once a week. Wear lots of sweaters and socks and turn the heat down. Go veggie and cook from scratch? There must be a way you can eek a little more...?

[ditziness]

Thanks backforgood, that's all true and good perspective for me to take onboard. I'm feeling very sorry for myself tonight. Never a good state of mind. Sorry. I've never particularly needed to own, it's not been important to me till now I've had kids. But bad experiences in the past couple of years have made renting feel very insecure. Particularly the place we just finished moving out if today, which was unsafe but the landlord wouldnit fix it and there was very little we could do about it. Bintang, different genders but young enough to share for a few years. I think they'll need to.

[BackforGood]

Phew. I was in 2 minds whether to post or not - I was expecting to be shot down .
Seriously, I understand it must be difficult to have no security of tenure, and totally understand that in some areas the cheaper areas are really not places you want to bring up your dc (not in all towns, but in some), but ultimately, it depend how important it is for you to own.
There are lots of posters on here who regularly advise on how to budget, if saving might give you a foothold. Good luck.

[glorifiedtramp]

Bought my wee 2 bed flat in 1995 for 42,000 with a 100% mortgage, sold it in 2000 for 95,000 and used the profit for deposit on the house we're still in. I realise we were extremely lucky.

[BustersOfDoom]

We were very lucky - although it didn't feel like it at the time.

In 1987 DP and I were living in a privately rented furnished flat with a no children or pets rule. Found out I was expecting so we knew we would have to move out. We managed to buy a house that needed a shit load of work doing on a 100% mortgage for £22k, we had no deposit but we were both in work so were able to get a mortgage without too much trouble. Getting the basics done and furnishing it just about wiped out all the money we had and my unpaid maternity leave (got made redundant just before the 2 year qualifying period back then) made the first few years a real struggle.

Within a year of us buying it the property boom had happened and our house almost trebled in value. Not that we were in any position to benefit from it, we just realised that had we left it any longer we wouldn't have been able to afford to buy anything at all. Our own house would've been well outside our reach which felt a bit odd really.

[ditziness]

It's not important for me to own in the sense that I want to build up wealth and accumulate and all that. I don't want more than my share. I just want to spend the money I earn on somewhere to live that I like, feel secure in and can paint my children's bed rooms ( or atleast put a photo on the wall without written permission).

Feel very stupid as in 1996 I got an £8,000 insurance payout. Wish I could go back fifteen years and tell my head strong live for the moment self to buy a house with it or invest it, rather than the travelling and partying I did instead.

[Bintang]

You wouldn't be who you are today if you hadn't lived the life you've lived

Or sumfing....

Can't change the past, just look to the future, and good luck.

[balotelli]

Moved to Hull!

Best decision we ever made.

[AKissIsNotAContract]

We bought our house in June so I probably have the most recent experience. Sorry to piss on your fireworks but it is so much harder now than it was a few years back. We bought a 3 bedroom house for 160k which is very cheap for where we live. We had to put down a 32k deposit so with fees etc we needed 37k saved up. We couldn't have done it without parental help.

[whogivesaduck1]

i am 24 and i have just bought my council flat. it is in such a lovely area in a lovely very uncoucil block. my flat is valued at 160,000 and i get a discount so i am buying it for 90,000!! and i didnt need a deposit. i am very pleased!

[FreeButtonBee]

Bought in 2007 at height of market in London but good flat in a great area. Saved like mad before that and had some help from. Parents (enough to cover stamp duty - which was a lot). Lived with telly on the floor for 3 years and gradually improved the place. Got v lucky with interest rates - which dropped our payments from £3k per month to £800! But we continued to over pay the difference plus more and now have £200k equity after 5 years (house prices haven't eeally changed so thT is all savings). We live well but no where near to the extent of our salaries (which have also gone up consistently over the past 5 years - industry specific and savvy job changes). Grateful now as it means we can move to a family home with hopefully not too crazy a mortgage and still survive the arrival of twins next year!

[peggyblackett]

Bought my first flat with a 105% mortgage whilst at Uni in 1995. I've always bought doer-uppers, so combined with market rises have increased equity that way tries not to look at current peach bedroom walls and orange curtain combo. We are now in our forever home.

[BonnieBumble]

When we bought they were offering 100 % mortgages. In fact I think we had a 105% mortgage and used the additional money to pay our legal fees and furnish the flat. We were just back from a year long backpacking trip and had no savings at all. That was 13 years ago and it was very different then. We wouldn't have a chance now.

[Chandon]

we saved for 10 years, whilst living in a rented flat. At mid 30s finally moved into a bought house, but it was just too expensive before that.

[Bearcrumble]

Inheritance.

[Himalaya]

Ditiness -

Don't feel too bad, and beat yourself up thinking the grass is always greener on the otherside.

Plenty of people who own end up hating their houses, stuck in them with negative equity, or living on value baked beans for the sake of living in a big house.

Others get lucky with inheritance, timing etc... and end up with piddling mortgages for a lovely place.

What matters to your kids? That you are happy/not stressed and have time for them, that money isn't a problem and doesn't stop you doing what you want to as a family, that you live in an area where there are good schools, friends, parks etc... nearby, and that they have enough space at home that they are not on top of each other. Kids are really not that bothered about the colour of the walls.

You can do all that in a rented home as much as one that the bank owns. In some ways there are benefits - easier to trade up when you need more space, easier to move for school catchments.

Don't despair!

[madda]

Hang on, OP -

Keep it in perspective - you went travelling, you saw the world! You have memories that others who built conservatories or bought houses do not or never will have

I know what I'd rather be thinking about when I'm sat in the nursing home or rented damp home when I'm 75...ooooh the saving and saving for the bricks and mortar stress, or the sun, sand, exotic travels and chances taken when you had the health strength and life in your hands to do it

Hang in there and just hug your kids and be thankful you have them, and then just cut back, live simply and things will fallinto place when youre least thinking about them

good luck

x

[phlebas]

we bought our first house in 1998, in London I was still at university (medicine) & dh was in his first year at work (civil service, on 24k). We found a 2 bed house in Poplar (new build) for £80,000 & managed to get a joint mortgage for 70k. We scraped the deposit together from my student loan, money we'd been given as a wedding gift & credit cards!

No way would we be able to buy anything similar now; not in a million years. Our current (grotty) two bed terrace outside London cost 140k, dh is now on 30k pro rata (took a 50% wage cut over two years & works a short week so gets about 25k) & I'm a SAHM with a disabled child & not likely to be able to work for a very very long time. Ho hum.

[ditziness]

Himalaya, thank you! To be honest I've totally agreed with you for years, which is why I've been doing what we're doing, ie renting a nice place in a nice area. The thing that's changed is that I'm sick of moving, it's too hard with the children and my son is old enough now to notice, and is crying at night not sleeping wanting to go home. But we were forced put by a shit landlord who wouldn't do repairs that made the place unhealthy to live in.

So everything is packed up and stored and we're staying with family and we don't have the heart to look for another rented place. Just don't feel like I can unpack again if it isn't atleast a bit more controllable and permanent.

This is made worse by the fact my (estranged) dad died a month ago. I was hoping for an inheritance, but he left me nothing.

[trixymalixy]

100% mortgage 17 years ago, not very helpful either, sorry.

It definitely paid off, but I do think it restricted the amount of travelling I was able to do, which is something I regret.