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

If i were you I would move into the smallest cheapest place I could possible stand. As you have children you will want to avoid the very worst area but you will need to compromise? Short term pain for long term gain.

I realise my situation is different but we are about to embark on a major refurb/ extension project. During this time we are going to attempt to live on site. I won't have a kitchen. Dishes will be washed in the bath. I will have to use a laundrette. I won't always have heating/ hot water. We will in effect be camping. It is going to take a year and it will be hell. If it gets too unbearable we will move into a caravan on site. Not ideal with a 14 and 7 year old.

We cannot afford to move out and rent so we will just have to get on with it. Of course it will be worth it because in the end we will have a lovely warm safe home to our exact specifications. If i were in your situation i would be prepared to make compromises and put up with less than ideal accomodation, if it meant I could get what i wanted in the end. Which is a nice safe home for my family. If I was not prepared to put up with the mess and inconvenience I would have to continue to live in a house that is not suitable for my family.

A year is not really that long. We started planning all of this nearly a year ago. Picking an architect, agreeing on a plan, getting permission, putting out to tender, picking a builder etc etc. You and the children will adapt and at least you know it is not going to be forever.
Then when you have your deposit you can buy a house that will be your home for the rest of your life if you want it to be. People are going to be working into their 70's and living well into their 90's so you have not left it too late.
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Saved and saved and saved in our mid 20s to buy a flat in the city centre where we live. Renvoated the flat with a bit of spare money and a lot of hard work on our part (we did most of it ourselves). Got lucky with the market, sold it at the start of this year for a nice profit. Used the profit plus a little extra savings (we don't go on holidays or buy lavish things, etc) to buy our dream house in the suburbs. The house needs some work, and we're prepared to work hard to make it what we want, hence why we were able to afford it.

Re mortgages, both times I've bought I've used a mortgage broker and it's been so worthwhile. I like to think i'm a reasonably financially savvy person but i can't imagine navigating all the products myself. They also know which lenders to go for and which ones have more leeway, and can speak to the underwriters directly to explain your circumstances to avoid you being kicked out at the first hurdle.. Both times, I've not had to pay any brokers' fees myself. So if you are getting short shrift from banks I'd really recommend using a broker.

We bought the council house we lived in so didn't need a deposit. It was also at the time when house prices were rising really fat and banks were lending to everyone.

Bought a house in 1999 that either of us could get a mortgage for (small house, iffy neighbourhood, insecurely employed). Before last big house rise. Would not be on property ladder now if we hadn't bought then.

Most of my cousins have lived in Gran's spare bedroom & saved like crazy to get a deposit together.

We lived on one income for a year then at the end had enough to cover deposit and renovations, moved into beautiful home. Tripled in value within a year, total luck, sold and used the equity to buy two more places. Etc.

Some luck, some planning and scrimping.

crescent, we bought our house 18 months ago. I am 40 and dh is 46.

95% mortgage on an 85k house back in 1997. DH and I had a joint income of about 40k at the time. The deposit of 5k was DH's life savings.

15 years on we are in our second home, which is worth about 380k with a 130K mortgage. Our combined income is 75k. If we were starting out today from scratch we couldn't afford to buy a home in London. I feel very, very sorry for your generation. You do have it tough.

We bought our house in 1993, so only a small mortgage, but even so we had to save up for nearly 10 years before we could afford to marry- living apart and very frugally. Dh was 33 when we married: until then he had lived in shared accommodation/rented rooms, eating as frugally as possible and writing letters to me to save on the phone bill (before the days of cheap calls). But we managed it because we deliberately put off the whole living together and having children thing- would have been harder otherwise.

crescent my sister is 40 and her husband 52 and they haven't bought together yet - they plan to do so in the next few years but their priority is not to keep moving up the ladder but, rather, to find somewhere once and for all so that they're not paying a mortgage when he retires.

Never give up hope.

Talk to the bank. Keep talking. Do whatever it takes to notch up an excellent credit score. Get a reference from your landlord if you can, or if not then you are entitled to a written record of your rent payments to prove that you have never defaulted.

Pay off any existing debts. Do not borrow what you cannot afford to pay back. Scrimp and save because any savings, no matter how small, prove to the lenders that you are capable of saving and managing your finances.

There is a lot of discretion on the part of banks and underwriters, which is why I believe fully in meeting managers in person. Don't just apply for a mortgage, make an appointment, sit down and discuss it with them first. They can usually offer you something that is not available online or over the phone.

Op, the great thing is that you can do things differently for your children and bring them up to be financially savvy. I saved half of everything I was ever given (£5 here and there for Birthdays etc) and my parents matched my savings for me. So although it was small sums, I was used tithe idea of saving and always saved half of my earnings as a teenager/student. My parents had stopped matching it by then though!

But all those £5's added up and I had a deposit for my first flat by the time I left University. Most of mt friends spent their cash. A lot are still in rented flats paying £2000 a month (central London). I pay about a third of that on our mortgage.

We brought in 2004 and got 100% mortgage with Northern Rock.

Then they went off the rails and we are stuck with them on an average deal. Cannot realistically move it until i got back to work.

Our mortgage is £1200 for a 4 bedroom terrace in a London borough.

Saved, saved, saved from the minute I started full time work (2002), lived with mum and dad then bought a flat with ex-fiance aged 21. We couldn't have managed it as individuals. Sold flat the next year 2005 when we split up for exactly what we paid for it (despite modernising inc. bathroom). Mortgage was £800 a month so def. much more expensive than renting back then.

Married DH 4 years ago. He already had a house.

DH did it by not moving out until he was 31. He started working aged 15 straight after his exams. Saved hard and bought his first house on his own aged 31 outright in 1999.

There is quite a big age gap between us and personally I think he found it easier to buy. The gap between wages earnt and the cost of a house wasn't so great as when I bought with the ex.

Like you, DH and I spent our twenties living until our peppercorn rent house was sold with a month's notice.

We had no deposit for renting let alone buying, but a dodgy mortgage broker friend found a way round.

We applied for a cashback mortgage where upon completion the lender sends you a cheque for 5%. We borrowed the 10% deposit - half from parents which we paid back with the cashback, and the other half on 0% credit cards.

We sold the property a year later, clearing the credit cards and making enough for a decent deposit on the next house.

It's not a strategy for the faint hearted though.

Any chance of parents or other family giving you a bit towards the deposit ? If mortgage would be cheaper than rent then you could pay them back from the difference - you could set it up as a monthly direct debit.

Dh and I have always been savers, and never really spent any bonus money or our full salaries. Dh is naturally frugal. I never really wanted to own a house because home ownership hasn't historically ended well in my family. All the saving, meant that we had money for the deposit. Dh then got a sizeable inheritence so it meant we didn't have to get a starter home and bought a family home. I have a very healthy respect for mortgages and the real possibility of ending up homeless if things go wrong because you take stupid risks. Despite what I have now, I would have been okay with never owning if it meant it was the safer option.

Another one here that just bought lucky. We saved, saved, saved when we were students to pay for our wedding. Rented an old farm cottage from the farmer we knew but lived hand to mouth. Luckily, we didn't spend all of our £4k we'd saved on our wedding so had enough left to put down 5% against our first house. It cost us £37k in 2001.

We sold up 4 years later, making £14k profit, which we ploughed into buying a new build in the area we really wanted to live. It cost us £115k in 2004, so before all the prices went utterly bonkers. We've overpaid as much as we can, even managing to do so when I became a SAHM. We've just done up the kitchen/boiler, and are about to build an extension with the equity we've built up - the house is now worth over £200k. Couldn't afford to move though as realistically, we could only afford a similar sized house so what's the point? Adding an extension is the ideal solution for us.

Can't see how anyone does it these days.......we've always went with what monthly cost we could afford rather than the silly 5x salary we were offered back in 2004.......we'd be looking at a 2 bed flat for the same cost now rather than the 3 bed/3 bath/soon to be extended detached house we have now!!

I feel like I'll only put a downer on things, but do remember that you don't just need the deposit, you also need money for solicitors and fees and surveys.

I have put the numbers into a mortgage calculator and if we were to buy the house we are currently renting we would pay about 30% more on the mortgage than we currently do in rent. (that is assuming 10% deposit, 5% interest, 25yr term, repayment mortgage)

Not only did I save every penny but I lived in a crap area in a bed sit for years to get my foot on the ladder. It was worth it now though.