To be aghast at current house prices?!

[tiredoflooking]

I have been looking at houses for sale in the city we live for about 6 months now. We are a professional couple, we currently own a small city centre flat and have a good deposit saved. I can't find anything even vaguely affordable for us in a relatively decent area. I know there is a housing crisis but what is the story??! Who is able to afford these prices? Are house prices likely to fall? And are we to be flat bound forever or should we move out to the middle of nowhere (where it is only slightly more affordable?) I really dont know what to do anymore, should we just use the deposit to pay off some of our current mortgage and accept we will have to stay where we are? We are trying to conceive and I find constant searching through moving websites and the feeling of potential upheaval quite stressful. I find it really hard to believe that as a hardworking professional in my 30s a house is totally out of my reach!
I would love to hear other peoples thoughts/experiences

Thanks Bowlersarm. I don't think I'll bother to search. If I want ranty and rude I've got some of my colleagues of both genders!

We are in London and feel we're lucky to be able to get on the housing ladder at all, but we only have a small 2 bed flat with no garden. We have a good joint income (six figures) but we see no way of upsizing any time soon, without compromising our quality of life by moving out to somewhere with a much longer commute. We'll never have a dream house with a garden, utility room, attic etc. We only bought two years ago but price rises mean that we wouldn't have managed it if we'd waited any longer. We had no help from family or any government schemes, we simply saved hard for 10 years and didn't allow ourselves the luxury of renting our own place or owning a car, we lived like students in a shared flat even on our professional salaries.

We have one young dd but we won't have any more dc as there's just no way it's affordable. I've made arrangements to get sterilised as it would be disastrous to fall pg accidentally.

Andrew I don't think building more homes is the answer, they just get snapped up by BTL. Ok it gives 1 in 8 to housing associations but thats it, it won't be on a big enough scale to bring down house prices as the homes are priced to match equivalent homes for sale in the area. e.g existing 3 bed houses go for £375,000 then they put the new build up for £380,000.

Building shared ownership homes would, a 'normal' salary would stack on the figures and deposit and in theory the BTL's would be out the window. The government would then be able to get their hands on it for care home costs, you wouldn't need to claim housing benefit when your too old unfit to work and they'd in theory be something to leave your children. As well as the obvious benefits to children growing up in a stable environment.

In the time I've rented (5 years) theres been a family member who has bought 10 BTL's. He started at just the right time with one, was able to remortgage when it grew to get the deposit for the next and so on and so on. Right place right time. If you make one mistake, one wrong relationship, no family support to stay at home early on in life (or born into a family receiving housing benefit so that stops when your 18) now your screwed with home ownership.

The trouble is that anything that is done to help one group of people could disadvantage others so any government will think very carefully before bringing in those measures as they would possibly lose more votes than they would win

When we bought our first place in the SE we paid around double the amount our friends were paying in the North. For the five years we lived there they had more holidays, replaced cars and generally had a better standard of living than we had due to our high mortgage repayments. I would have been infuriated if we had made those sacrifices only to be penalised by a policy to reduce prices.

We did reap the benefits, however, as our home had appreciated more than those in other areas and, when we moved back, we were able to buy something nicer up here but we could never have afforded anything like it had we stayed down South

In fact i can't see a bad side to the building / acquiring of more shared ownerships. The developments would be smaller so less for a NIMBY (although I'm sure there's some that would moan about them being 'shared' owner houses), there would be less impact on the local infrastructure (roads, schools, doctors etc) and local wildlife. I personally wouldn't chose to buy a new build, but if it was the only way to ensure my children get a stable home, to stay at school and ten people are kept in employment then yes id buy it.

A house price crash would cause devastation for current home owners, people stuck in negative equity unable to remortgage / move up. People who cashed in their pensions loosing fortunes forced back to work. Renting properties sat empty being repossessed causing land lords homes to be repossessed as the rented homes were in negative equity.
I'd also imagine that banks would also be more cautious with lending due to their losses. Im guessing thats why the government have been frantically protecting it.

BTL is a red herring, as banks won't be able to lend on new housing stock - especially if the government do as they have said they will. HAs will get a %, for rental or shared ownership, but the rest should be owner occupier. The only way BTLs will get much of a look in is if the original buyers sell the houses on for a quick profit - though hopefully the anti flipping regs will stop that too!

Whoever it was who said they wished for a crash so they could buy.... please be careful of what you wish for. If you can't afford to buy now and house prices crash, chances are you won't have the job/s and income you currently have, and so still won't be able to buy. Meanwhile lots of people who stretched themselves to buy will lose their house whilst still owing the bank lots of money.

Where I live some house prices have more doubled in seven years - I'm talking 3 bedroom modest family houses going for nearly 600k. I don't know who is buying them.

I feel very ungrateful complaining about having a 6'11 x 3rd bedroom and wanting to move if we have dc2 as we own our house have a mortgage of £150k so not ridiculously high but I also don't know how people are buying at the moment!! Dh wants to return to self employment working from home that definitely won't work with 2 dc's using all the spare space we have

4 beds that need redecorating/updating are starting at around £300k here a nice house which I would love is nearer £400k and we live in greater bristol where there are quite deprived areas within a 5 minute drive. Dh and I both professionals on good money and don't want mortgaged up to the eyeballs so looks like we staying put

Nomama the government are actively encouraging BTL on new builds, the new garden cities they are talking about really pushing the BTL's.
Im sure its not because they can make the housing lists look better with them.

The thing is that I think I could come to terms with the idea of never owning, if renting for the rest of my life was a reasonable option.

I am incredibly lucky - damp walls, miserable bloody neighbours and no garden notwithstanding - that my rent has only increased by £75 in the six years I have lived here. Rents have spiralled out of reach too. To rent another place around here now, with the extra boxroom for an office space and little bit of green out the back that I'd love, would increase my monthly rent by an absolute minimum of £500 per month.

Even with dp now living with us and therefore a combined salary of almost £60k, that is simply not doable.

So we are stuck. With ds in a room that is becoming literally too small for him, and dp and I taking turns to wait until the other has gone to bed so we can get on with some work at night without disturbing each other.

It's crap, it's depressing and it's wrong.

Not on all sites though, DamnAutoCorrect.

Some sites are wholly private concerns and BTLs are encouraged as there are few people who could afford to buy.

Other sites, other areas, BTLs are actively discouraged/not allowed at all.

But what tends to happen is that new, larger developments are zoned, BTL, HA, owner occupied.

It is often down to the local planners as well as government input. And, to be honest, the new Garden Cities are hardly representative of the vast majority of new housing these days any more than the original ones were!

Are you in the SE? I live in an unfashionable northern town just a few minutes on the train from a major city, so lots of commuters here. We'd be looking at £150k for a 3 bed semi with garden, garage etc. because we don't want parking or a garden the same amount gets us 5 beds.

Try looking at places you could commute from?

Nobody apart from those with parental support or a load of money can buy at the moment. Unless you're talking about severely depressed areas with many social issues..

Not true. There are plenty of areas which are perfectly pleasant where you can buy a house with a reasonably wage and a £12-15,000 deposit. We bought our first house last year for £183,000 with a £10,000 deposit which we'd saved ourselves over a couple of years, in a nice village in the west country.

However sympathies to those not in those areas. It's a thoroughly ridiculous situation. I've long thought that the ludicrous price of accommodation in this country is the source of much of society's ills :(

YANBU.

Mid 30s. We only managed to buy last year. Our house cost us a little over 400k. In the SE but not London (although commutable from London). Six figures combined salaries and help from parents. His parents paid the deposit, mine paid stamp duty. That allowed us to spend our savings on furniture, etc.

We wouldn't be able to buy in London at all...

I really feel for you. When we bought our 3 bed semi (large city in the south) in 2007 (peak of bubble) we had a list of criteria as everyone does, but at the top of ours was the hope of attaining some work life balance at some point and that we should not be in danger of losing the house should either of us become unable to work, want to retrain or similar: we needed to buy as affordable as possible, in other words. This meant looking in very different areas to the ones we had enjoyed renting in. We ended up buying in an area I'd previously vowed never to set foot in again having taught there some years before, an area which most of our friends had never heard of, and a house which had very few of the features we'd fantasised about. But it was sound, in a quiet street , with a big garden backing on to woodland. And more and more, we noticed how the houses in the vicinity were being bought by people we felt we might be friends with, people who, like us had been priced out of the city, and decided to seek their fortunes on our old council estate. Since then, local services, transport and amenities have improved and the school at which I taught has gone from special measures to good. We enjoy being involved in the allotment association and various community initiatives. We now have two DDs who I hope will grow up feeling good about living here.
So might it be possible to play a long game and buy in an area which isn't even "up and coming", but has long term potential? I wish you good luck!

You can't as the law stands forbid BTLs. That could change but only for new-build. The right to sell to whoever wants to buy is part of ownership. Those of us who own will, when the time comes to sell, not care whether we are selling to BTL, owner-occupier, or second-homer, as long as the money is right.

We bought last year after ten years of saving between us, both on good salaries. But that was ten years of frugality. Even more frugal now to pay the mortgage! It is craziness and I can't see how we're better off owning. If there is a crash in the market we'll be buggered.

back in 2000 wife and I woke up one morning and suddenly decided to leave London. we had two small kids and lived in a nice, but v small 2-bed terraced house. Depsite my OK wages we had no hope of moving to a bigger house in the capital.

so we sold our place for £99k and bought a 3-bed semi with a big drive and a huge garden for £72k, 150miles away from friends and family. Turned out to be the best decision we ever made.

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do

(The house we sold for £99k 15 years ago recently sold for £250k but I have no regrets at all)