AIBU in asking how much money you had left after buying your first home?

[jbevan6]

Myself and my partner are the first of our friends to be purchasing our first home, so without anyone else to ask, I’m hoping to find out the general consensus on here.....

We have found a property we would like to make an offer on and it is at the very top end of our budget when it comes to our borrowing facility. We are confident we can afford the repayments comfortably enough but our issue is the initial fees involved.

We just about have enough money to cover the deposit, stamp duty, legal fees etc. After we have paid all of these fees we will have no more saved money and would have to use all of the furniture in our current rented property (we already have all the basics as our property was totally unfurnished).

Are we being absolutely stupid here? I was originally of the opinion that all first time buyers put absolutely every last penny in to buying their first home but I’m worried I could be wrong and this is not the norm!
Thanks

I think the trap you need to be wary of falling into is the one of furnishing the place.

Historically, first-homers made do with hand me downs and freebies and car boot stuff, replacing on a piece by piece basis. This is actually a great way to get nice good quality stuff rather than paying for lower quality new stuff which will break and need replacing anyway.

In the past few years, there has been an explosion in people "needing" everything brand new and right now, usually on credit.

If you can keep your head and not go crazy there you should be able to move in, and start rebuilding your savings at the same time you are building your home.

As far as I can remember we were really skint for at least the first year. No spare money at all. It does get better though.

Going back a few years but I used every penny I had to buy my first flat. I made do with second hand furniture and no carpets, central heating etc and it wasn't a problem. There does seem to be an expectation these days that new buyers get to equip their homes out in style from the start. To be honest, thirty years later I am still replacing some old stuff. So long as you have enough for your bills and ideally a little spare for emergencies you will be fine if you are sure you can pay the mortgage.

Another vote for nothing (or virtually nothing).

On moving in we found that the boiler didn't work. DH's granny loaned us the cash to replace it.

Unlike you we had very little furniture and so had to buy bed, sofa, table, chairs, appliances etc. We coped with that by getting a credit card with a 12 month interest free period and paid all those purchases off gradually over the next year.

I think it's fine to buy a property at the top end of your budget as long as you're confident you can make the repayments. The actual initial capital outlay would be unlikely to be lower on a cheaper property. Good luck

Every penny spent

In fact when we bought this house (which is our forever house) I actually raided the DC's savings accounts too. I even raided the accounts which my parents have for the DC.
(before I get flamed, this money has all since been put back into their accounts!)

I think it would be odd to expect to buy a first house and also just ditch all of your existing furniture and start again.

PS. As other posters have said - you don't need everything to be perfect right away. It can be a work in progress - which can actually be quite fun!

Nothing. And we still don't years later! But it was worth it all.

We spent every penny we had. We even had to resort to making our own wine!

We were skint for about 6 months, but then got back on an even keel quite quickly. We got a small loan to buy new carpets at that point.

It is worth doing. In 20 years time you will thank yourself for not waiting.

That would be too risky and stressful for me but if recently renovated you have less to worry about. I suppose you have thought through all possible scenarios? What if you or you partner lose their job or have to go on long term sick? What if the boiler breaks/ there is a flood/ etc?

I was skint. I had budgeted for furniture and a kitchen (new build) but blew it all up on a parking space around the corner that became available shortly before completing on the flat. Parking is a nightmare in this area so I've never regretted this decision but that still left me very short on cash. As a result, for a while I had a bed, an inflatable armchair, two garden chairs and that was it. I couldn't move in without a kitchen so I saved, had it installed with all appliances and then moved, still relatively skint and short on furniture but very happy. That was just me and there's two of you so I'd say go for it, provided you can make the repayments comfortably.

We had nothing not a bean, and we didn't really have anything in it either. This was the days before Gum Tree and Ebay.

Mum bought us a washing machine as a house warming present and we bought a cooker on interest free credit from the co-op department store (long since gone). Our bed was a slightly damaged second and the mattress was cheap, paper thin and rock hard. The sofa was a hideous 4-seater gold draylon one given by an aunty and we had no carpets, none.

It took us five years to full decorate, carpet and furnish that little 2 up 2 down house.

Unfortunately it seems so many people now expect to move in and fully decorate and furnish with brand new everything.

Which is probably why now 20 years later, we have moved, extended and paid our mortgage off and my dear (entitled and extravagent) friend has just taken out a 25 year mortgage at 50. Yes 50 - and with the minutest amount of equity in it.

I am another one who is saying think about the repayments each month. Are they top end of your budget? Are you secure if one of you falls ill or loses their jobs? Will you have any money for emergencies and insurance policies etc?

I have always gone to the top end of my budget when buying property and then just made do when I moved in. To the extent that after 10 years in our current (forever/dream) house we are only just buying sofas that are right for this living room rather than the much smaller living room we bought them for 23 years ago. They are beautiful and not at all what I would have picked 10 years ago so it was definitely worth the wait.

Get the house, move in and then all the rest will follow in due course.

Absolutely nothing. We got a 0% credit card for the bare essentials and as our mortgage repayments were £500 less than our rent had been, paid it off quickly. Non-essentials were bought after - the first six months we had towels and sheets at the window instead of curtains, and clothes were kept in a suitcase!

We used pretty much everything we had apart from about £2k which was used to buy bits for the house (we moved from parents houses so had nothing) and we were very kindly gifted some items by family.

If you've got house bits ready, albeit old, I'd make do with them and just replace as and when you do have spare cash or have saved up a little bit to buy them.

About 10k after buying the place, nothing after making it habitable -planned it was a project and needed rewiring, new bathrooms as they were leaking... If the house is basically habitable with flooring, servicable bathroom and kitchen even if you don't like it and you have essentials (cooker, fridge) then that's pretty normal.

We had nothing left, well just enough to buy food and pay bills for the first month, but we did have 2 full time jobs and no children. We did buy a microwave, and a small fridge.

We spent a couple of months without a bed, then bought a few things gradually, including a few pots of paint. We redid the place properly (kitchen, bathroom, floors, decoration) 3 or 4 years later before selling and moving on.

I don't really understand what you mean by using your current furniture? Did you expect to buy everything new?

I can't see that as an issue AS LONG AS you also know that you will be able to build up some savings agin pretty quickly.

Seriously, experience has taught me that having those savings will make a hell of a lot of difference!

We already had all the furniture and white goods from years of unfurnished rentals so only had fixtures to deal with though. Mortgage similar to/cheaper than rent so once in and on an even keel we're better off.

I used my student loan cheque to pay the deposit on my first house (aged 20, houses were rather cheaper back then)! We didn't have two pennies to rub together, never mind savings. We survived but I'm not sure I'd rush to be in that position again.

I think it makes more sense to go for a property that you can very easily afford even if your circumstances changed like if one of you lost your job. We went almost to the bottom of our budget- we got the 'type' of house we wanted (three bedroom, in a particular area, period) but as cheap as we could. We can easily meet the mortgage payments if one of us lost our jobs and the other one went part time.

This (and other similar advice to only buy what you can afford on one salary) is really unrealistic depending on where you live. Where I live in the south-east, if we'd bought what we could afford on just one salary we couldn't have bought at all. Were a lecturer and a teacher so not low paid but not nearly high paid enough to live off a single salary in this area. Anyway, wouldn't that mean that no single person would ever have a mortgage at all?

Anyway - OP we used very nearly all our money in the purchase (we had about £1k left over, which we thought of as our absolute emergency emergency money) and it was scary but ok. I don't see why you wouldn't be planning to use all the furniture from your rented house? New houses don't need new furniture!

We had nothing! We gratefully accepted any old furniture relatives had going spare, and got anything else we needed from junk shops and eBay. Did no work to the house beyond basic painting and sanding which we did ourselves. But owning a home gave much more of a sense of security than watching house prices continue to soar while our savings stayed more or less stagnant (this was 8 years ago).

When I bought my first flat, I slept on a borrowed camping mat ( in my early 30s and single though with no children!) for about two months, then I bought a mattress (not a bed as I couldn't afford it). I slept on the mattress for about 18 months before buying a proper full bed (I wanted a kingsize one so waited till I could afford that)

I had a cheap rail thing for clothes and boxes on the floor for about the same amount of time. Then I payed to have a wardrobe built from mdf all along one wall (I remember it cost about £200 to build and I spent 3 weeks painting it myself in the evenings and weekends (mdf needs about a million coats of primer and undercoat etc). I remember feeling really happy that 2 years after I had moved in my bedroom no longer looked like a student dive!

The first 12-18 months were really hard financially but it seemed to ease a bit after that

I also had zero - and my interest rates soon went to 13.6% from 7% - (and mortgage payment went up to 65% of my take home pay ) I was young, I was single. I managed.

I ate a lot of noodles.

Also I took a sofa from a friend who was getting rid of hers. It had been a cheap one to begin with and was about 6 years old when I got it. I kept it for another 5 years !