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

Nothing! The vendors had helpfully left the fridge (still going strong today), two battered sofas and a bed base, and I hired a Zipvan to lug my mattress, microwave, ironing board and a table I'd found by the side of the road. I moved in and spent the next few months painting, while saving up to get the bathroom don.e

It was really fine. It's not forever.

Completely agree with previous posts (now I've RTFT) in that we had second hand furniture for a long time and were really on a shoe-string in terms of doing it up. It's only now really, 17 years later ish and a few moves down the line that we're in a position to buy really decent furniture and decorate properly. It doesn't all have to be amazing right now.

I had enough to buy things like a kitchen bin, a couple of towels and some wine glasses. A sofa (cheapie) on 0% for 6 months.

People wanted to buy me house warming gifts and I asked for practical things (washing powder and loo roll!) to start me off.

I picked up bits second hand to tide me over and replaced things over the years. it was a big deal to buy a house alone back then, some kind friends gave me £30 in Homebase vouchers and I bought paint.

They were very happy days

We used it all, pretty much. We had a couple of grand left. I sometimes wish we'd borrowed a little more and held some savings back for a rainy day - we weren't quite at the top of our available mortgage so we could have had a smaller deposit (by say £10-15k) and bought th same house.

I can't remember, it was more than 20 years ago, but I doubt I would have left myself with nothing, I'm too cautious by nature and that couple of months salary for rainy day savings is sacrosanct here unless it's an actual emergency such as job loss. Luckily the house was not at the absolute maximum of what I could afford. However it was a frugal existence, furniture, white goods etc were bought bit by bit and cheap / hand me downs (no internet back then) - we are still replacing a few of the original cheap items that have lasted longer than I thought they would.

We had loads of furniture though. We'd been renting unfurnished house for a couple of years while we rented out our furnished house in another part of the country, so we picked the best stuff from each home. Also our vendors left their curtains, and they're neutral in colour and really high quality. Our vendors also left some solid ikea bookshelves (they were downsizing).

DSis went to her absolute limit and said they would love off potatoes every day if needed (her DH owns a veg shop)

They are now very comfortable and it was the right decision.

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.

I competely agree!
The prices are going crazy in my area, if we had bought the cheapest place, we would have priced ourselves completely out of the market: we wouldn't have sold for enough to buy the next one and so on. The only reason we went from a shitty 1 bed flat in a grim but commutable area to a detached 5 bed house in a nice area is because we stretched ourselves as much as possible in the past. Every time we sold, the equity made a bigger and bigger deposit allowing us to buy better. If things go bad we can always sell and downsize if we must, but in the meantime the mortgage is going down regularly. Buying expensive furniture in our first properties would have been a complete waste of money.

You need to look very carefully at your own area and situation before deciding what to do.

Around £700 which got used during the move for sudden replacements and paint. But don't forget you'll get your deposit back from renting which will help as well.

My other very warm memory of that time (it was all of four years ago, but feels longer) is inviting friends round to help me paint in exchange for beer and pizza. One brought his incredibly fussy girlfriend who supervised the whole thing brilliantly.

We had nothing left at all. In fact half way through the process we realised that we were about £1000 short (unexpected fees) and had to go begging to our parents so we could complete the sale.

Very slowly over about 2 years we transformed it into the home we wanted but like you had to use all our old furniture from rented accommodation for a long time. Also got a lot of stuff off eBay.

However we are now five years later and are in the process of selling the house for £26,000 more than we bought it for. Meaning our onward purchase has been fairly comfortable financially and we will actually be better off after this move.

I'd say take the risk, renting is easier in some respects but the money is just gone. Yeah we've paid interest on the mortgage but the value of our house has increased so we are much better off now. It was definitely worth the struggle!

We had nothing! We had a cheap argos matress on the floor and we bought a second hand larder fridge. My aunt gave me her old sofa about 2 months later. My job is very stable as is my husbands and we took a gamble. Had enough to pay mortgage and saved up slowly to do things.

I look back on photos from the first few years after we moved in and laugh - Homes and Gardens it wasn't.

The sofa was an old futon of DH's who's frame had seen better days. My DPs had just downsized so we had bits and pieces from their house. The table was a very wobbly one of DH's that he'd bought from a flea market for about £35 years earlier and we bought chairs vaguely the same colour from IKEA for about £15 each. We did have a new bed which I bought with help from my parents as a housewarming gift.

11 years on, looking around our next house up (and the one that they'll carry me out of it in a box), the wobbly table and dicey futon have gone, and the IKEA chairs are in the loft to be used as spares at Christmas but all the other hand me downs are still here. They've just blended in with nicer things as we found things we wanted ourselves and could afford them.

You've made me smile OP. That was a long time ago and in the first flush of love and youth - we've been married a long time now and have two DC.....it's a different life.

Go for it - you'll figure it out.

MargaretCavendish, I think I was the poster who mentioned something about affording the mortgage on one salary. What I meant by that was the payment for the mortgage. I also live in the SE and I'm in the process of upsizing right now but I've made sure that the payment for the new mortgage (plus council tax) wasn't more than could be paid on one of our salaries alone. Then if the worst case happened, we'd be eating a lot of beans on toast and lentils but we wouldn't lose the house.
This is the sort of this the current mortgage affordability rules are assessing anyway so hopefully people aren't taking out mortgages where the repayments are a huge proportion of their income and quickly become unaffordable should interest rates rise or they have a change in circumstances.

You said that making sure repayments were less than one salary would mean single people wouldn't be able to have mortgages. Being single does mean that some means of trying to protect yourself against the future aren't available but it doesn't mean that they can't make plans for losing jobs, ill health, unexpected bills etc. I have a savings pot with 6 months mortgage and bills in it but if I were single then I'd want to have more.

I'm probably more risk averse than many people but I grew up listening to tales of my parents friends getting repossessed in the 90s and I'm determined to have some slack in my budget that can be eaten into if the worst happens.

Every penny here too! Plus a bit!

Someone else mentioned painting parties! I love a good painting party. Myself and my friend reckon we can always fall back on our decorating skills - we can cut in with the best of them

It was last year, we are relatively old FTB with 2 DCs already. We had £10k left but I had 5 months left of maternity leave, and that covered our mortgage and living costs for those months.

By the time I went back to work we were on credit cards. We had all our furniture as we'd been renting unfurnished.

PS good luck!

Nothing left after. But we already had our furniture etc from our rented place and DH earned well so we could begin to save again. Was well worth it for us

Very little. My mum lent us her spare bed and we had garden furniture and big cushions to sit on. My MIL gave us a cash gift as a housewarming present that bought us a washing machine and DH's uncle gave us a fridge/freezer that he had spare because he was moving too and his existing ones wouldn't fit into his new house. Both my MIL/DM raided their attics for spare curtains, light fittings etc.

But we had deliberately picked a house where we could afford repayments on the bigger of our two salaries. So we could build up our savings again and buy furniture a bit at a time over the next few months.

I would say if it is at the very top end of your budget - do you mean you won't have spare money every month to save - it be a constant stretch?
If you are moving from expensive rent to a cheaper mortgage - and the only problem is you can't afford new furniture and for the first couple of months and you would struggle a bit if you had unexpected maintenance costs -fine.
If it is going to be a constant struggle I would try and get something cheaper - even if it isn't 'perfect'.
Two things to think about - who refurbished it - and why? If it a property developer/homes under the hammer type - doing it on a budget as a way of making money - they may well have cut corners and covered things up.
Or even if it was the previous owners (as in my case) trying to get the best possible price - you could redecorate somewhere similar and not pay the premium...
(I choose my first house over one that would need a lot of work but was much cheaper because I was heavily pregnant at the time. The house I bought would need a new kitchen and boiler at some point but otherwise fine, liveable ... one of the selling points was a great luxurious bathroom - big, separate shower etc. I discovered that a lot of things - inc the bathroom- had been done by a DIYer I now call Mr Bodge-it. I had one problem after another - leaks and blocked drains through bad design/installation...the lovely bathroom had no heating ...a lovely big fridge. The good quality double glazing had been badly fitted by a company that had disappeared (guarantee worthless)... leaving me with gaps between opening and frame I could fit my finger in. And the boiler did die within 6 month and I had to have all new central heating fitted.... It took me 6 years to be able to have a new kitchen and in all that time I had problems with leaks in there too (Mr Bodge-it strikes again) ....the list of other minor stuff is endless...including some dodgy electrics on top of standard long term maintenance - part of the main (cast Iron) drain needed replacing.

The second thing to think about is in the first years of a mortgage (even with low interest rates) is when you are paying the most interest...most of your repayments are interest - if your mortgage lets you and you can it is usually really worth paying extra - you can save thousands. (Different times and interest rates but an extra £1000 paid off in the first year would have saved me £4500 over 25 years) Moneysaving expert has a calculator you can use.

We had nothing left over, the interest rate was 15% and it took over one salary just to pay the mortgage, We saved for three years to put central heating in with both of us working. (But DH was also paying maintenance) . We had a mumsnet £500 wedding which was great. And all this in a tiny terrace house in the south east. We went through negative equity where the value of the house became less than the mortgage. and got trapped in the house for 9 years before we cuould move. We saved another 20k in the 10 years so we could move to a bigger 3 bed house. This was in the 90's. I know people think we had our houses handed to us in the 90's but we really did'nt we were skint for years and we had decent jobs . Eventually the mortage rate dropped down to 10% and then lower and that enabled to live cheaply and save for a move.

I also recall moving into my first one bed flat with the following.
A single bed
A futon for the lounge
Coffee table
TV stand and small colour TV
One medium sized bookcase
Two rugs from the pier
A tiny table and two stools for the kitchen
A new shower curtain and matching mat for the bathroom
CD player and Video recorder
Books (lots)
Minimal kitchen stuff (no microwave)
Towls, linen, net curtains but no proper ones
A loo brush.

The first thing I bought were two pairs of cheap Argos curtains and then realised I had no curtain track.

The best housewarming presents I got were a kitchen flip top bin, a table lamp for the lounge and a canvas wall print of poppies in a field (which is in our porch now).

It seems so long ago.

It was 1992. We wiped out our savings, but our repayments were well within budget (until we had DC1).

We slept on the floor for a couple of months, then slept on a mattress for a couple more months until we could afford bedroom furniture. Ther was no such thing as e bay. We had a couple of chairs and a table donated by parents, we had a fridge from a second hand shop and a washing machine on HP.

We had a great HiFi and load of records and CDs but only a black and white portable TV.

We were always out though. We only bought a proper telly when we had a baby and had to stay in.

I think I was the poster who mentioned something about affording the mortgage on one salary. What I meant by that was the payment for the mortgage. I also live in the SE and I'm in the process of upsizing right now but I've made sure that the payment for the new mortgage (plus council tax) wasn't more than could be paid on one of our salaries alone.

I understand what you're saying, but I'm saying that wasn't possible for us, or most of the people we know. Well, I guess the actual mortgage could be paid on one salary, just, but we couldn't live off one salary. We do have savings enough to have a six month buffer if one of us lost their job, which we're currently saving very hard to increase, but that's because we're trying for our first child. Incidentally, we also couldn't have previously paid our rent on one salary (it was more expensive than our mortgage), so buying didn't create this problem, the cost of living in this area as opposed to our salaries did.