To think it IS possible to get on the housing ladder?

[SleepyHeadThisTime]

I'm not talking about people living in London - god I would not like to be a first time buyer there!

However, I live in one of the most expensive areas for housing in the country and DH and I have spent the last 10 years scrimping and saving to make it to our 'forever home'. Our first house was an ex council house and an absolute dive but we ploughed all our savings into it, did it up, sold it and did the same again twice more. We have never earned more than 40k per year between us.

AIBU to think there is an element of choice about getting on the housing ladder? I have friends who say we're so lucky to be in the position we're in, however when we were spending every weekend sanding, painting, tiling and the rest, they were having holidays abroad, meals and nights out and new cars?

I don't begrudge them this (we're now enjoying all these perks) but I am a bit irked that it's put down to 'luck' and not bloody hard work and very frugal money management?

Surely if you're earning there is the potential to get on the property ladder? I know some who weren't willing to go down our route but still managed it through the government help to buy and shared ownership schemes.

I understand circumstances such as buying on your own and being on a low salary etc make this much more difficult but when I read about 'millenials' earning 30k plus per year and living at home with parents because they can afford to buy it makes me a bit

Btw DH and I bought our first house in 2010 so not in the golden era when houses were only about 3 times yearly salary!

DH and I bought our first home in September. We earned £36k jointly and had saved enough for a deposit over a few years. Our families chipped in a little in lieu of gifts (think £1-2k) and the rest we saved by carefully budgeting. We don't live lavishly and so it was a case of stashing as much money as we possibly could away with each of my DH's weekly salary payments. Saved approx half and loved thriftily. We could have bought a big house in a somewhat rough city nearby but decided to pay a little more for a smaller house and live in a lovely, quiet village with brilliant schools. The house needed a lot of work and so we were lucky to secure a 5% deposit through a broker so we could use the additional money saved to make it liveable. It was a massive struggle, no holidays or luxury at all, but we got there.

Well even if you have enough for a deposit you then have to have a stable and well paid job to make the monthly repayments....not easy.

Just catching up.
My ds lived in the houses they were doing up, showered at work, here, friends.
They sofa surfed and shared a house whilst doing another up.
They had no fixed abode I suppose.
To them it was a priority to get on the property ladder, they worked very hard and had lots of jobs going at once.
It worked for them because they aren't/weren't career minded then, ds1 is now as managed to pass exam for what he wanted to do.
Ds2 works in a call centre, as do I.

Yanbu but i couldnt scrimp for 10 years to afford a box and stay in teaching which i hate to make repayments.

I think it is harder to buy now but not impossible. Plus there seems to be a lot more temptations for people to spend money on.
We only saved for about a year and a half for a deposit as first time buyers. We had a bit of help in we were given money from ILS and my family to buy some basics like white goods.
It will take DC a lot longer to save but we hope to be able to gift at least a few thousand pounds towards a deposit.

Ah. Yes, I think if your parents or anyone for that matter are effectively subbing your rent and your bills, it probably is an awful lot easier to save than in the situation many are in. When I was in my early 20s about 80% of my pay went on rent and bills - not having to pay that would have put me in a much more comfortable position.

It's so much harder to get on the property ladder now, but once there you stand much more chance of holding onto your property than in the past, when it was so easy to get a mortgage.
I saw so many friends and family repossessed in the 80's and 90's, some lost everything more than once.
I don't know the trick now but it used to be buying a shell, for far less than the mortgage offer given, and doing it up yourself.
Our first house cost half what the banks were prepared to lend.

The luck vs hard work debate is all about pride. It is less well off people saying you are not better than me because you have a house and better off people saying yes I am.

Why does it matter whether it was luck or not? I didn't buy a house so that my friends can admire how hard I work, how frugal I am and how good I am at financial planning. I bought it so that we have a place to live at an affordable cost.

I'm equally as disinterested in saying to people richer than me that they are only in that position because of luck. Maybe its luck, maybe its not, maybe it is a combination of both but it does not matter. They still have money and I don't and they are not superior in any case.

I think talking about your woes is therapeutic. If my friends are bothered about house prices and want to talk to me about them, fine. It is obviously harder to buy a house now than it ever has been. I'm not going to judge them for eating too much avocado.

It's like anything else. If a friend has health issues, I'm not going to lecture them on their lifestyle or tell them they should be grateful they are not in as bad a position as others.

Moaning is okay in moderation. It does become boring after a while though. It is not home owners' fault that house prices are what they are. What do you want us to do about it? You have to play the hand you are dealt and get on with it. No point feeling sorry for yourself.

Well done susannah for finally recognising home ownership is now within the grasp of everyone.

If isn’t much of a stretch to realise that these people are likely to be there ones who’s parents couldn’t afford to play host to them like yours and your partners could and are not as lucky as you both have been.

Do you understand yet ?

I agree with the OP to some degree. We’re in Ireland, and during the recession DH was on a 2.5 day week, but we made the commitment to live on my wage and save his earnings. We batch cooked, became very familiar with slow cooker and bulking things out, took packed lunches, grew things on our balcony, and our cars even now are 10 and 12 years old. We only upgraded our phones last Christmas, having had the same ones from 2010, and we didn’t have a holiday or even a dinner out between 2011-2015. We don’t drink and we don’t smoke or of course do drugs. I do have a chronic illness and my health costs are nearly 200 per month (no NHS). We picked up our keys to a 3 bed apartment 2.5 years ago. Many of our friends have had a 50% or more rent increase; as an example the apartment we were renting was 850 when we moved in, 1050 when we moved out, and is currently renting at 1475. Our mortgage is less than our rent was. Many have commented that we are lucky, but lots of them traveled abroad constantly through that time, had the latest phone, have newer cars, full pay TV package etc. DH has remained with the same company but has finally returned to full time hours. I’ve changed jobs in the last year and had a 25% pay increase, but only because I also studied part time to finish a degree; my ‘pay increase’ is actually cancelled out by the fees we paid for the next two years. They made their choices but so did we, and I really dislike the animosity that sometimes gets directed our way. We didn’t have it easier, we just made different choices, and I think too often it’s easier to avoid responsibility and go “Poor me”.

The ones who really bug me are upstairs neighbors; they’re on subsidised housing meaning they pay less than 10% of the market rent for their apartment, they have a campervan and two cars which they’ve upgraded each year, and the three kids have got more gadgets than they know what to do with. They spend every school holiday abroad and they have a long list of after school classes etc. If they can afford that type of lifestyle, then I think they’re tking (or even stealing) the resources which could be applied to a more deserving family.

If you seriously want to buy a home, you need to look at every aspect of your life. To paraphrase to the ‘A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips’, it’s a moment of pleasure when you hand over your debit card, but could be a lifetime of renting. Pare back to basics, watch your spending - even now we have a weekly allowance of 15 per week for coffees, movies, lipstick etc -and look at your career options. If you’re on minimum wage, you need to seek development, skills etc to get off it. If you’ve got time to watch TV, you have time to learn new skills. As offensive as it may be, children are expensive and where possible, maybe delayed a little (I KNOW THIS ISNT ALWAYS AN OPTION). Before anyone claims it’s hard for poorly educated people, I came from a dysfunctional family, left school with almost no qualifications, and I’ve done it, as has my sister and brother, with no help from family. It’s a case of walking away from excuses for most people, although I recognise it is an impossible for some.

We first bought in 2001 at that time we only needed a 5% deposit and we took a loan out for it, I don’t think you could go that now.
Checks were less stringent we literally blagged our mortgage dh was self employed but got one of his friends who was a sole trader to write a letter saying that he’s worked for him for years!
I don’t know how people manage to buy houses these days. I count myself as v lucky.
My kids won’t have the same situation as we did.

YANBU. We moved out of London. Will not be able to move back at the very least until our children leave home. At least we were able to buy a house.

Tbh I think it’s very hard without help. The deposit is hard to raise and mortgages are a lot stricter. In many ways I’m glad we only have one DC we are saving for his future so he should have deposit when he’s old enough. But I truly can’t see how any one can afford in london

Not RTFT because I’m too tired!

Both my partner and I are band 5 in the nhs. Between us we have a guaranteed income of £50k a year, we have slightly more than that coming in as my business has just gone into profit but I don’t include that at present when looking at finances.

The average 2 bedroom house in my area sells for £275k - £300k. So we would need a £27.5k deposit, plus £4K additional feels. Even with the 10% deposit, who would lend us £247.5k on a £50k a year joint income?

Its rather sad that as 2 professionals with only 1 child we still can’t buy a house!

DP and I have just been discussing this, and he reminded me that a couple we know "couldn't afford" to buy a flat but managed to save £12k to spend on a wedding!

Another £3k and they'd have had a 10% deposit to put down on a £150k flat ...

I was very lucky when I bought a two bed flat in 2002. I'd been living with my mom to save and although I was broke afterwards, I did it. I didn't have kids though, or a partner, no catchment to consider or numerous rooms needed.

It was 2002 and very different. I was lucky

It makes me uncomfortable when posters talk about living frugally and scrimping (as I did) to get on the ladder. Many posters are already doing this OP just to exist, let alone find a property. Let alone one for a family/ close to work.

The example used upthread about someone's boss buying a one bed.....well try fitting in a four person family into a one bed.

It's all relative. When I bought my flat for 50k I was in a professional job. Yet my parents and co on non professional jobs all had mansions by comparison (well three bed semis). I thought this had been the golden age of home ownership yet I recall my parents in the 80s and 90s really struggling. My mom had three jobs at one point to keep the roof over our heads.

Me and dp bought our house 3 years ago.

Up north so not expensive, 5% deposit (they do still exist quite readily!) Smallish mortgage. Neither of us have huge wages. Earn about 40k all together.

Now we have a ds. If we'd gave had him first, we'd never get a mortgage because our childcare bill is about equal to my wage.

Its doable If you live (or are willing to live) in the right place I think.

53rd - we lived with parents to save money.

So your parents gave you your deposit. Call it what it is. That’s different than saving for less than a year.

Many posters are already doing this OP just to exist

Exactly!

We are lucky, bought in 1999 for 75k and it's now worth 180k. Mortgage will be paid off next year. Brother on the other hand dithered about buying for so long, living at home and with various girlfriends he's only just bought his first home at the age of 40.

He says he had to buy as time ran out in order to by and be clear of his mortgage by retirement age. It got me thinking, if you'd never buy and rent all your life what happens once you retire? If you are on a state pension how do you cover rent? Would councils give priority to elderly who can't afford to rent their homes any longer? Sorry if it's a stupid question, I'd never given it thought before.

A lot of people could get on the ladder if it was their top priority. However most people at that time in life are having babies or establishing a career both of which take priority in terms of energy and income.
In my 20s I was burning the midnight oil at work. No way could I have come home to a DIY project (and had no partner to buy/diy with anyway).
In my 30s I had babies, and tried not to destroy my career. Again a doer-upper was not my number one priority.

Mincepiedout.. there are tonnes of threads with people terrified about that very situation.

The elderly in unstable housing is a very real certainty for this country now.

There are elements of choice for many with people choosing to have several children before they’ve bought a house. However, for many I think getting on the property ladder feels like it’s completely out of their reach - even with scrimping and saving. The person above talking about two NHS professionals not being able to buy a house is very sad.
The young people who can get on the property ladder usually have help in one form or another. I’m not sure that’s changed particularly; certainly we were rare among our friends because our parents didn’t provide a deposit as a wedding present.
One of ours has just bought a little Victorian terrace in Winchester for 500k. It would be OK for a couple with one child (they aren’t even married yet) but any more than one child in the future and they’ll have to move up. They haven’t even got parking for 500k. I’m not sure how people on ‘ordinary’ salaries could afford anything. Even on joint income of nearly 100k, both sets of parents have had to help a fair bit with some costs and furnishings.
Another is just about to complete on a little flat costing 198k. He’s very lucky that he’s had forces help to buy, been deployed so has saved and earned more whilst away and had us to help out with some costs and furnishings.
Our last nanny now has three children of her own. She and her husband started off quite young with a part buy/part rent house. They had help from grandparents to buy this. It’s now too small for their growing family but they can’t afford to move up into a bigger house locally.

Funnily enough, I have just finished reading a brief piece in The i on the back of Phillip Hammond’s pledge about stamp duty for first time buyers. A few facts:
22% of parents plan to release equity from their homes to help their children.
21% provide it as an interest free loan. 2% offer it as a loan with interest.
£877bn -The estimated total of equity that could be released through downsizing by 2036.
Average age of first time buyer = 30.
Average UK property deposit - £48,931.
Average property deposit in London- £94,088.
69% - percentage who say that could not have afforded their deposit without their parents’ help.
£6.5bn - Amount parents are estimated to have lent during 1917 making them the UK’s ninth-largest mortgage lender.
5.1% The percentage by which average property prices increased this year.