To ask how you managed to buy a house?

[Lollipop30]

If you’ve not had any parental help or outside input but have been able to buy a house recently..how?!
I’m feeling really down about it. We have a decent income and are able to save a modest amount per month but even with a 10% deposit the mortgage payments come out as double what we’re paying in rent for the same size.
Are interest rates really set to go up, and in which case should we just forget about even trying to buy.

By saving like mad and being utterly tight - only buying things we had to ie bills rent food for a year

A friend’s daughter has just bought first house a couple of months ago. She lives and works in Bournemouth, so not a cheap area. She literally budgeted really hard to save a £25k deposit. No iPhone or similar, no internet at home, shopped at Aldi, batch cooked, made own lunches, cycled to work, never smoked and doesn’t particularly drink. The house is very dated but friend’s daughter is quite creative especially with textiles. She has now let the 2nd bedroom and is saving up money to redo bathroom. I think it is do able but not easy.

Thing is though, for those people saying they moved in with parents/family in order to save up - that it still doing it with help from parents/family. It may be indirect help - they may not be giving you cash for a deposit but by allowing you to live virtually rent free while you save that is just another version of the bank of Mum & Dad.

The system is just so wrong.

I’m in my mid 30s, married with a child. Both work FT in reasonable salary jobs. The majority of our monthly income goes out on rent/bills and usual living costs. Saving for a deposit (or for anything!) just isn’t an option. We have no hope of getting a mortgage as things stand now.

Went via a broker. Much better rates and could borrow what we needed.

We are currently living with family to save for a deposit, which we've now got and will hopefully be in our home by July

Where does everyone get 25 year mortgages from its hilarious. Mortgages are generally up to a maximum of 40 years or age 75 ish (every lender is different) get a good broker,a mortgage is very rarely most expensive per month than rental payments otherwise landlords with buy to lets wouldn't exist. We have a £215k mortgage over 35 years and it's £670 per month,we plan to borrow another 30k when we remortgage next year and that will be around an extra £80 per month. Get good advice before you decide to stick with renting.

Pure luck. Brought at university when prices were low ( mortgage less than rent) and my deposit was from summer jobs etc. Yes I did the property up but much of the rise was just house prices ( so not my hard work really). Used equity of my first property for deposit in my next property. My age has been immensely important for me ( buying when property was cheaper). Rising prices takes money away from the next generation and hands it to banks and the government in taxation.

Rented a room in a shared house rather than my own place and lived really frugally to save for a deposit.

I was lucky because 95% mortgages were available then so I only had to save 5%.

It's unbelievable how I bought my first house by myself.
In 1989 I bought a 2 bed terrace in an ok part of town for 12k!
I was on a part time casual contract with the council.
A few months after I bought the house I was offered a permanent full time job with the same authority. A few months i met DPI'm still with DP and the LA nearly 30 years later but have moved house several times!!

OK, so it was a long time ago so perhaps not directly comparable, but my first house cost 6 times my annual salary (so basically the equivalent of a £300K house for a couple both earning £25K).

I did it by working 2 jobs and only spending on the absolute essentials. And buying before I had any children.

I'm 25 and bought my first house with my partner last year. He is a HLTA and I work in retail, so not on amazing incomes! Luckily we do live in the north east so prices are less expensive.
We managed to get a 5% deposit and our house cost £76,000 - 2 bed terraced in a nice village. Needed decorating to our taste but that was all. Can easily live in it without doing anything.
We are looking to move again next year but we will have a bigger deposit and be 'on the ladder' thanks to getting this house. It is so difficult but all I can say is save, speak to a financial adviser (we couldn't have done it without him), and go for something that's less than perfect to begin with.
Our mortgage is £250 a month.. in comparison to us paying £450 a month when we were renting! Which means that extra £200 can be saved towards the next place!

Saved money in an HTB ISA, then bought a new build using the HTB scheme, government owns a 20% stake in the house which will charge a fee after 5 years untiul we pay it off, just kicked the can further down the road , but kept our mortgage down to 75% LTV rather than 95%.

Instead of moving out like my friends did I stayed at home and saved up my deposit

Had 100% mortgage on my first flat. Made 10k on selling it. We had saved another 10. That gave us deposit for our 180k 3 bed detached house in Scotland.

Bought a small flat in a rubbish part of London which was an hour's travelling time from my job the other side of London. Made improvements to flat then managed to move to nicer flat much closer to job, but then worked two jobs day and evening and weekends for 2 years to keep up with rising mortgage rates. For several years no holidays (stayed with parents in country & occasional YHA walking w/ends), no car, occasional nights out, limited heating. Was worth it though.

We bought a flat in a not great area with a 5% deposit we’d saved. We over paid the mortgage and 5 years later sold and had a big enough deposit for a small house - bigger mortgage cos we earned more. We were lucky that we bought our first place several years ago - it was easier to get a higher % mortgage then

Shared ownership here in London basically. Mortgage and SO rent together are still about half what the market rental rate would be.

To get the deposit together we rented a room until we were married, DH worked double time, I sold stuff on ebay as well as working, I did mystery shopping, organised super frugal living. We went on the occasional budget holiday to Spain, but not Borneo or travelling like all our mates. No new clothes, toiletries etc. It was hard but worth it, although mates have all got on the ladder now due to large inheritances / family help / rich partners so we're still pretty much bottom of the heap!!

I bought in 2002 for 90k. The same flat sold this year for 215k. Salaries are not that different. You didn't even need a deposit, although I had saved one. Interest rates went down as well so I think we paid 6-7% and everyone said they were low and they got lower.

We own a place which we rent out, and then are tenants ourselves closer to work/DS school - the only reason we own is because it's the 4th property in 15 years and we were able (each time we moved) to decrease our mortgage by buying further and further outside London where our money stretched.

If we were to buy the house we live in at the moment, the mortgage would be £600 a month more than what we currently pay for it in rent! That's calculating repayments using a GENEROUS deposit of 20% - it'd be double rent every month with a 10% deposit!

On one hand, it feels unfair and can make you feel really despondent. On the other hand, though, we are the only county in Europe which is so geared up towards buying property - everyone else on the continent rents.

OP, have you thought about investing in student accommodation? A lot of companies offer guaranteed returns on investment - it puts you on the property ladder and also provides you an income.

On a combined salary of 45k we saved for about 5 years for a 10% deposit on a 200k house which we bought 3 years ago. It meant putting away about 350 a month between us. We were seriously lucky though as for the first three years we were living in a very cheap city and our rent cost £300 a month for a nice flat, so actually most of our savings came from that time.

The house is in Scotland where the market isn't as crazy, though. Our mortgage is slightly less than rent in our last place was. We live in a nice, fairly central area.

I have no idea how single people and those living in expensive areas manage it.

My friend just bought his first property, (a flat in London). He did it through shared ownership, as he simply couldn’t afford anything in London otherwise.

Save every penny in a high risk / high return stocks and shares ISA with funds picked via Hargreaves Landsdown’s lists. No treats, no holidays, no gadgets or fancy clothes, no expensive house rentals (house shares only) for 10 years when my salary was very, very low. This allowed me to build a pot of approx 30k and I used that as a deposit on a 90 percent LTV mortgage.

Lived outside the south east. That's it. Didn't have to try especially hard and made some non optimum decisions, but they didn't prevent us from being able to do it.

Bought in 1999, house cost £19,000. I was 19, DH was 22, he earned £12,500 a year at the time. The house needed a lot of work it had no bathroom just an outside toilet with a washing up bowl on a shelf. We sold five years later for just over a hundred thousand.

I don’t understand where we’re going wrong then 😭
Our rent is £595pcm for a 3bed But to buy just a 2bed in the same area the payments are £1000 with 10% deposit, or £1300 with 5% deposit.
We live as cheaply as poss, bulk cooking, minimal social life. Living with family would be a no go as we have 3kids and we moved out from parents as the rent was dearer with them than on our own (pre children)