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.

We bought an ex-council house with one storage heater and an open fire.
It was 47k 15 years ago.

It wasn’t great but we sold it for over double just three years later and were able to use the equity to purchase a bigger house

Repeated that five years after and now we have our forever home.

So basically unless you bought 15/20 years ago I think it’s impossible these days.

You could move to northern Scotland? It’s cheaper here!

@notso - where? I couldn’t find anywhere under 50k and at that time I was searching for places in the north and midlands

You have very cheap rent, but our mortgage on the 4 bed we were renting for 800 pc came out at 700 pc (deposit 25%). This was 3 months ago. Maybe shop around more for a better mortgage?

I bought on the outskirts of London 4 years ago. I had 9k deposit, lived in a shared house to save it over 3 years while DP retrained.
The flat was £153,000, the interest rate was high and initially more than renting a similar flat. When we remortgaged after two years the LTV was much better (due to Crossrail induced price rises) so a much lower interest rate. It gave us the leg up to buy a house when DPs wage increased, although as we bought in the same area the houses were also much more expensive than 3 years before!

Are you only looking at new build?

We bought a 3 bed 30s semi in a fairly pleasant area of NE Glasgow - so not West End, or Southside therefor not posh or stupidly expensive. This was in 2002 so a while back, the house was fixed price at £84995 as opposed to offers over, so we snapped it up. Can't remember if it was 25 or 30 year mortgage (Northern Rock). I think the payments (after we sold our flat for £33k ) were about £900 pcm, DH is a uni lecturer, me SAHM, three DDs. We paid it off completely about two or three years back. I really wouldn't want to be buying afresh now.

We don’t look at new builds at all as they’re half the size of anything else the same price and there’s no way of making anything on them at all.
I think we just have to carry on saving it’s just depressing when the goalposts feel like they’re moving every time they’re within reach

We live in Essex

I am on £28k and DH on £25k. We saved a 5% deposit in 2 years (and I was on mat leave for 9 months) for our £260k 3 bed house we're about to complete on whilst renting a 2 bed flat. Yes our mortgage will be higher than our rent by £200 but we won't have pressure of saving anymore.

We managed it by only giving ourselves £50 each a month for anything luxury e.g. new clothes or a meal out etc.

We had to be strict and we will have it tough for first couple years too whilst we have high nursery fees and renovate the house but it's worth it long term so people keep telling me

I’m going to say something that many will accuse me of stealth boasting for but the point I’m trying to make is kind. We were able to buy our 3 bed semi because my Gran originally left me half the value of her own house. So despite us having very small incomes ourselves we already had half the equity of our current house. We were extremely lucky - most people are not and never will be in that position. For lots and lots of people renting will be the norm, for the rest of their lives. And actually it’s fairly normal in the rest of Europe. So please don’t beat yourself up about these things, there are lots of advantages to renting too! (I won’t bore everyone with listing them but when you’re having damp problems with your own mortgaged house that you keep throwing money at and can’t fix and wouldn’t be able to sell either - due to said problems - it does suck)!

I'm lucky because I live in scotland where house prices are cheaper. We saved very hard, we've always been good at saving anyway. Then bought an ex-council house with no heating. It was not in a great area and needed a lot of work. We were so poor after making the purchase that we lived for years after without installing gas heaters and using plug in electric heaters. We renovated it bit by bit over the years. It's a lot better now, but still not fantastic. Will be looking to sell it soon and move to a nicer house.

The mortgage payments were slightly less than the rent we were paying.

I don't know how anyone does it without living rent free for a while.
DP and I saved for one year by living at our parents separately. but before that we'd both been paying rent at university (no help from parents here either). We are early twenties and both have good income (above national average)

I bought in an extremely undesirable area for 28k, 2 years ago.

I earn 16k PA (21k for the year before I bought) raising the deposit while renting was tough and entailed pulling 15hr days 3-4 days a week (as well as my regular 11hrs for the other days of the week, barring mondays only) to try to bump my salary for the year before (to both save and look good on paper for my application). But I did it.
Honestly, I don't recommend living here. getting to work is bloody tough and there isn't much around. I had to put down a 25% deposit due to a less than favourable credit rating... it does make the £300+ commute more bareable though. My mortgage repayments are under £100 a month (I was previously paying £350 rent plus the expensive commute). It's a 25yr mortgage.

This house is v similar to mine.
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-64077929.html

This probably isn't helpful but that's how I did it without parental help. I'm the first person in 4 generations to own any property, so I wasn't about to receive a big deposit from someone downsizing or something...

Where can you buy a house for £28K?!!

I live in Essex and you couldn’t even buy a beach hut for that!!!!!!!

You could buy houses for about £30k in Belfast a few years ago. Not even terrible parts of Belfast.

Lived with parents. Opened a H2B ISA and another savings account. Saved 40% of salary into these whilst paying minimal digs over 20 months. Bought a 2 bed, semi with gardens, driveway, garage and loft space with potential, by myself. (35 yr mortgage, 10% deposit, £350 pcm). It's in Scotland but is in an area with a bad reputation, however, we're in a nice street, lovely neighbours and I feel it would have been silly to pay extra for a "nice area".

My tip would be to cut your fixed outgoings really far down. The only fixed outgoing I had when I went to my mortgage interview was £25 insurance. I pay everything else up front so it doesn't come off monthly and so this does not factor in their calculations.

bought in the north west. delayed having DC so we could work and save up. No car at that point (cycled everywhere, I zero transport cost). not going on holiday for a few years to save for a deposit instead. We had a few really, really frugal years but it was the only way for us to save enough for a deposit to buy. once we bought costs came down as the mortgage was a lot cheaper than the rent.

Parts of Wales, particularly the ex mining towns and areas, A lot of Rhondda cynon Taff. You can get houses for under 50k.
The link I posted is a house similar to mine, next area over (within 15 min walk) and is 32k, which is about right. Can be done. Wouldn't recommend it if you've got a choice though!

Bought when we were both 20 and only started seeing each other as property prices had only started to boom (in N.Ireland) We currently pay £360 mortgage a month but i only work 10hrs per week and hubby on average wage

lollipop it’s the same here, rent for a bog standard 3 bed here is £600-£750 pm, the average 3 bed to buy is around £200,000-£250,000. I don’t know many people under 40 who own their own property unless they bought 10+ years ago.

I rent and won’t ever be able to buy.

You start with a flat pre children and work up to 2 , 3 , 4 bed houses . Have you looked at new builds where they offer incentives ? Our house now is a 4 bed detached and we got stamp duty paid , it's not our forever home but it big and almost mortgage free and needs not maintenance so suits us for now .

Pigpoet - that’s just not realistic. I live in a 2 bed flat at the moment. Our rent is £750 pcm. Our neighbors own their flat (identical to ours) and pay £480 pcm in mortgage. Our rent plus all other bills means we have almost no disposable income to save to go towards getting a deposit together.
Back in the days if 100% mortgages and when the banks were just throwing money at people it was far easier to buy a home but those days are gone.

Be V careful with investments like student accommodation. I'm a property investor and wouldn't touch them. If you are tempted by the guaranteed rent, how old is the company offering it. If it has no history and dissolves in 2 years then you'll get nothing. What's your exit? The only person that will buy it will be another investor, investors will want it cheap.

If I were to start now without much of a deposit I'd look at something like rent to rent. Normally this would be leasing a house as a house from the owner over a period of years then renting by the room. For you, possibly do this with a house with a spare room and get a lodger. Ideally you could do this with an option to buy so that once you'd saved you get a mortgage on it and buy it. There are property sourcers who can find these for you although for a fee but if they're any good you'll save their fee several times over.

The other way is to do an exchange with delayed completion. Normally when buying you exchange contracts then complete a week later. It can be done with as long between as you want so you can exchange, do it up over 6 months and then sell it on at a higher price with the seller getting the original price. Doing that would generate a deposit. Obviously this sort of thing works better on a wreck/somewhere that's been on the market a while.

Not sure whether there is a private message function on here but happy to expand if there is and you message me. I won't try and sell anything.

Right to buy from.the council
Valued at 320k
Bought for 191k with the discount
Pay £795 a.month
With the rtb scheme and the hefty discount from being council tenants we could never have afforded to buy off our own bat despite earning 30k between us

Saved on a fairly low salary (by London standards) for roughly 7 years, and bought 2 years ago with my partner, who'd been saving (in a much more casual way but on a much higher salary) for around the same amount of time.

I worked in hospitality for the bulk of that time so ate for free whenever possible, and cooked economically when home. I bought pretty much everything 2nd hand, and cycled my daily commute.

On reflection, it was a long time to deny myself fairly regular everyday pleasures (whilst in my 20s), and to maintain a constant awareness of spending.

It definitely wasn't easy, and I feel for anyone saving for a deposit these days...

We sacrificed our social lives and holidays and saved hard for our deposit it was truly depressing watching all our friends still partying like we were at university and not being able to join in. I didn't buy any new clothes or shoes for a year, it was such a contrast from being at uni where I was blowing money at a ridiculous pace.

After a year of saving, we bought three years ago in the South East with a 5% deposit on a £185,000 property. We did want to put down a larger deposit but needed to keep some back for fixing it up, as the kitchen and bathrooms were pretty much unusable. We initially paid £860 a month on our mortgage.

We did have to compromise on buying a smaller house than we would have liked in order to get on the property ladder. The house next door, which is exactly the same as ours, is being rented out for £925pcm and we now only pay £650pm on our mortgage after renegotiating a new deal last year. The key for us was compromise and learning to lower our expectations.