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.

I bought a flat using inheritance money in 1998 so very cheap. We sold in 2000 which gave us a good deposit on a house. We have recently moved to our forever home, again using what we made over the years on the house. We had to play the long game to get where we are now

We both lived with parents after university until we had saved up a big enough deposit. Not for everyone but worked for us. No inheritance or parental help. A cheap area in the North though.

Op, having three children is expensive. Do you have a salary and does it cover all your childcare? You may find your finances improve once your DC are at school.

One of my DC has managed to buy a property by moving to a cheap area but they don’t have DC yet, so it was easier to save a deposit.

Moved at the start of this year. Was in neg equity on old property so had a double whammy of having to pay that back plus save up a deposit from scratch.

I couldn't have afforded a house in our old town (our old property was tiny), so we have ended up moving to the next county where it is cheaper. Having spent 5 years working a second job at weekends, only doing a SC holiday cheap once a year, supermarket clothes, bog standard cars which are economical to run, we cleared the neg equity and got together a 5% deposit (tip: see a mortgage broker - L&C are excellent).

If prices are outstripping your deposit and borrowing ability then you need to find an area that you can afford.

Back in the day when house prices really started kicking off and interest rates were running at 20-odd %, you co-bought at an early age with a group of friends, then you either bought each other out or sold it at a profit. You then had your own deposit to buy alone or with a partner.

Bought a 3 bed semi for £86k 15 years ago (95% mortgage). Sold it for £160k odd. Used the profit towards our current 4 bed detached about 8 years ago - £225k. Current house not gone up in value much, still abut £100k left on mortgage

Can't offer anything up other than empathy. I (stupidly) helped my dad so he didn't lose his house when my parents divorced and went on his mortgage 8 years ago. Was supposed to be short term but long story short I'm still on it with little chance of getting out without making my dad homeless. Live and work in Surrey (was born here, family live here, wouldn't even know where else to go!). I'm now subject to additional stamp duty as a '2nd' homeowner which is about 15k we don't have. Don't qualify for any schemes as technically own a house so rent with husband and go to sleep every night stressing about not being able to afford the family he would love. Save really hard and sacrifice as much as I can mentally manage but it consumes me every day sigh.

Met DH who is a high earner and had a substantial deposit from his earnings and we lived in a small room in a shared house for years. No inheritance or parental help. No car, no iphones, no takeaway coffees, no shop bought lunches, cheap/free nights out, don't drink/smoke. We were 33/35 when we bought our first flat, five years ago, in London. Had been saving since leaving uni, so over 10 years. It was a fairly newbuild flat as we don't have the skills/time to deal with a doer-upper, but it wasn't brand new so couldn't use HTB etc.

We bought in 1999 with a 100% mortgage on one small income. With a child to look after and both recently graduated we could just afford that but we couldn't afford rent. Had the house purchase not worked out we would have been compelled to move in with my husbands parents. One of the many reasons I adore my pil is that they had anticipated this need and planned to:
Vacate their ensuite bedroom to give to us
Move in to bil's smaller room
Move bil into the box room (which he nobly was fine with)
Give up the spare room so we could use it as a sitting room of our own.
Happily we didn't need it but that's what was on the cards.
With the current state of House prices I think a big part of the problem is that we don't think like my pil. A house that's a struggle with two incomes is affordable with four. What needs to be done is to find somewhere big enough for two family units, buy jointly (if you can get a mortgage) and live the compromise for as long as it takes.

My boss lived like a pauper for 8 years. She had no holidays, bought most of her clothes in charity shops, did 2 jobs a lot of the time, lived in cheap house shares, had a crappy 2nd hand and old cars, got promoted 3 times and increased her salary by 50%.

A couple of months ago, she used her £30k deposit to buy a £150k flat in a cheap (for round here) area. It needed a lot of work, which she is slowly getting done.

I don't know the details of her mortgage, but I know her repayments are less than the £750 a month she'd have to pay to rent an equivalent property.

Sorry, 2nd hand phone !

I agree with lowering expectations. Bought a tiny 2 up 2 down in a less than ideal location. But you know what, it was ours and we loved it.

I do think it must be hard saving for a deposit and paying rent. Can you either move somewhere where the rent is cheaper for a while (and save the difference) or consider cheaper / smaller properties to buy?

We were old (late 30s) and used the savings we had. Plus PIL very generously gave us 12 grand. This was 2007. I really feel for people doing it now, it was hard enough then.

Live in the north west, lowered my expectations... a lot.

I saved every penny I could; no going out, no holidays, no treats or luxuries at all for a few years, then I bought a wreck. (I could stand in the cellar and see the sky!). Did it up gradually (living in one room with an outside loo) when I could afford to buy a few more floorboards. I actually cooked on the open fire for a year (handy having lots of woodwormy floorboards to burn).

It was very tough, but I have managed to upgrade since then!

Moved to a slightly cheaper area (still South East) and used help to buy. House prices have gone up so it's worked out well for us and we now have a decent chunk of equity. I'd look at Help to Buy again.

We moved in together into DH's rental house and just saved everything i had been paying already in rent and bills, so that we didn't miss the money. DH continued to pay the rent and bills while i just siphoned off the equivalent amount into an ISA. Did that for about two years.

Hated DH's rental house. Was in a rough area and needed a lot doing to it but it was a good incentive. If we'd have moved into mine i think we'd have been more relaxed and it would have taken us longer, but DH's landlord let him have a dog, whereas mine said no.

I'd agree with the point about adjusting your expectations as well. I love our house, but it was a massive compromise. The area - whilst fine - is not as nice as the one that I wanted to live in and we get a lot of traffic noise. Plus the house is a massive fixer upper; I didn't really want a big project but that's what we've ended up with! However buying the equivalent property all "done" (or only needing minor cosmetic work) in the area that I preferred, would have been an extra £250K.

We had one DC lived with an inlaw who had no mortgage so with our two incomes we only had to pay half of the utilities and I took on the cooking and cleaning.
DH did training to up his salary and I had a F/T day job and P/T evening job.
After 4 years of savings we had enough for a deposit and the mortgage would have been similar to the amount of rent on the same type of house.
Ended up moving out because I got pregnant and decided to put the savings aside hoping the market came down a bit when I returned to work, ended up with an inheritance towards the end of my mat leave which added to the savings made the deposit roughly 70% so the mortgage was smaller than anticipated.

House prices rose over that year and our savings wouldn't have been a decent enough to buy comfortably.

I think once you have children it becomes doubly hard unless you have multiple jobs or cash gifts from parents unless you buy something a bit smaller for a few years like others have done.

Cheap area Peterborough 2 years into our first jobs. Saved hard before that.
We didn't stretch ourselves financially by only buying the size we really needed but that's easier to do without DC.

Have you looked into an interest only mortgage. They're not easy to come by but might be a way onto the ladder and as others have said, you'll need to move to a less desirable area. We've had to make a lot of compromises.

Saved like mad
We camped instead of pricey holidays costing grands
Never had a new car until now
My food bill is £60 a week

And then we moved away from London

OP what mortgage term are those payments over? Based on what interest rate? How old are you? £1300 would be over a term of around 20 years which you'd only have to do if you were approx 55 years old with a pension in place or 45 years old otherwise. So if you're younger than that you can do a longer term therefore smaller payments. Overall if you still feel it's unaffordable you need to reduce your dream a bit and look at smaller places or flats or less desirable locations just to get on the ladder which most of us have had to do.

We bought a 2 up 2 down terrace in 2002 for 75k. At the time I was on £10000 and partner was on around 17k I think.
We saved previously to that while still living at home. I was only 19 when we bought. Put 10% down.

We moved 3 years ago now with 2 children and having seriously outgrown the first home. Sold for £160k
So with that and equity we had a sizeable deposit.
However this mortgage is far bigger. Takes a while to adjust.

Also don't rule out new builds. Just be sensible and sus out the market.
The one I am in now was a new build. It's huge, great location, good garden and far superior to anything we saw when we first started looking. They tend to have greater incentives for ftb too

We live in a dirt-cheap area in the North-west. Two bed terrace with a garden for 60k - 6k deposit which we saved for in a year between us.