To wonder how ordinary people afford to live in such expensive places?

[Sienna290]

I have been job hunting and I saw a position based in Kent. I am not planning to apply for it but just out of curiosity I went on Rightmove to see how much it would cost to live there.

I earn 52,000 and would have a deposit of 50 so I was looking at around quarter of a million for starters. This would buy me - a rundown terrace or a one bed / studio flat.

Do most people buy in couples? Or is this just how it is in expensive towns and cities - ordinary people don’t live there!

@kirinm. Thanks. How long would you say it’s taken (from moving in to now)?

I was always told aim for a two bed flat if possible.

Wrong part of the cycle to buy. Incomes will rise; property will be static for quite a few years I suspect.

Small houses near our primary school have doubled from around 300k in recent years. Apparently driven by people moving from London I don't understand how people afford it with children .

@ohtheroses yes, I agree but it will take that long to save deposit!

We only afford it as bought in the 1990s before having DC early 2000s

@Ohtheroses when do you think it will pick up ? 2021 or 2025?

Three bed semi in an ok school area here....£350:000 MINIMUM

Depends where in Kent though. Bromley, I see your problem, Ashford or Dover you can get a decent 3 bed for £250k. That’s what we did and used the high speed train for work when we first moved to Kent.
Quids in.

They rent, as they can’t afford to buy & it makes it easier to move on to the next job/progression

@maddie but isn’t all your money going on train fare?

DP and I are part of a Housing Association.

You don't need to be poor to join one.

An alternative if you're not keen on buying.

£250k is normal for where I live. Most people get help from family, but a run down place and do it up, get quite large mortgages (to the point that if one of them loses their job, they'd be in trouble) buy in couples. I think it all depends of where you're looking to move to.

DH and I are in Kent. We are both part time teachers, so our combined income is not hugely higher than yours on your own (about 60K) and we have childcare expenses, so disposable income a fair bit less than yours.

1. Bigger deposit - we saved for quite a long time, and we both had a small amount of inheritance from grandparents, so deposit was more like 100K.

1. HUGE mortgage. Basically since DD was born we have had almost no disposable income after childcare and mortgage/bills. This was tricky for us, but was our choice as DD was not well for a long time (around a year) so we didn’t want to take more hours away from her just in case things went badly. The way we got a mortgage this large was by having a “guarantor mortgage”. Basically a member of your family signs as a guarantor in a similar way to when you start renting.

Basically, you make it work if that’s what you need to do. With your income, you have probably become used to a certain amount of luxury (no judgement, that’s your money do what you want with it). If buying a house is important to you, you have to go without for a while and cut back to bare essentials. Financially, it’s worth it in the long run.

No help from parents, just lots of saving for the shabby, run down properties and lots of weekends and evenings spent doing them up. Each time right on the edge of a ‘naice ’ area and each time, by the time we had finished doing them up they had increased in value with the ripple effect of the ‘naice’ area. Done this four times and now have a decent size home in a better area. It’s doable but admittedly not easy...

Oh and we are (and always have been) in Kent.

I don't think it will be a fast alignment but I think greatest growth will be around planned crossrail/Elizabeth Line routes and the northern new conservative areas. There will always be possibilities for risk takers and the buy to let rentals will gradually return to the market increasing supply but that's a 15/20 year trajectory.

Buy in a cheaper place and travel in? Buy a larger place and rent a room out?

Unfortunately £250000 doesn’t buy a lot in the south east.

We rent

I live in Kent. In order to buy, we moved from mid to East Kent, away from my parents and where I grew up. My parents helped us too - but actually the most important factor was that we are lucky enough to have been born in 1979 and we got onto the housing ladder before it became unaffordable. Even a few years later it would have been so much harder.

The town I grew up in is polarised and the demographics are not good long term. The rolls of the schools are falling. Families can't afford it, but people who retire from London can, which exacerbates the problem. It's a beautiful place to look at, but I wouldn't want to go back. There is nothing set up for families there - the people who run things and volunteer don't like the noise, and don't see the point.

When we bought here in 2013 prices were reasonable. They have shot up thanks to our town becoming a cool place to live and commute from. It's a real worry for people that rents are rising.

Basically there's a big discrepancy between wages and house prices, and it's getting worse. At least in London you can get paid well (I know, not everyone does). In Ashford or Folkestone a full time, professional office job can be in the mid to low twenties, maybe even less, and neither of those places are as cheap as they used to be, thanks to the high speed.

It's all very well posters saying that the first house is always hard - this completely misses the structural and demographic issues in the economy here, and the rapid effect of the high speed line. Trickle down economics don't work really - we have loads of hipster vegan restaurants and drugs and poverty. I really worry about this time bomb.

I think the issue today is not so much getting on the ladder although yes it was easier past eg lending was less strict, more multiples, smaller deposits, interest only. Its crazy that you have a couple paying rent but can't "afford" lower mortgages.
What's changed in the last few yrs in many parts of London is that the prices have stagnated, the days of buying your 400k flat & selling in 2 yrs after doubling your money are pretty much gone. I have colleagues s bit older than me who have made 500k plus on the ladder so have bought 1m homes with small mortgages.

In the case of a lot of my slightly older friends

• bought on two incomes when 110% mortgages were a thing so no deposit to save
• got self certified mortgages
• benefited hugely from rising prices to trade up
• got lucky that interest rates stayed low for years

Most of the above is now not possible

Lots of people talk about making money from doing places up, but a lot of the time the money made is purely from a rising market. I forget what program it was but they used to follow people and at the end there would be a voiceover-

"couple bought property for 200,000, spend 30,000 on renovations, now worth 315,000 making 85 k profit. However if they had just bought the property and done nothing, it would now be worth 300,000 - 100k profit"

I also don't think it's a good thing for the young generation to borrow loads over long terms. The burden is unfair & I say this as someone whose ok but recognises that if I was born later I wouldn't be in my home no matter how hard I worked or gave up coffees.

I agree with @OhTheRoses I wouldn't buy unless it was a long term move & you had space to grow. I'd ideally go for a small house over a flat.

We looked at moving in 2019 but it would be a short term move so are staying put until secondary.

This is what you can buy for £240k in my village. The estate agent has been naughty and marketed it as a three bedroom bungalow, but it is really 2 bedrooms and a dining room. The kitchen is too small to eat in. It has an en suite and a house bathroom, a garage and a conservatory.

@newyearsresolution we bought the place back in August 2016 and we saved and did bits as we went. It's an old Victorian villa split into flats and it has been ignored for years so there have been lots of issues. Plus we had a baby which slowed everything down. We bought at the peak too so when we remortgaged at the end of our fixed term, it had only increased in value by £10k so we aren't relying on a general market rise.

The aim is purely to buy somewhere that we can live longer term so whatever we make will go towards a bigger deposit.