House Prices

[ladymary86]

DP and I are hopefully going to be buying a house together soon.

We are both teachers so have a good income and we have a very healthy deposit also.
We have been renting a 3 bed house for 2 years now at just under £1k a month. This is ok for us and we can still afford to do other things.
In the process of looking and considering properties (we will probably buy a new build) we noticed that there is so much out of our price range and it got us thinking - who CAN actually afford them?! I know we are not the highest earners but we are certainly not anywhere near the lowest. We are looking at around £295k for a 4 bedroom house which will have us paying roughly the same a month as our rent just now.
I am just being nosey really, but AIBU to ask - what's your mortgage a month? What kind of home do you have?

Do not forget that I retest are at the absurd lowest right now and although unlikely to rise in the next few years, it could do so in 5 or 10 years time. This would add a lot to your monthly payment.

I think first time buyers who have not yet experienced higher interests might not always be conscious of this.

4-beds in my road (Sussex) go for over £525-550k.

They're cramped though, the houses were built as 2-bed semis (a few had a 3rd tiny bedroom, but they had smaller kitchens and g/f bathrooms) in the 30s, on plots with driveway width along the side, some had garages built later. There are now very few that haven't been extended, and what was a street of semis looks like a terrace!

We thought about extending ours, but it would cost £80k and only increase the value by £100k, so we decided not to bother. We'd have needed to remortgage for good chunk of it, and I'm retiring next year and it didn't seem worth skinting ourselves for a couple of years for the sake of £20k.

We paid off our mortgage 3 or 4 years ago.

About £500 a month for a 3 bed semi in North West. We could afford posher or bigger but we'd rather work less and this way we have both been able to go part time. There's been costs we hadn't factored in though when we bought, like deciding to have a lid. At one point our nursery fees were same as our mortgage and we'd never have taken on a £1K mortgage.

Kid not lid, sorry.

3 bed period cottage within an hour train commute to London.
We paid £420k, but only had a 5% deposit so had to get a mortgage with a ridiculously high interest rate as not many banks were offering 95% mortgages.
Monthly mortgage payment is £2,100 but we will be remortgaging shortly and have been offered a really good interest rate which will reduce our monthly mortgage payment by about £750 a month.

I'm in a North West village. Paid £248k for a 4 and a box bed detached 8 years ago with a £70k deposit. We pay about £900 a month mortgage but took it out over 17 years rather than 25.

Also a teacher, approx £850pm, 3 bed terrace. If you have only looked at online mortgage calculators do talk to an advisor... after meeting with our (whole of market, no fee) mortgage advisor we discovered we could borrow a lot more at a much cheaper rate than we had realised.

In our area a 4 bed detached new build house for £400000 + £290000 will get you a 3 bed semi with a box room. We are only a midlands town, no where nice at all. I was thinking the house prices that you are mentioning are pretty cheap! We are 50 mins direct train line from London and in the last few years we seem to have been designated a commuter town! Jobs here are mainly warehouse and minimum wage!

My house is 3 bed and cost £260k 2.5 years ago. Mortgage is £923. Manageable for me as I'm single parent. Rent would be more.

That's on a 17 year mortgage term.

OP I would not assume that house prices are about to crash as many people are suggesting on here. This is exactly what I thought for the last 4 months until recently. There are too many people who simply won’t move if they feel their house is not commanding the price they feel it’s worth. Meaning supply decreases, keeping prices high regardless of economic situation. And the biggest enabler for the is....low interest rates. Prices are going nowhere but this may be the best time to negotiate in many instances as confidence is low. Probably as low as it’s going to get.

My mortgage is £1200 a month and my income is currently £0. Hth

I have an outstanding mortgage of £63000 and pay £270 a month.

4 bed house in the south west market value c. £240k

I need to borrow another £40k to do a loft conversion for 2 extra bedrooms. (Plans already drawn up) But I really don't want to take on more borrowing at the moment so will make do for another year and see what the market is like then.

£1400
4 bed farmhouse with land
South east commuter to London

But it really depends on when you bought not how much you earn right now etc.. anyone who bought 8-10years ago their affordability and loan to value will be better.

I honestly couldn't afford my own house if I had to buy it in todays market with my current earnings. And I'll sure that's the case for many people, I do think house prices are crazy so even as a owner I'd do hope they drop, to allow the market to move again.

I think house prices will drop. Lots of talk about pent up demand and sales being good etc, but that was to be expected. The issue is, most first time buyers like myself now can't get a mortgage now 95% and 10% LTV's have been withdrawn. So sales WILL definitely begin to slow.

Those who have lost their jobs and can't pay their mortgage or rent are still protected at the moment, but by next year will have been evicted and some landlords will sell up, many of the buy to let landlords and landladies who bought properties when it was much easier to get buy to let mortgages are now at retirement age. I think a lot of them will choose to sell up after the Covid scare.

I've been following the local market for the last year, and I've seen loads of houses that were SSTC come back on in recent weeks.

Furthermore, the pandemic has slowed down and halted new build developments, the new price cap for Help to Buy comes into place in March, which could price out a lot of developers. With less new builds to inflate the market, prices will drop.

It's a market for current owners right now, not first time buyers, unless they have a huge gifted deposit.

Southeast.
3 bed semi, bought recently for £500k
Mortgage is £1500 a month but we overpay, think it's meant to be £1300

Joint income is around £110k

First house paid £25,000
I sold at £55,000 three years later - made £30,000 (3 bed terraced)
Now selling for £110,000

Second house brought for £108,000, sold for £168,000 5 years later. Made £60,000 plus original deposit (3 bed semi)

Current property paid £270,000 current value £345,000 so equity £75,000 plus the original deposit of £60,000 (4 bed detached)

So yes we could afford a bigger house, but we aren’t moving til the kids have left home.

user327253
We are also looking at Help to Buy since 95% LTV mortgages have been withdrawn. I figure that using the Help to Buy equity loan would give us the security if house prices plummet. We would get the house valued when prices are predicted to be at their lowest and then pay off the equity loan at that point.
That's clever.

Southeast , 1hr from London.
£3,700 month on 600k mortgage.
5 bed detached.
Looking for a smaller place w/ 3 DC as divorcing STBX😒

I paid £625k for a 1.5 bedroom basement flat in London. Money came from a trust fund.

£400,000, 4/5 bed detached house in the south. We pay £1,000 a month.

Our mortgage is £880 pm on a four bed detached in the south east. Whilst we are child free we also overpay by £250pm. We purchased the house for 220k and have done a lot of work on it, it's now worth 375k
We have a joint income of £100k
I would hate to ever be mortgaged upto the eyeballs, so wouldn't ever want a mortgage much bigger than this.

Our mortgage is £880 pm on a four bed detached in the south east. Whilst we are child free we also overpay by £250pm. We purchased the house for 220k and have done a lot of work on it, it's now worth 375k
We have a joint income of £100k
I would hate to ever be mortgaged upto the eyeballs, so wouldn't ever want a mortgage much bigger than this.

"who CAN actually afford them?!"

I know a few people who even as couples are living in a room an a HMO and saving everything they can for a few years to get a significant deposit. If you have children first though there are fewer options.

as confidence is low. Probably as low as it’s going to get

That isn’t the case where I live. It’s a sellers’ market here. Houses are selling really fast as there’s an exodus of people out of London who now wfh most of the time and we’re less than an hour’s train journey from King’s Cross. People are selling two bed flats and getting five bed houses here for the same price.