To wonder how you came to live in a big character house

[Summerofloaf]

As in how did you afford it? What job do you do that enables you to live in a lovely big character house with big gardens?
Did you inherit? Work from scratch?

How? (Doesn’t anyone else wonder this?)

Mynames, on this "Xenia's post is interesting as actually what was possible in the eighties isn't possible anymore. How many law grads get training contracts these days? And if they do they'd be paying most of their salary to live in a shared house in London until they were partners. And then if they're earning 150-200k they could afford a two bed flat maybe? There will be a hell of a lot of graduates with firsts who aren't even getting a minimum wage job this year, nothing to do with hard work. Luck is a huge factor in this."
I applied to 139 firms and had 25 interviews before getting a training contract in the early 80s (time of a big recession) so I am not sure that is harder now than then.

We lived out in zone 5 where today our first terraced house costs £450k ish and you can buy the same house on a newly qualified city solicitor £100k salary and my husband's head of department teacher salary so I am not convinced you cannot today (also my solicitor daughter and husband this year bought a house (and sold their 2 bed flat).

It was amazingly hard for me in 1982 to get that first job, very hard even though I was top of the top at my university.

Like my husband and I my daughter and husband also bought before they bred and with 2 full time professional London salaries by the way. Just like my parents too.

However I agree comparisons between generations are very hard to do fairly and there will be difficult times for everyone in all their long lives. That is one thing we can all be sure of - depressions, slumps, recessions, redundancies, deaths, divorces seem to be with most of us at some time or other and life can be very hard. I can imagine those graduating this year (like my twins) will think their millennial older siblings must have had it so very easy not to be graduating with the biggest slump since 1790 Great Frost the Bank of England are suggesting on the horizon.

I agree with Bumf about waiting for children until you buy. Even my parents did that and we did and my child who has children - all those generations putting off babies, making sure both husband and wife work full time in professional jobs having passed often very difficult exams most people cannot so you have something others don't etc. In fact my grandfather was 49 when he had my father even back in 1928.

It would have been interesting if everyone had put the area of the UK they lived in.
A character house with 0.25 acres in London - even out in the suburbs - is over 3 million. In rural parts of the country, it's a third of that price. With the latter, you can get there with good jobs and a dose of luck. In London, you need to be a super high earner (hedge fund, entrepreneur etc.) or have family money.

To live in a 1m house in a nice area we did up an unmodernized house (no loo or heating inside) to start with, worked bloody hard all our lives, and went without luxuries. No family money.

I should have written SOME rural parts.. Wiltshire - not so much

Bought my first house at 19 in 70s. £7,500
Scrimped, scraped and watched every penny with 15% interest on mortgage.
Split up with my husband and in 1982 sold half of our house which was then £19,000 and bought a flat, remarried 1984

Various house moves due to work relocations, some we lost on, some we gained. Bought our current 6bed seaside semi at the bottom of the market, it was shite! Shower leaked through ceiling, my 3 yr old son’s bedroom roof leaked onto his bed and he woke up with a starling flying around the room.

We gradually made it liveable, scrimped and saved, bought most of our stuff from charity shops.

It’s getting there now.

I live in a big 150 year old detached Victorian house. I bought it with cash. How? Well it all depends on location.
When I married my lawyer husband I owned an ex council terraced house in London. I sold that and we used it as a deposit on a semi detached 3000 sq ft Victorian house in SW London with a £1m mortgage. Fast forward eight years later I'm a widow and sold the house for almost double what we paid (though we had remortgaged at one point to £1.25m). Mortgage was not insured and the life insurance did not cover it. I eventually moved 70 miles away to a much much cheaper area and bought my current house with the equity, which was worth 20% of the house I had in London with my husband, but it's just as big, detached with a garden four times the size. I spent a lot fixing it up. Old houses are money pits. But yes I have very big rooms, very high ceilings, lovely coving and ceiling roses and wooden sash windows. It's still only worth a small fraction of the equivalent in London though.

Oh I know one of those houses! It used to be owned by a couple who had a really successful cleaning and services company. Maybe they had a bit of help, but I think it was hard work that bought them the house.

My friend at school moved into a 1m
house in Wim village in the late late 90s, I remember thinking that was an incredible amount of money. The family sold it for 7m about 5 yrs ago.

Live in a large detached grade 2 listed Georgian manor house with about an acre of land, bought it as FTB age 31

DH and I met at 18 so we’d been saving together for a long time prior to this, we started a company together at university and it thankfully grew and grew. We were also moving from London to rural countryside (where we live now not even considered a hamlet). The house had been on the market over a year and had been considerably reduced because it was, and still is, a complete doer upper. The garden was head height brambles plus a dirty swimming pool with a dead rat floating in on the day we viewed We also were lucky to have significant family help and we now have a huge mortgage!

We don’t plan on moving again until we’re very old, so we know it’s going to take a lot of time and money but it was the house of our dreams and we’re very happy here

Married a man whose best friend is a king the house was our wedding present. Grade 2 listed farmhouse built in 1600.

Bought ours 28 years ago with a hefty mortgage. Husband has a reasonably high income but works incredibly hard for it. I've worked on and off, full and part time around raising children, and we've gone without most other things, other than school fees. Very few holidays etc. Never been so glad to have the space as during lockdown. I'd downsize in a heartbeat but it's DH's dream home. Big financial millstone, and we won't be able to properly do it up until the mortgage is eventually paid off, but I like having enough space that all the kids can come home and stay if need be.

PILs spent 20+ years building up a retail business in a large high street shop in an affluent town in the south east of England. The business did well, and eventually they payed off the mortgage and owned the building outright.

Then, in the early 2000s when retail was booming a multinational corporation decided they wanted to buy the building, which was in a prime location. They made PILs an offer they couldn’t refuse. PILs retired & bought a big house in the countryside with paddocks, orchards, stable block etc etc.

Of the people I know, a v successful hedge fund manager, a self made internet entrepreneur, someone who had multiple large inheritances at a young age, child of v famous rockstar - who has several amazing houses - and a famous model married to a film director. Also an actress who has been in a Bond film in the 60s and who married well and did up properties, various high flying corporate senior managers in telecoms and IT and an engineer married to an accountant.

I'd love one of those houses. We're Londoners with one of those +£1m little Victorian terraces. So the obvious answer is to move out of town. Though I bet everyone will try that post Covid, so London shoeboxes will go down, and Georgian rectories in Herefordshire will go up...

Only person I know like this has just renovated a colonial property in Australia. Spent a couple of years getting ready for retirement.
Helps that he’s a millionaire.

As others have said, a lot of hard work and a lot of luck. We emigrated and sold our UK house at the top of the market, right before the 2008 crash. We then bought our home here when the market was at its lowest and just did really well out of it. We have always appreciated how lucky we were but a lot of it took a quite a bit of nerve to do in the first place, without knowing what was about to happen globally. Kind of like now.

I wonder this too. DH was on an online chat the other day with a group of his drinking buddies - a couple of accountants, two very senior civil servants, a barrister, a banker, all in their late 30s, mostly earning six figures at least. Yet none of them yet live in that kind of character house, all are in small flats/terraces in the outer zones of London, because that's what people on that age and that salary band can afford unless they want a massive commute. No idea who is buying all the lovely houses these days!

@cleopatrascorset We're in the US but agree completely and have discussed this a lot. I think a lot of people are going to leave the city so suburban/rural homes are going to rise in price. And then there are going to be all the people who realise they can now work remotely and will just go and live wherever they like because why live somewhere expensive when you can make the same money and have a better standard of living somewhere else?

Ha @TomBradysLeftKneecap we were looking at leaving London later this yr as DH wfh x 2 days a wk & was going to increase it to 3 days after Summer already. Now we are worried everyone will have the same idea & the cost of 2 days train fare will be akin to 5 days due to the reduced footfall.

We have a big detached farmhouse with outbuildings and close to 10 acres.

Some of its having good salaries. We had nothing when we met in our 20s, worked hard, postgraduate degree, and finally by mid 30s were earning well, not ridiculous, but £100k a year combined.

We both had inheritances (both lost a parent young) and some family help along the way. And then just lots of saving and investing wisely, so that we had a really healthy deposit.

It’s our first house - didn’t buy til late 30s - and hopefully the only one until we retire.

Oh, and to add to my earlier comments about the hard work / living in an unmodernised shithole / etc earlier... We're so far behind where my parents were at this age if isn't even amusing.

They bought a bungalow on a postman's wages (mum didn't work) with a garden in their 20s. Upgraded homes a few times over the years. Me and DH university educated working long, long hours, with more precarious employment and awful commutes... We were first time buyers years after my parents, who (even they admitted) don't have the work ethic of either of us.

Mum and dad like to comment frequently about how they "wouldn't have put up with" (say) getting home beyond DC bedtimes, there's just no choice because of workloads and unions aren't exactly a big thing now.. as if we have a choice.

So despite all our hard work and DIY... It does sting when I think about our situation. And we're the "lucky" ones in our generation! Plenty of my graduation peers are in flat shares or living back with parents or have an even more horrific commute from a rented property...

So despite living in my dream home, a huge partis luck.

There's no way you can say otherwise.

The woman we bought our dated shit pile () from was a secretary all her life. Yet it required two full-time higher earners (us) to pool equity and income to buy her unmodernised house... There's a lot gone wrong for younger buyers which has fuck all to do with how hard working you are!!

Lucky I can’t tell if your post is your post is tongue in cheek or not but it did make me laugh! and if it is true you certainly live up to your user name!

It sounds like some people have spoiled their lives in order to live in a big, character house. Living in building sites for years, choosing jobs they might not enjoy, no maternity leave etc. Not worth it IMO, although it might be to them. Others have just inherited a fortune.

Nice house, nice city, next door just sold for the best part of 2 million but just worked hard over the years for itr all and the rented out ones !

Should have retired a few years ago but thats just boring, work is more intresting and fun most of the time:)

The value of property in some areas has just skyrocketed. If you worked in london in a good (not ultra ultra tich) earning job you could have a small place in london and a castle practically in dome parts of England too. I see beautiful houses on line and just laugh as the ate half the cost of my 2 bed central London house.
My husband bought it in 1982 for 245k now worth 1.7m. It has 2 beds one bath and one room downstairs with the kitchen integrated . It's in a fab place. Obviously tiny.it only has windows on one side!! You could sell that and buy something massive (we have another house we live in in london) but I hate mud, cows and worst of all quiet!!