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?)

Yes you see it on Escape to the Country all the time a 40 year old couple trade in their London home for a country pile with cash to spare.

We built ours ourselves. Husband earns £50k, I’m on £22k. Had a small house, Sold it and made £20000 profit, used it to turn a falling down stable block into a three bed house, set in half an acre which is now valued at £400000. We did absolutely all the work ourselves whilst both working full time with 2 children, figured it out as we went along!

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.

My thoughts exactly. Absolutely fine if that's your priority and goal, but no big fancy house would be worth it to me if it came at a cost of spending time with my family, if I could still have a perfectly nice house as well as plenty of time with my family.

it's known in the area as "the big house" but I really don't get why, when we live in a village with some beautiful manor houses, equestrian houses etc which are far bigger

Hmm - does it have extremely thick internal metal doors, all with their own locks, bars on all the windows and 18ft-high walls along the whole perimeter?

We could sell ours and buy the cheapest of your links outright. As a pp said, starting 30 to 25 years ago is the answer. I bought my house and DH bought a flat. Once we were married I made a lot on my house so we traded up and then we traded up on a rundown place and here we are. We both know what it's like to struggle financially so we are both savers and overpay our mortgage when we can. We both work.

DH and I recently moved into one. It’s not as big as many on here and is on a street not set in X acres, which obviously makes it trashy by these standards!
Large 5 bed farmhouse/lodge with ample gardens though.

We saved hard, made about £30k selling the house DH bought 3 years ago and have a combined income of about 100k.

We could have bought a grade 2 listed proper Victorian style estate, fancier than your links, if we were willing to take a significant step down area wise and a crap school catchment but we weren’t.

There are some areas near us where houses similar to your links can be bought for around £400-£500k

Married a man whose best friend is a king the house was our wedding present. Grade 2 listed farmhouse built in 1600.
@luckylucy01 has certainly lived up to her name! Just wow!

The clue op is that many on this thread bought before I was born. Likewise if I was 5 yrs younger & didn't have help Id be struggling to buy my first flat.

Webuilt, I was happy with my choices about no maternity leave etc and it wasn't busting a gut to buy a big house actually. I wanted enough money to have 5 children and pay for school fees from age 3 - 18 as much as wanting to buy a big house and I wanted us to have a few things I wanted to buy eg I play the piano every day so wanted a nice piano, ski holidays, a few things like that and island - I bought only for the price of a Spanish flat, a small island in the Pacific off Panama which I enjoyed camping on for about 10 years in my 40s which was a childhood ambition so it was not just work hard in a job I adore (lawyer) to buy a big house.

Also the work is really interesting - it is just as interesting as anything else I do. When work is fun it is like a hobby every day and to have 5 lovely children too and that nice balance has worked out very well.

Those lucky enough to have choices in life all want different things and at different life stages. I would be happy to live in this house until I die now so am pretty content (and currently living with 2 student age sons). My parents died in their own house (literally) which they had owned for 50 years which I would also like to do so I suppose I am just boringly repeating what my parents did.... although it not particularly unusual that we become our parents in a sense. My house is a bit bigger (5 bed not 4 bed detached) but in the SE not NE of England - pros and cons. In the NE we could drive to the coast in about 25 minutes and into really lovely wild countryside in about 40 mins which you cannot do fro this house at all easily in outer London suburbs.

Our road has 8 houses, all worth between 1.8 and 2.5m. Two couples mid 40s - the rest are mid 50s plus. Doubt there are more than one or two mortgages.

Residents comprise: chartered accountant, dentist, hospital consultant, two barristers, significant small business owners - either still going or sold/taken over by children.

We live in a beautiful, characterful 1950s property. 3000 sq ft 5 bed detached with a large garden in the Midlands. It’s a real doer upper! We moved in at Christmas.
We bought our first home in 2011, a 1980s two up two down semi that needed a lot of TLC. We’ve bought three houses in 8 years and really pushed ourselves each time and taken advantage of the increase in value of each, going from a £99k repo to the £500k home we’re in now. We’ve done all the work ourselves previously. This house is costing us a lot more as we’re having to get people in to do a lot more of the work.
We haven’t really sacrificed holidays etc.

I'm working my way there. Bought my first house at 21, 2 bed terrace up north hammered the mortgage, upgraded to a 2 bed semi bungalow with garden last year now 28 - mortgage will be paid off in 5 years. Then I can upgrade again if I want or stay here as it's a nice area with good schools. But houses of that calibre would be attainable once this mortgage is paid off.

My road in SW London is probably representative of many roads around here, with houses at about 1.2m.

Neighbours to the right retired nurse & her 2 dc in their 20s, been here at least 20 yrs with no mortgage. Us earn low 6 figures between us (I'm pt & tto) bought 8 yrs ago mainly using equity so low mortgage.
Neighbours to the left, SAHM & dad who is a solicitor & I'm sure earns more than us who pay at least 3.5k in rent as we have great schools in the area.

Interestingly the values haven't really changed since we bought & once you factor in work spent & stamp duty may actually have dropped. We want more space (a wider house) but we either need to earn more & take out a bigger mortgage or have parental help to move up in the same area.

Obvs we could sell up & move out & buy somewhere a lot more impressive outright. However we love where we live & as we are both Londoners have family around the corner which is great with small dc.

I’m also curious by the serious number of houses in london that are valued over 10 million. That’s not achieved by being a bit frugal and skimping in holidays. I also think that’s out of reach of the majority of the city too. Are they all oligarchs etc. I wonder if some seriousmy dodgy stories could be told in many of those roads around Chelsea. What gets me is that there are loads of places like that so must be a market too.

Buying isn't the only option. We moved to Norfolk/Suffolk and have rented some gorgeous character houses. Loads of old cottages and farmhouses for rent here, most of them long term, animals allowed, near the coast etc. We have all the perks of lifestyle that owning would provide without having to pay if the boiler breaks. Current plan is to sit tight in our lovely listed cottage with our ducks and hens until we have saved enough to buy something. Don't feel the urgent need to save super fast though, as we love the current house and will stay here as long as we are able. Rent is lower than we were paying in Cambs and Herts and we have upgraded size wise too so it's a win. Luckily DH was self employed so we were portable. I recognise not everyone can just up and move without factoring in jobs etc

@NOTANUM and @BettyBooJustDoinTheDoo honest truth. He worked for a king who had a son the same age as him, they both had the same passion became best friends supported each other through all kinds of things still best friends 30 years later. Best friends dad passed away and best friend became King. We visit him and his friend they visit us. You have bizarre moment each time you meet where you bow and say good afternoon your majesty and in normal times he gives you a big hug and says how many times have I told it's X.

Most London houses are not however over £10m, that is very rare and those would tend to be international business people etc although a writer married to the late Margaret Forster I think bought a big house in Hampstead in the 1950s and it was worth £6m. I think he may still live in it so there will be some like that. Now cross with myself that I remember her name and not his.... ah looked her up - Hunter Davies - www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/09/my-life-in-houses-margaret-forster-review-memoir-homes

"Soon, though, she is married and she and her new husband, the journalist Hunter Davies, move to London. For a while, they rent in Hampstead, and Forster is content. When they buy a big old house in Dartmouth Park, however, the mithering starts up again. The house is in a terrible state. Even worse, it has a sitting tenant, Mrs Hall, on the top floor. It comes as rather a shock to realise that it is now the swinging 60s and that among the visitors to the house are the Beatles (Davies is their biographer) and various film directors (Forster’s novel Georgy Girl is to become a movie).

Forster is mostly preoccupied with the abominable Mrs Hall, a problem eventually solved with the purchase of a flat elsewhere that she then lets to the sitting tenant. Forster scoffs at Mrs Hall’s tears when she departs, which seems a bit unfair given that she allowed herself a good bawl on leaving her precious Hampstead.

During a period as tax exiles (Mr Wilson wants to steal their cash), Forster, Davies and their children go to the Algarve, having hotfooted it there from (horrible) Gozo and – how amazing – they adore it, staff and all. After this period as lotus-eating expats, moreover, Forster is finally reconciled to her London house (she still lives there, 50 years on). After all, with Mrs Hall gone, they can finally “knock through” downstairs. A cottage in Northamptonshire doesn’t work out – “weekending is not for us” – but two houses in the Lake District, the first in Caldbeck, the second in Loweswate, definitely do. She and Davies spend the whole of the summer in the north, which means they’re able to settle."

wow @Xenia an island! Was it expensive to travel there?

Can I ask the most you've ever earned? You can ignore me if it's too personal.

@PrincessW11-I assume this post is tongue in cheek?

'It's all about timing,having stable high(ish)salaries so you are offered good mortgages;bought our London home in RBKC '04 with a 90% mortgage,did a reno on it, now worth x4 what we paid. Husband kept his London bachelor pad, we acquired another flat so have 2 BTL sources of income. Then recently bought our country pad, period lodge property & 5 acres in Sussex;I'm SAHM exmedic, husband is lawyer in big city firm v good salary. I never pay full price for anything, always looking for discounts. True what they say, look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.'

If not, I would say the marrying the extremely highly paid London lawyer would be more key than saving a few pennies at Tesco.

I think the factors involved in owning an expensive/ large house would be.

-Having got on the property market 25-30 years ago
-The above plus living in an area where prices have rised dramatically (London)
-Very highly paid, stable jobs (although counts less than if you were born 50-60 years ago)
-Inheritance/ gifts from wealthy family

We live on a pretty shitty road in east London but could buy either of the cheaper houses you linked outright with cash to spare.
We’re in our late 30s. I’m a nurse and my husband a banker.

Have zero desire to live anywhere but London.

Combo of inheritance, buying in and then moving out of London at the right time and being lucky with the area going up since we bought, and DH good job.
But it’s not all it’s cracked up to be as massive bills and maintenance are a worry so I wouldn’t recommend stretching to afford it, also the time needed for upkeep, cleaning gardening etc if you’re not in a position to pay for help with these things. And people making assumptions about your position based on you living in a big house when someone in a more modest property could have more disposable income.

I'm only 33 but DH is older and had a house prior to us buying our farm house. He worked hard to save for a deposit and pay the mortgage off within 5 years.

We bought our current house and worked hard to save and ensure we ended up mortgage free.

It's a farm house with circa 3 acres of land in a beautiful place.

We are lucky to have it but it came from sheer hard work and being good with money.

We bought straight out of university with a 97.5% mortgage, fixed at 10.25% for 5 years. Property price plunged, negative equity for 6 years, and only just worth what we paid for it after 7. Hugely scary times. Moved out, changed to a BTL mortgage, rented it out, and it paid for itself. Lovely tenants, they choose decoration, it’s their home while they’re in it.

Saved up about 7% of next property price as deposit on next house. Overpaid on that house, mortgage finished, released equity with another BTL, about to move to dream home using that equity as deposit. (it will be our dream house when we’ve fixed ALL the issues 😱), rentals will pay mortgage.

Hard work, lots of worries and fretting along the way though. I never stop remembering how lucky we are.

@luckylucy01 Oh I believe you. I'm just absolutely envious!