To think most property owners don’t understand how hard it now is to buy a house

[Boredfromboredshire]

DP and me earn 40k between us and our rent is 1200 a month for a 3 bed house. We don’t have rich relatives, we are in our early 40’s and circumstances (ill health) meant that we didn’t buy a house before. We can’t save a deposit & houses are expensive by us. We have stable jobs & our kids are happy so moving in the current uncertain time’s isn’t an option. Life has happened to us & some of it has been out it control.

Cue well meaning friend (who bought their house for peanuts) asking me why we couldn’t afford a house when we could get a house in a cheaper area for ‘only’ 400k. I’m so fed up of it. We really want a home of our own & we would move but in the current recession, it’s not a good idea to give up a job. And we can’t afford to save. My friend (whose deposit was 12k can’t understand it and looks on pityingly while telling me the house they bought for 120k is now worth 700k.

For many of us, the housing market is closed for ever. I’m so tired of the pity and the complete cluelessness- I quite often feel utter despair about it. It makes me feel such a failure for no real fault of our own. Some people were lucky because they happened to buy at a particular month in time & then some of us couldn’t & it’s over.

I don’t think people who own really understand what it’s like. Low interest rates, cheap mortgages, everything weighted in favour of owners while renters are treated like the Victorian poor.

Aibu to be sick of it. We are a normal family in normal jobs.

YANBU. I bought in 2000 with a 100% teachers' mortgage because DH had just got his first teaching job. They offered 110% but it felt dangerous so we stuck to 100%. We put the deposit on my credit card until the mortgage came through. We never had anything in savings. It made money just by sitting there and we traded up to a 3 bed in 2004 where we are still and probably will stay. I couldn't buy now, no way. I've never had anything like enough for a deposit. We were just very lucky. I don't know how the problem should be solved.

@Boredfromboredshire You need to find somewhere cheaper to rent ASAP!! 1200 rent on a 40k Income is WAAAY too much!! Is that not practically half of your income before other bills!?? Assuming you take home 2.5k after tax??!! No wonder you can't save!!

@h

@hfrdgftcsdg that's the plan, the kids are both still in primary at the moment so this is our investment in their future. We kept the flat because at the time in the area it is we couldn't sell it for more than we owed and we couldn't afford to pay the bank thousands. The plan now is to keep the flat while they grow and then once they need support for uni, or to get on the ladder themselves, we'll have that asset and be able to help.

I appreciate this makes us enormously privileged and will do the same for our kids.

But then those who rent, from housing associations or similar, also don’t appreciate how expensive (for example) routine maintenance is. Elderly neighbour used to kick up a real stink that her dripping tap hadn’t been fixed for 2 weeks. How dreadful! And of course it was costing her ‘a fortune’ as she was on a water meter. But didn’t appreciate the cost to a homeowner that would have to pay call out +topime for a plumber. She had no conception of priorities. If something really minor needed attention she had nothing better to Fido than ring housing assoc every day until grass was cut, tap fixed, gutter cleaned etc.

Can you buy one for a smaller deposit in a cheaper area to rent out. Then you own one for the future.

We own, I’m in my late 20’s, DH is early 30’s. I completely understand though! The only reason we could save our deposit is because we had no children at the time (have 2 now) and decent earning jobs (household Income of 55k 5 years ago), and lived in the shittiest studio flat in a shitty area, we didn’t have cable tv or nights out or anything that we didn’t ‘need’. We had no family handouts but in 2 years we managed to save the 30k we needed to get out of there and buy by living off one salary and saving the other. We only had the ability to do that because we were a couple and prepared to slum it for a while, something I wouldn’t have done had we had the kids.
It’s really hard, and with the prices of everything else, cars, phones, council tax etc. There’s no way a lot of people will ever manage it. It’s sad.
I agree with what you are saying, why is it not enough to be able to get references from the landlords you have rented from, or proof from statements or something to say you’ve never defaulted on payments. I know there would be people who would take the mick, there always are, but the majority of people just want a home to call their own.

@themaniac buy to let mortgages require substantially higher deposits.

We bought our Orkney home cash, and yes, we’re renting it out but we insisted on a rent that covers maintenance and letting agents fees. DH insists on not for profit and I agree. Our tenant is paying almost half the market rent. We just wanted someone to look after our retirement home for us. They get a very cheap 2 bedroom cottage in the centre of Kirkwall with no repairs/maintenance. Not all accidental landlords are bastards. We see the women as doing us a favour by keeping an eye out for the weather getting in

I hear you. With cost of rent and childcare it’s hard to make ends meet let alone save and to save £40k plus

Wasn't that easy 40 years ago. Husband, teacher, earning £2,000 a year. Cheapest houses in North Cornwall were £10,000 ( applied all over the country and we ended up there.)
I could not get a teaching job or any kind of job.
Eventually got a temporary one 3 years later when house prices had gone up to £18,000 for cheapest.
Luckily, as Key workers, we were given a council house after an astronomical rent on a winter let in Bude, so managed to save my salary ( £3,000) for the year as council house rent was low.
My salary became our deposit and we eventually bought.

The only trouble was that the interest rate was 15.5% so could not pay mortgage on one salary alone, each month, let alone all the other bills.
Remember crying at school one breaktime when I received a phone call to say how much our mini was going to cost to be fixed, as I looked down at the holes in my shoes! ( Car was essential to get to our schools in Cornwall, I was dropped off by my husband before he went on to his school.)

Our furniture was all 2nd hand from our parents.
My mum ( 90 ) also tells me of her early married days and those sounded even harder. They had no hand me down furniture as their parents never replaced furniture for new. Instead, my parents used orange boxes for furniture when they first married.

IF anybody has had it easier at all, then it is possibly the baby boomers born straight after the war who would now be in their 70s.

Completely there with you ❤️

@Namechangeapril20 I don't really understand how falling house prices would cause you to lose your house as long as you pay back your mortgage. I hope you are on a fixed rate?

YABU
It's not that property owners don't understand how hard it is. It's that some people who haven't got a clue about the value of money haven't taken the time to consider not everyone is as fortunate as them.

We had it easier when we bought 20 years ago and I fully recognise it's harder for people of the same age we were now. I'd be a dick to claim otherwise

Where did you get 40 k from its 20k

You say friend bought her house for peanuts, well wages were probably peanuts too.
It’s hard for everyone when saving and first buying a house.
We worked every day available, all Bank holidays, didn’t have a holiday in 15 years. Depends how bad you want something.
Immigrants come here without a pot, they have family and it’s their priority to buy a house. They manage it. You can’t have it both ways, if you want to own a home then you have to pay, in blood sweat and tears

@OmgThereAreNoPlanesAboveMeNow My DPs bought the house they still live in now in 1984 for £27500. Just checked and an identical house on their estate; same loft conversion, same size garden/drive, same layout sold for £218000 two years ago.

Their first house was bought in 1971 for £2000. The same property type (2 bed semi detached bungalow) on the same street went for £164000 five years ago. What is interesting about that one is that the price more than doubled when it was sold (twice) between 2013-2015. In fact, it was sold in April 2013 for £75000, then in July 2013 for £98000. An increase of almost a quarter in three months!

The property market was certainly not as crazy, even in my younger days it was possible to buy on one salary. When I was at school (mid-80s to mid 90s) most of my friends mums had given up work or worked part time and it was all on husbands salary. If I’d been born just a few years earlier, it would have been much easier for me to get on to the property ladder. Unfortunately I was only just leaving college when it would have been an ideal time to buy. I couldn’t even get a credit card till I was 19/20 as I had no credit history, even though I was working so getting a mortgage then wouldn’t have been possible.

You're right. It is extremely hard for most people to buy a first house. Having said that, you should have been able to save much more by your early 40s. How much were you saving a month for the last twenty years?

No, owning a house, but having worked in housing for 15 years and having a partner working in housing, I am acutely aware of the housing affordability conundrum, and the complete political lack of will to do anything about it, to avoid a "house price crash" that will upset Express and Mail readers, and people who look on housing as an investment and pension fund, rather than somewhere to live.

The house price crush never comes just by itself. That's also one of the reasons no one should want it...

You are living in one of the UK's most expensive cities with a fairly low household income. Have you thought about moving out to somewhere more affordable, like Swindon, which has a regular bus service to and from Oxford? Many people who work in Oxford can't afford to live there, but commute in.

We saved and saved and saved. Now we have enough for a deposit on a house. But DH is almost 80, I am in my 70s, my son is nearly 50. Who is going to give us a mortgage ?

I agree, it's ridiculous. We earn about 90k a year between us, we have been saving for 4 years and have saved about 60k so far. We are frugal AF, we live in a small 1-bed flat, all tech is 7+ years old, car is 13 years old, I only shop in charity shops, etc. All 60k will get us around here is 20% of a 2-bed shoebox flat. A house in a non-shit area is 400k+. Considering we are "middle class professionals" and we can only afford a small flat, what about people on minimum wage? People on 25k? People with children?

I look at the 750k 4-beds around our town and really wonder how anyone nowadays could afford them - surely there aren't that many hedge fund manager jobs going around? We have to look at the "rubbish" town next to us to be able to afford a house, and we are fairly fortunate compared to average!

Also we went for so many viewings where we were told that "They won't accept less than 232.5k because some investor offered them that a few months ago", even though they bought the flat for about 130k just a few years ago! There are only 2 words for that: greedy fuckers. Now they will get what's coming to them if there is a corona-induced HPC.