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.

Ok I just call myself middle class, despite the private education from 11 up, red brick university, post grad and professional qualifications, professional job. You just sound out of touch, perhaps it’s an age thing?

@Jaxhog

Part of the problem is that even "not very nice" areas are expensive if close enough to transport links to work with a tight commute (generally becomes necessary for childcare purposes). Anywhere with decent connections is expensive, and moving away from support networks carries its own financial cost (ignoring the whole emotional side of things).

You can't just go 10 minutes down the road to the unfashionable bit of town, you have to go to the less fashionable town 45 minutes away and still stretch to buy a house that is largely unsuitable.

The remaining "cheap" bits of London are either unsafe and likely to remain so or less convenient for most transport options than moving 40 miles away.

Stamp duty thresholds remaining quite static vs prices also make moving up the chain more expensive than it was. Better to skip any links of the chain you can...

Early adopters in the Canary Wharf area did well!

Taz, haha .....just pure statistics.

Remember you don’t need to fits the stats.

Take a look at ONS stats for marraiage. Until the 1960s births outside marriage remained at about 5% with no class variant. By 1980 it was up to 12% and today to about half. That’s a huge change from a pattern that had endured centuries in 50 years. The class similarities no longer remain. 87% of mothers in the highest social class are married and 22% in the lowest. There has been a strong move away from marriage before having children amongst some groups and not others.

Your experience doesn’t make your experience wrong nor the stats but the stats speak for macro data not individuals or their group of friends.

As I said, if you visit traditional prep schools you won’t find many families where parents aren’t or weeent married.

Another interesting stat too - in families with 2 parents co-habbitting but not married, the chances of splitting up before a child is 5, are 5 times more likely than those who are married. Again, of course lots of married people slit up and those who aren’t married stay together ——and you might be in those groups, but an interesting statistic I think.

So point was - not out of date, just raw stats, even if they don’t fit with your experience. Look it up and see - interesting and might surprise you.

In London even the cheapest areas are astronomical. And plenty of people have jobs (me included) that don’t exist outside of London. You could move to somewhere commutable but the price difference will be eaten up by a hefty season ticket (3k in some cases). It sucks.

I do think the problem is that once you have children, requirements change enormously - more bedrooms, outside space, good schools, etc. When DH and I bought our first home (a tiny one bedroom flat) in our early twenties, and long before DCs were on the scene, our only requirement was that we had a reasonable journey to work.

To now be in our "lucky" situation has consisting of working abroad for a while and renting out that first flat, and then with each step up the ladder taking on a renovation project (even with young children), doing it up and selling on.

I think that most property owners DO understand how hard it is to own a house, OP, and that if you truly want to own a property, then being flexible in your outlook as to its size, location and condition, is the only way you are going to achieve this.

As with many things in life, it is often harder the later you enter the game, but certainly not impossible with the right mindset.

@randomsabreuse

I think as someone else has already said, having children before buying a house will obviously make it much. much harder. But that's your choice.

Choosing London makes it harder too. Our first house was in a really shitty part of East London, then we moved out to where transport links were just about ok - provided you didn't mind walking a mile to the train station. Uphill. And you didn't want to stay late in London.

It's all about choices tbh. You can't have everything.

If think 3k is on the lower end from Home Counties.
Lots of first time buyers need to move further out still to find affordable property, but there are actually lots of places which are commutable. Loads of websites list places with less than an hours commute etc which might be surprisingly affordable compare to Lomdon, although the high commuting cost has to be factored in.

So hard to have to buy a small flat somewhere like Luton or Chatham or near Peterborough and do the commute......but doable for lots of people and a way onto the ladder. I wonder if more people did this in their late 20s or early 30s if door so out do be opened and new lives built that didn't have to be Lomdon based.

Some of this comes down to how far people will go to becomes homeowners....other geographically and metaphorically. Accepting London is too expensive and giving up on the crippling rent in 20s and not 40s and moving for a different life with a long commute can be the way. People do establish a new life and become part of communities. When they later have children, perhaps they can scale up having gained a few years of equity and perhaps one stops the Londonncommutebor no you does it part time or works more locally then? Given lots of people with kids move out of London through necessity, why not just do it a bit sooner?

People need to look at the workable options sooner and not wait until they have 2 kids. So, not expecting to live in city centres or the trendy towns for fun 20s social times, but reducing that time of excessive rents seems important, some more time in shared, cheaper accommodation, rather than in couples or singles which is more expensive , or living at home and expecting 5 years of hardcore saving before moving to a cheaper area to buy........all so dull and not exactly fun times in your 20s in the cities. but it really is a workable way forward for many.

Problem is small houses in meh areas don't go up as more comfortable family homes in areas with half decent schools so you can get trapped in the small flat in the cheap area even if you buy well before kids.

The cost of commuting from further out is massive - the fast train from Peterborough is over 10k/year if I remember correctly! There's also a reliability issue, if the train line falls over you're stuffed, you need a network in the area to solve power line failure disasters...

@randomsabreuse and the small flat in the family friendly aera is £££

Good point about just how expensive that commute is. There are websites which look at house price affordability and cost of season ticket and journey time too.

The meh areas might not see such house price growth, but as a first time buyer that is a luxury you cannot afford. In most times you will get some growth and it will prob but you inna stronger position to move up than not starting out. It's whennfirstbtime buyers say 'that area is too meh for me to consider' that I think they have lost sight of the fact that affording anything else is beyond you and by putting up barriers, our remain in rented when you might have got that first important step on the ladder.

There's many issues affecting home ownership, but people making the answer to everything 'but that won't work' is a mentality barrier that only they can overcome.

First starter property might not go up lots in value, but it gets someone on the ladder. If the lack of profit means they'd sooner rent then that's their choice.They can't complain about how nobody understands their struggles of many in a similar position manage to buy.

There's meh and there's the wrong bit of Moss Side... or presumably equivalents in London where shift work/working late as is required in many professions would put you in a dangerous situation.

I am actually that person also, which rented for years, I had children early and did everything back to front, so I know its possible.

Me and my partner, didn't go to uni until we were 23. This was hard, as we had a child and was renting, we gave up our spare bedroom, to a family member in exchange for some money towards the rent.

After we finished uni, I sat there one day and pondered buying a home and realised just how much the odds were stacked against us.

I started to look into our family and seen plenty of opportunities, which people term "social value". We moved back in with my partners mother, whom had very little rent off us, as long as we covered all utility Bill's etc, over 24 months.

The house was a mess, seriously hole in the roof, no central heating, totally inefficient. Stunk because she used to have a dog...

We then both worked 45 hour weeks and established an online ecommerce business. I still get flash backs of packing 100 parcels aday.

This business made us 25k over 2 years, after starting with 3k. We ended up with 35k by putting aside work cash and living frugally.

Obviously moving back helped, but the business, extra hours, sacrifice and being frugal were the key factors. If we didn't move back, it would of just taken an extra year.

We then bought that house off her mother, she moved out with her partner. Within 3 1/2 years that house went up in value by 30%, the area is well placed for first time buyers. We understood that buying there (ex council house), on the edge of a very wealthy area would lead to a greater increases, in the price over the years and it did.

We gutted the house, while living in it, new electrics, gas heating, plastering. It was a mess and such a struggle, I remember waking up with a dust filled mouth.

However it's the best decision and sacrifice we ever made and we've achieved a current LTV of 50%, it's crazy when I think about it.
However most my age, my friends, just wont put themselves through the pain. They rather buy coke on a weekend, a BMW and pretend they've made it big in life, while living at home with mom a dad.

2 more years, the 5 years fix ends, with abit more left to do, we should pull nearly 70-100k out of the house.

Then we will look for somthing much nicer, all that sacrifice, hurt at the time. However when we get that beautiful house, I know it will feel even better and the house we have now is pretty decent and modern also.

It was all worth the pain and has given us such a decent standard of living also, the mortgage is much cheaper than renting. Considering rents have gone up nearly 20% in our area, it's really is worth the pain.

The message is, wether you want to chose to accept it:

Life is unfair.
You'll very rarely, get a free lunch.
Everyone will always act to preserve their wealth.
Nobody cares if you have kids, are disabled or in a low paid job..
Accept your finances and postion in life.
Adjust and make sacrifices.
Move to that rougher area or not so big house/flat, hell take a 1 bed flat and have you child sleep in your room.
Make good decisions with your money.
Live frugally.
Save, save and save.
Take advantage of your social wealth.
Buy a house where you can afford even if that means, more traveling or something not so adequate.
Build as much equity as quickly as possible.
Then move up the ladder and continue until your as happy as you can be.

TheGuru - great story and just shows what can be done. Inspirational!

• plan
• I’m it for long haul
• didn’t discredit possibilities
• worked hard
• wiling to accept sacrifices
• knows gain is coming if not just yet

And when you move on and up, some renters will say you’ve got no idea how hard things are....whilst remaining exactly where they are rather than getting on and making a hard plan.

In the end, no one has to make a hard plan. Long term renting is a possibility ....but I do wonder what those people do at 65 with retirement looming, or do they just keep working. That’s the thing isn’t it.....it is about retirement too. And I’d have thought more people might be prepared to go down the bloody hard route now to avoid that issue later.....but human nature is often to avoid the bloody hard, even if there are long term gains. Perhaps they are waiting for an inheritance which might never come!

Dd bought her first place at 19. 200 miles from where she lives.

She has friends who have bought already in different areas all under 25.

What I notice is the ones who have jumped on the property ladder are the ones who didn’t go to university.
They left school at 16 or 18 and/or did an apprenticeship.

The ones that went to university seem to have the attitude that when they leave they will get a fantastic job and overtake the ones who bought younger but then seem to struggle as they don’t want to buy the type of places the school leavers bought but can’t afford to buy

But can’t afford to buy the next level so remain in rented whilst the school leavers group sell and buy the next level and the next etc and get on with their lives

@Oliversmumsarmy DH only started proper work at 26. He was doing his masters degree in law and had to repeat a year due to illness. Also took a gap year. But he bought a 2 bed flat in london with me after 3 years of work in London at 29.

University graduates definitely buy later, but many would buy bigger. I had the attitude that I had to buy something under 500K so as to qualify for stamp duty exemption. However, I don't think I am much better off than my peers who are earning £70-100K at 28 years old (quite common in London). they haven't bought but there is no doubt they would have the ability to buy in future. Their first time property would just be a £800k property rather than my modest 400K flat.

Ultimately buying property is about earnings. This is a stratified and unequal society. Makes sense that you have to maximize earning potential if you tote up the costs. Property is 1 small percentage of your total outgoings. Add up childcare costs of £1600 per child, at least £500 pension contribute a month ( to maintain an income of £20 per annum after retirement) and of course the 20% savings- no matter where you live, you need to earn well to ensure a sustainable lifestyle where you can always pay your bills and mortgage and always have a year's expenses saved up.

Without the earnings, even if you own, you don't have the ability to sustain your lifestyle in the long term

*to maintain an income of £20k per annum after retirement

If you have children before buying a house obviously it’s going to be harder to get on the property ladder, unless you are going to inherit a huge amount of money or win the lottery. The more children you have the harder it will be, common sense really.

Desiringonlychild

Given only 15-17% of university graduates earn enough for long enough to be able to repay their student loan then the majority never earn the £70-100,000 you talk about so have absolutely no way of buying a £400,000 flat let alone getting something for £800,000

Most of the ones Dd knows are earning less than her.

That’s a truly horrific %

Wombat, interesting points on marriage. My older lawyer daughter (private school) was definite about marrying and then having children (she now has 2 - children, not marriages!). I know her group of 5 or 6 friends from school and all except one married first and then had their children. In our case being at least culturally a Catholic family religion also always played a part too.

I think there is a problem that people think marriage has to be expensive. We married in church with 30 guests on a week day and had a nice sit down lunch after - so quite a good affair, morning suits etc. It was not expensive. In fact you can marry in church for almost nothing but people seem to think you need a massive budget for some kind of superstar wedding they see on TV which is a shame.

The Guru, wise words. Obviously we were different as had an easier start, professional careers but it was similar. We bought 2 flats to let out int he 1980s and put in an incredible amount of hours - even I with 3 children under 5 and working full time was spending 6 hours on a Saturday doing things like painting walls in them (and then we sold them at massive losses in the 90s crash BUT and it is a big but as we were saddled with a 13% interest rate on one we put every penny towards paying that off entirely so when we sold them there was no mortgage on either of them and no mortgage on our home either as we did things other people don't like working 6 or 7 days a week, no maternity leaves, extra second jobs at weekends, I remember not affording hair conditioner and that kind of thing, second hand clothes including school uniform for children etc. I call it "jam tomorrow". It does not work for many people but for some of us putting off today what might be rather nice in the hope we might have more later does pay off.

I feel your pain. We are in the same situation and everyone I know owns their house :(
How is it possible to save when rents are so high?! We are thinking of moving over 300 miles away to give ourselves a chance of owning!