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.

@Boredfromboredshire
Yes i am well aware that for a lot of people, saving 20% is not physically possible. Just like buying a house for OP is not physically possible.

People were shaming OP for not buying a house. She said she can't save. Probably not possible for her to save either. So if she can't save 20%, how can she afford a house or more importantly keep it without becoming bankrupt. A lot of the people on this thread were advocating using every penny to invest in property with no backup. Using extreme measures to buy property. Moving to deprived areas with fewer job opportunities with no regard to consequences when the job market dips. This is fueling a property bubble and putting a lot of people in extremely risky situations. Its one thing for a millionaire to overpay on property. its another thing for poor people on ordinary incomes to buy a house to fulfil a dream of home ownership.

There was a poster, @BeijingBikini earlier (may be another thread), who was saying that buying now at inflated prices is not worth it and she would rather have a buffer of savings for the tough times. That is financially astute. Sure buy property if you have a savings fund. But advocating someone who is probably living hand to mouth to buy property just because it is a good investment is dreadful advice. Also asking her to place herself in a situation where she would definitely never be able to save 20% ever because she is overleveraged is even more scary.

I agree with you, it was totally down to luck rather than hard work. It's impossible to buy at the moment as a first time or single buyer, my full time salary is over 70k and I'd be pushed to buy a two bed flat in the south east which i would need as I have two children.

A lot of the people on this thread were advocating using every penny to invest in property with no backup. Using extreme measures to buy property. Moving to deprived areas with fewer job opportunities with no regard to consequences when the job market dips

From my understanding bored can afford a £300,000 house.

People have been saying move a little further out from Central Oxford. I suggested Abingdon and Didcot area. (1 stop on the train and walk into Oxford) someone else suggested Bicester. I would think their job prospects would remain the same. Just a short commute to work.
I don’t think these places are deprived areas at all.
And most people were saying to wait till this is over to see if her and her dh were still in jobs before committing.

I really don’t think getting another job in the evenings or weekends is an extreme measure. Or even moving to a cheaper area

Ultimately buying would probably help with saving 20% of their salaries because the mortgage would be lower than rent

My son bought a new build 3 bed detached in Oxfordshire at the end of last year for about £300k by the way.

People should try to buy before they have children as my daughter, I and my parents all did so all 3 generations had 2 full time professional salaries to buy on with no children and no childcare costs at the point of first purchase. in fact my father's father was 49 by the time he was born even and he had put off marrying until 1917 until he could afford it! Nothing much changes I suppose. My parents didn't have children for about 8 or 9 years after they married as wanted to buy a house first which they did about 3 days before I was born.

The average age of marriage at the turn of the 19thc was 26. Because they had to save up to afford it.

But a £300k house still needs two decent salaries Xenia... not everyone has that!
My DD2 is a nurse..perfectly respectable job that she loves. Her partner is a support worker... his salary is awful, as is always the case for care work.. so a joint income of 50k tops. That's not going to get them a 300k house within commutable distance (DD2 is already commuting 60miles round a day on a 13 hour shift..that's far enough and her nursing is very specialist..not general hospital type)

@Strawberrypancakes could try intergenerational living... Ok let's say for argument's sake - a 3 bed house in harrow is £450k. Parents have paid it off after 30 years. I have checked on Rightmove and there is a 5 bed semi-detached for £650k. A couple should be able to get a mortgage for £200k (difference between the 2 houses), they need £50k income (£25k each which is quite close even to OP's salary in Oxford) and they can save some money to offset the difference. 5 bedrooms should be comfortable for parents, child and partner, possibly 1-2 grandchildren.

The stamp duty is tricky. Maybe the government can introduce stamp duty relief for intergenerational living. They can own as tenants in common and get lawyers to draw up rock solid legal documents on how the house is divvied up if there is a divorce.

That is 1 way I can see it working out. Also helps with the problem.of childcare- even if grandparents are not able to care for children full time, at least there is someone to pick up children in emergencies or provide emergency cover. The children are more likely to care for the elderly parents as they age, given they live in the same house

A lot of the people on this thread were advocating using every penny to invest in property with no backup. Using extreme measures to buy property. Moving to deprived areas with fewer job opportunities with no regard to consequences when the job market dips.

Is moving to a cheaper area really an "extreme measure"? I thought it was pretty standard! Besides, cheap area doesn't mean there are no job prospects - it just means you have to commute a bit longer to get to work, that's all.

I think a lot of people move into nice rented properties and don't want to countenance the idea of moving somewhere smaller and older in order to get their foot on the property ladder. They want all the benefits of home ownership but don't want to have to make any changes to their lives in order to achieve it.

I am so worried about this for my kids. I was really lucky that my DH was able to buy in the area I wanted to live, but I’m not on the mortgage, so it’s not my house

Why aren’t you on the mortgage?

Why isn’t it your house?

I certainly not regard it as an extreme measure to use even the chidlren's savings (now reinstated by the way) when we bought this house, every last penny cleared out - only way to do it. Similarly I wanted the children to buy so I gave HMRC and the children my pension when I turned 55 and all my savings (mind you my husband got my then life savings on the divorce and more than half of everything so I am pretty used to losing a lot..,..... I have simple needs).

I agree that it is now and actually in some areas always has been hard for a nurse and a support worker to buy a house in the SE. It is one reason why when we moved here in 1984 there were nurses homes all over and my teacher husband got a school flat and policeman had police houses etc etc.... Lots of those kinds of hardworking people could never afford to buy places in this area. However if yo go up to NE England where I am from or Huddersfield and Leeds where we have lots of family members it is very very different. Here is a £50k 2 bed terraced www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-68185719.html Halifax and you can commute from Halifax to the bigger cities around there for work - loads of people we know do so. So that £50k jobby is similar to the £350k or whatever it was Harrow small 2 bed terraced I think I linked to.

I agree that a £300k salary either needs a mother who has always worked full time and picked high paid work and is prepared to give her money to her children or 2 decent salaries. Eg 2 newly qualified London solicitors on say £70k each (some get £100k now) could buy out here in zone 5 where we bought at a similar life stage.

2 staff nurses on £35k each possibly might be able to find a lender at 4x their salaries these days (used to be 2.5x when interest rates were closer to 10% than 0 but if not they could buy a flat in Watford.

I agree on intergenerational living being possible too as many people have done - the richer ones with granny annexes ( a neighbour at over 90 sold her house and moved to her son's property to a cottage in his garden a year or two ago) and others like plenty of my Indian origin neighbours living with the grandparents. There are lots of ways to skin a cat but I kind of start from 1911 my great grandparents were living with 7 children (4 more children came soon after) in 3 rooms including kitchen in the 1911 census and they were not unhappy. Our needs in life are much smaller than our wants I suppose....

With intergenerational living you have to live in the same area as parents and family

A lot of people don’t

@vanillandhoney i am not sure about Oxford but living in the commuter belt for Londoners is more expensive than living in a flat in zone 3.. I did look at moving to places like high Wycombe where you could get a 2 bed for £300k (much cheaper than my £400k) but the commuting fares for 2 people would have wiped out any savings as it's over £400 per month or £800 for 2 people.

Even moving out 2 zones to zone 5 would have reduced my affordability. I currently pay £1000 mortgage and season ticket of £150. Zone 5 would have meant £250 per month or an extra £200. Assuming an interest rate of 2.02%, I would have been able to borrow £50k less which would have given me a budget of £350k in zone 5. I would have been able to get exactly the same thing as I do in zone 3 (2 bed flat) except my zone 3 neighborhood is a million times nicer. Also in zone 3 I am happy without a car which may not be the case further out.

Vanilla, I agree that lots of people consider the 'normal' steps to buying of not-so-good area or grotty property too be'extreme" and not not countenanced.

Shiny new Ensuite uni accommodation funded through big loans, living with Mum and Dad in decent areas and then rentals in prime city locations, mean that less prime locations and grotty conditions seem like another country to many first time buyers. Add into the mix the availability of shiny new help to buy apartments which might be a rip off but look attractive, or add a couple of kids into the mix and a sense that good school so real a necessity too oo and the barriers seem to be immense....in people's minds.

Go back 30 years and early 20s had lived in truly revolting student houses with no heating and then faced rentals which often had environmental health called out to them and buying a grotty place or one in a rough but hopefully upcoming area didn't look so bad. And what's the aversion to a 2nd job - tiredness, kids...pah ....lightweights. It was common for someone to do a few hours cleaning or work filling shelves on a late night supermarket shift. And don't even get me going on the work ethic of new immigrant families who don't say 'it's too hard or too tiring '. So when Op says people don't realise how hard it is, I actually think the reality is that lots of people do know how hard it isand went through things she would never even consider as reasonable or possible and that today we often won't consider hard things or think somehow that we shouldn't have to and that stuff isn't for people who have standards, in the same way fruit picking or waitressing feels beneath people too. There's some kind of disconnect between what people expect and what they can afford and I suppose the marketing people have told us all that we are worth it and deserve it. Fortunately there are still lots of sensible people out there and sensible families who show their kids more of the reality, so when they are not super-earners (and most can't be) they can still find somewhere to buy and have a really good life, because living in Bicester or in an ex local authority maisonette or near a special measures school or somewhere threat means you sleep in the living rooms doesn't feel like an abomination or insult to them as people. Makes me think too off thenpeople who must always have a new car every 3 years on finance too - because they deserve it and what does it say about your self worth to drive an old car, which might end up costing money and must be dangerous and certainly not suitable for kids.

Desiring.....love the fact that the Zone 3 neighbour is a million times nicer than the Zone 5 neighbour would be. Wonderful!

Again, it's the talk of London zones and flats for £400k which does make some people decide people on MN aren't in touch with the reality. Most first time buyers don't buy a flT in Zone 3. Most don't spend £400k. If we want to talk to people on average incomes facing real word difficulties, we need more examples of people with those levels of earnings, buying in places that those people can afford.....not the examples of very high earners who bought in London today or in the past. Clearly, Desiring, you have worked hard and saved hard and your purchase is a good achievement. Great stuff. But your situation is not typical and the people with 2 lots of minimum wage can't take huge amounts from it to help them buy. All stories from now and in the past are helpful, but when our situation is pretty different to the vast majority...and that might be in terms of our occupation, or earnings or where we live etc, I think we should acknowledge that and not peddle it as the norm and way everyone can do it.

What's the answer for people with a joint income of £50k in their 40s in Oxford with 2 kids.....or a similar situation? Knowing people in their 20s bought a £400k flat by saving 20% of their income isn't a huge help to them.

@WombatChocolate most families can't afford to buy houses but they can afford flats. But they are unwilling to buy flats because there must be a garden even though there are shared and private gardens in flats (and people all around the world raise their children in flats).

@WombatChocolate obviously that was an example of how moving further out to a cheaper area doesn't save me money or make it more affordable.

I am not familiar with oxford or the costs of commuting from a town to oxford so i had to use my own figures. Given that rail fares are very expensive, it may be unaffordable for OP to commute.

@WombatChocolate in OP situation, i would try to buy something like this: www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-77996305.html

small 3 bed flat- each child has a bedroom and bedroom for parents. its perfectly adequate as a home

Boredfromboredshire
From one of your first posts

The worst thing is people telling me about ‘government schemes’ like help to buy of which there are none where I live. And no shared ownership either

There might not be anything in Central Oxford. But within a short distance there are places

This is a 13minute bike ride away

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-72219229.html

Or around 30 minutes away these

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/find.html?minBedrooms=3&propertyTypes=bungalow%2Cdetached%2Cflat%2Csemi-detached%2Cterraced&keywords=&channel=BUY&index=0&mustHave=garden%2CsharedOwnership&partBuyPartRent=true&sortType=1&viewType=LIST&maxPrice=300000&radius=5.0&propFeature=Garden&locationIdentifier=OUTCODE%5E1883

From what I have seen with friends and people I know the difference between people who buy a place and people who are still renting in later life is flexibility.

The people who rigidly stuck to ideas about where or what they were going to buy never bought.

Looking over your posts I get the impression that you grab onto anything that says other people will suffer and are waiting for that rather than taking ownership of your situation which sounds incredibly precarious and putting yourself on a more sound footing.
What happens if you are told that you have to leave your rented place. Where would you go if you have no savings and you need a deposit and 1 months rent for your next place.
Maybe your friends are trying to tell you that you are living on borrowed time. If anything happened to either of you, your children and their remaining parent would probably have to claim UC to survive and be stuck.
And if the surviving parent then lost their job you would be unable to move to find work.

i am not sure about Oxford but living in the commuter belt for Londoners is more expensive than living in a flat in zone 3.. I did look at moving to places like high Wycombe where you could get a 2 bed for £300k (much cheaper than my £400k) but the commuting fares for 2 people would have wiped out any savings as it's over £400 per month or £800 for 2 people.

That's only a problem if both of you are tied to London. Most jobs can be done in other places too. If you choose jobs that tie you to the capital for life, then you've made a decision that means you're unlikely to be a homeowner.

There are plenty of reasons I'd hate to live in London and the price of accommodation is pretty much number one. It's extortionate and so out of touch with what people earn. But if people choose to remain in the capital and insist that they have to work there, then that's what happens.

Plenty of jobs are not London-centric, you just would earn less elsewhere, or have to do a slightly different career. But the pay-off is your living costs are also much lower, so less income and shorter hours can give you a higher standard of living.

DH works 8-4 and I work part-time. We're both self-employed and our income is small by MN standards, but we own a home, have thousands in savings, can afford multiple holidays a year, several pets and to run two cars and we don't struggle to pay for anything. We're five minutes from the beach and twenty minutes from the Lakes. But we live somewhere that a lot of people on this thread wouldn't even consider because it's considered deprived and poor. People I know in real life wouldn't consider living here because they've heard bad things, have never visited and actually, have no idea what it's like.

I'm quite happy for it to stay that way though, means it stays cheap for us

I honestly don’t know who these people are who selfishly refuse to buy because they insist on living in big houses with gardens, or refuse to move slightly further out because they’d have to commute.

Every single person I know, bar one, lives in a one- or two-bedroom flat and has a commute of 45-60 minutes. All rentals.

The idea that anyone can get on the property market if they’re willing to “settle” for buying a flat at first is laughable.

@vanillandhoney for a lot of BAME londoners, they have to live in big citiies. I mean, I have been refused service at a rural pub. they took one look at me and happily served the white people and said they were closed for business.As someone with an East Asian appearance, I would be terrified now if i lived outside a multicultural area. DH has a very visibly jewish name, but he works for an investment bank which has a diversity policy so it doesnt matter. Anti-semitism is a very real thing. For his career, he has only ever worked for big multi-national corporations who employ a very diverse range of people and i find thats the case for many Jews (which is why there is such inequality within the community- you can have a great job or really struggle finding one).

Not relevant to OP as i assume she is white british. If I was white, i would be happy to move further out. sadly i am not. Manchester is an option I suppose, but not an option we need to take.

I honestly don’t know who these people are who selfishly refuse to buy because they insist on living in big houses with gardens, or refuse to move slightly further out because they’d have to commute.

Oh, I know plenty. At my old job, everyone who rented lived in nice three bedroom homes with gardens, close to schools, but they couldn't afford to buy in those areas. If you tell them they can move further out in order to buy, they flat out refuse to live in poorer areas, or refuse to commute to work.

That's fine, that's their choice and it's a valid one, but you can't complain in one sentence that you hate being stuck renting, but in the same sentence refuse to consider moving 20 miles away in order to buy.

@ChocolatelyAsFuck i know so many people who don't want to buy because its a flat. they are happy to rent flats, but they don't want to buy them because it means that they would have to stay there for a long time and have kids in them. It is not easy to upgrade as there is stamp duty the second time. Even with my 400K flat, my stamp duty was £4600 as a first time buyer and if it was more I would have struggled.

I mean, my 2 bed flat is perfectly capable of housing 1 child (though many on Mumsnet would disagree). But I am unlikely to be able to upgrade to a house, i have made peace with that.