Just can't get on the property ladder

[NoFrills01]

We have a DS at school, I've just got a PT job and he works FT our income is just over 50K we can scrape together a deposit of 25K if we beg parents for help.

Still we are struggling to get a mortage and struggling to find anything worth having, we have been stuck renting for years. We need to stay in the area as DS goes to a wonderful school and because of our jobs.

We are both over 30 and it feels so embarrassing to not have a home we can call our own, we have no family support (pre covid) to help with DS so we do everything ourselves.

I feel left behind, my friends all have lovely homes, and lives and we are always worrying about money and going without trying to save as much as we can so we can have a home that's ours, and a better future for us all.

Worried to get a new build and still don't think we could afford it.

Has anyone any advise? It's all I think about!

@justanotherneighinparadise

I’m going to guess you’re renting a nicer house than you can afford to buy and you don’t feel like downgrading?

It’s surprising how many people get caught in this trap. Then end up never owning a property, we rented out properties and pretty much nearly all tenants couldn’t afford to buy it but also didn’t want to downgrade, and would complain about it, people often rent more than they can afford to buy.

If you want on the property ladder you’ve just got to do it.

Op you could easily buy a property, is the issue you don’t want to buy any of the properties you could afford?

[quote RedHelenB]@Ironmanrocks the price is £385;000 unless you're over 60![/quote]
that's so funny! Thought it was a bit too good to be true!!!

We did Help to Buy and it was excellent. When we came to remortgage to pay the loan off after 5 years, we had to pay an extra few thousand on the equity loan but as that meant the house had gone up (and we had made overpayments) we only needed a 60% LTV mortgage so got an excellent rate.

In general though, it's to be avoided if the houses themselves are over-inflated for the area, which wasn't the case here.

This is why I can’t emphasise enough getting on the property ladder prior to having children, when both parents are working full time.

You aren't struggling to get on the property ladder, you're struggling you compromise on buying less than perfect. Most people get somewhere smaller than they'd like, look at a range of areas etc - then in 5 years maybe you'll be ready to move to somewhere bigger. That's just how it works.

I think you seriously need to downgrade your expectations or accept the situation as is. Dh and I lived abroad in houses double the size of our current house. It just is.

You can either buy something small ready done or something larger, which needs renovating. I imagine you haven’t considered the latter as it’s not nice enough, that correct?

Idk where exactly you live, but this house has a decent bit of land and is a good size. You could do some basic diy / check electrics for now then do it up when you can afford it. Or just do the basics and raise the roof to 2 or 3 stories in a few years and have a lovely family home (if that would make financial sense, idk the area. www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/77636478#/ It’s next to an outstanding primary.

The thing with the property ladder is you have to start at the bottom! My first home with DH was a little flat in a less desirable bit of the area we wanted to live in. It took us 15 years to finally be able to buy our "forever" home and that isn't without compromise on what we wanted. My boys were both teenagers when they got their own rooms.
It will be about compromise and you have to decide what you are happy to compromise on. If you are prepared to play the long game then you'll likely end up in something worse than your currently rented house to begin with.

We had to buy a two bed flat with two DC. We are in SE commutersville, about a mile from the train station, near a very good secondary school, and good schools overall in the area. We had about £24,000 deposit but now have about £60-70k equity in the flat since we bought 3yrs ago. No way could we have saved that amount if we continued renting. I personally would go for the worst house on the best street theory rather than vice versa.

I feel for you because the housing market in this country has been a pathetic ponzi scheme for the last 25 years. Unfortunately your best option is buying something suboptimal if you don't want to move.

Maybe buy something somewhere else & rent that out so at least you're on the ladder. A fair few of my friends did this.

@HerMammy

Moat Lane, Ash, Canterbury www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-90012053.html This is a good starter home.

That's lovely. Brilliant starter house

@fluffythedragonslayer

The thing with the property ladder is you have to start at the bottom! My first home with DH was a little flat in a less desirable bit of the area we wanted to live in. It took us 15 years to finally be able to buy our "forever" home and that isn't without compromise on what we wanted. My boys were both teenagers when they got their own rooms. It will be about compromise and you have to decide what you are happy to compromise on. If you are prepared to play the long game then you'll likely end up in something worse than your currently rented house to begin with.

Yes I don’t understand people who expect to buy something in the “middle of the ladder” instead of at the bottom. Its called the ladder for a reason. People need to stop wasting their twenties and save hard to buy something that they can then upgrade after a number of years. It’s unrealistic to think you can just swan about then thirties hit and you wonder why you can’t buy a three bed family house straight away. I say this as a millennial in my early thirties, got my first flat I my early twenties, two bed house with my DP and now getting a four bed house for our family, in a very expensive area in the south east. It can be done if you want it.

you are being given a deposit, you only want to work part time and you can’t really be arsed.

I would get a ull time job because the increase in income will give you more deposit money. Plus, you can apply for a bigger mortgage, although you might not want to.

I would go through your budget and make cut backs where possible to add more to the deposit pot.

You really shouldn't be embarrassed about renting! I rent and don't really care that I do. In an ideal world it would be great to be able to buy a house but it is not an ideal world. However my DP is obsessed with buying a house. It will never happen yet he wastes so much time worrying about it that it is really starting to piss me off

Maybe you should change your search to what you can afford now and make money on. So think about rather than another 5 years renting its 5 years of some sort of property development plans? Either buy something to rent out so that someone else pays the mortgage and buys you some equity or buy a fixer upper that you could live in and do up to sell to get to where you want to be. It would be hard work but think of the long term benefits. I guess it depends whether you and DH are practical people?

Just commenting that if you're planning another baby, kent remove sibling admissions status if you move 2 miles away from the school or your original address.

I think you are just going to have to compromise, we are in the same boat.
We'd like a 3 bed house near school and then train station, but we can either afford a 2 bed flat in a good location or a 3 bed house in an inconvenient location.

(We're looking at both before we make a decision)

We chose an area we could afford and worked the school out after that.

I agree with posters who've said homeownership shouldn't necessarily be the holy grail. There's pros and cons to both renting and owning.

That being said get a mortgage broker as they will know how to package your application and who to bother approaching. Particularly at the moment when lenders are being very cautious.

Also take a look at different schemes. I got on the property ladder via a stair casing scheme. It had a fancy name but it was essentially rent to buy whereby with each months payment I accrued a bit more equity in the house. It felt at the time like it was too good to be true and I spent a while waiting for the catch. But actually I made enough equity in it to use as a decent deposit towards my next house.

I think one of the big differences between now and 20 years ago is social media! Look on Instagram and everyone seems to have big houses perfectly decorated in grey
It is so easy to feel that any thing less is inadequate. Keeping up with the Jones’s has never felt more important and I can see that you feel that way OP. It is so destructive. If your rent is a steal and it is secure, then make the house your own and don’t give a shit what people think. Enjoy life and pay heavily into your pension to support you if you rent in your retirement.

Or just keep saving as your rent is a steal.

Yep I have a couple of friends who “could never afford” to get on the property ladder.

What they mean is they can’t afford a nice 3 bed, with garden, in a nice area near good schools.

They think i am “lucky” as that is what I currently own. They seem to forget that 20 years ago when I bought my student flat they were the ones who told me it was a bad idea tying myself down with a mortgage, and it was much better to rent until you were settled and starting a family.

Now they are settled and starting families they don’t want to start with a student flat

@Fleurty

I see so much of this these days, with people saying it is so much harder to get on the property ladder than our parents/grandparents generation. It isn't, our lifestyle has just changed.

For previous generations it was save for a deposit, buy a 1 bed flat, wait 5+ years to get some equity in it, sell it and move to a 2/3 bed house (psiibly then another move to a better house/location) then have children.

Now the lifestyle seems to be have children, try and buy a 3 bed in a good school catchment area on one salary and complain its impossible to get on the property ladder.

I'm mid 30s and did it the first way round and it still works.

I haven't seen any evidence of that. It's pretty obvious that the cost of living and the cost of an average family home has risen drastically compared to wages. I'm not sure what's to gain by blaming a particular generation for doing it wrong rather than looking at the economic reality.

When I was a kid you could easily by a 3 bedroom semi on one average salary round here. There's very few areas that you could do that now.

Why are you working part time?