How can you save enough for a house when house prices keep getting higher?

[grannyinapram]

when I moved out, house prices near my parents house were 90-100k
now those houses are £160-200k
I can't afford to live there anymore.

I live in a really horrible area, ex council houses are 130-140k We can almost afford it. BUT every time we get to that magic number, suddenly house prices go up and we have to save more. By the time we have saved more, we look again and house prices are up again.

Well our savings are worth less now than they were when I started saving.
When I started saving I needed £5000 (plus fees) to get a mortgage.
now I have 10k behind me but we still need £5000 to afford smaller houses than when we first started.

And our savings are just sat there losing money.
The interest paid this year is half of what was paid in last year, despite the amount doubling.
I don't know what to do! I don't know how to get there.

How do you get on the housing ladder when the ladder has been put on the back of a truck and is driving away from you?

any advice?
we are saving as much as we can. A third of our income goes into the savings.

Being told to move further away is only helpful to an extent. If you have a job in central London okay yeah it might not be realistic to live in London but you’d probably still want to live in the Home Counties to be able to commute into work which is still an incredibly unaffordable area. Also this advice seems to completely gloss over the fact that some people need to live where they do to be near family who support with childcare etc. What’s the point in moving to a cheaper area if you are in turn going to spend all your money on childcare and increased commuter fares as you’ve moved further away from your workplace?

@Dobbyafreeelf would you earn more as an employee?

It’s a nightmare. We had the same thing. We saved to get a big enough deposit but the house prices went up and then all properties moved into the next stamp duty bracket so we had to pay 3% instead of 1% (back in 2014) so had to find extra for that. Looking back we should have just bought anything to get on the ladder rather than renting rather than seeing it as a long term move.

Do you have any new builds nearby within a price range. I actually find you can bargain with them, get them to pay stamp duty, legal costs, put money towards the deposit. It’s definitely a good time to ask.

One thing that the govt could do to help people like the OP is allow the regular payment of rent to be taken into account, maybe even offset against a deposit, when applying for a mortgage.

It's absolute insanity that renters shell out 1000s per year paying someone else's mortgage off, often paying far more monthly than they would if they had a mortgage, but none of this is ever considered when affordability checks etc are done.

I am 47 and an FTBer. A quick calculation suggests I have spent close to £200,000 on rent over my adult life. I've never missed a payment, ever. And yet, house-buying has been out of reach for me until now, and I can only now do it because of a significant gift.

The extension to SDLT is just another clear illustration of why the housing system in this country is fucked. Propping up the market, pushing prices up, pricing ordinary people out.

It is madness that people are able to pay huge rent but can't obtain a mortgage.
The budget today hasn't really helped anyone starting out to buy a place. I know the stamp duty has been stopped , but it doesn't go far enough.

The only way we managed it, at age 42 a couple of years ago, was moving to a cheaper area. What happens to those of us born and brought up paying rent in those cheaper areas? There are few places where normal wages match the house prices and I am damned angry about the waste of the best years of my working life in rent to give some rich bastards far more than we red. I don’t suppose Sunak considered for a moment that must of us feel we have paid more than enough tax by way of private rent, and it’s the Tories’ fault if in their idiocy they don’t collect the money back from the few private citizens they have supported in gaining excess wealth.
We don’t even have the option of clearing off to Europe any more.

We red?? They need.

[quote PattyPan]@Dobbyafreeelf would you earn more as an employee?[/quote]
@PattyPan no!!! I went self employed so that I could continue to do the work I love but earn enough to live on. I'm a self employed carer!

We had to move out away from our parents and friends in the 1980s to buy something. It wasn't miles away, but it was the only way we could afford anything. We have never been winners in the whole buying and selling game ( we had negative equity for ages and made bad decisions ) but I totally understand why people don't want to move away from their family or to a really horrible area or whatever just to buy a property.
It is so hard to make that call and families are more involved with childcare these days as well so just moving miles isn't possible.

@Dobbyafreeelf I don’t understand why carers are so badly paid, hugely undervalued profession!

It’s so difficult. Where I live in the south on the coast the smallest 2 bed house is about £250000. I have one son still nearby ( others live overseas with young families for their jobs and are in high earnings bracket so on the ladder) He is on a low to average salary and rents with a friend. With my help of a ten/15 percent deposit he could afford repayments. But because of his salary and the fact that he is single and therefore would be buying on his own, his borrowing ability is about a third of what he would need.
He is 29 and I can see him being a lifelong renter until he inherits from parents....

It’s almost impossible while renting and with children . The young people I know who have bought houses in recent years, stayed at home to save up before getting married and buying a house together. None of them had children before they bought a house.
I do think you have to make sacrifices either by living with parents longer, living in a house share, delaying having children , continue to work full time , save the money for a deposit which you would like to spend on cars and holidays .

Some of us don’t have parents to either support childcare or give out inheritances. I want to keep the house so that I can give my dc a bit of a security blanket that I never had. There are many more like us still out there. It’s gone back to Victorian times, when all that mattered for your chances in life was who your parents were. Believe me when I say the waving of flags will not improve my feelings towards this country when set against that simple fact.

Or for us to live with while saving up deposits.

I worked three jobs and started out with a £50,000 studio flat in a grim northern town. It's depressing but can be done.

How much do you earn?

How much does your partner earn?

Can family help?

Can you sell anything?

We had lifetime ISAs instead of help to buy - it’s worked out way better my investment has grown loads of the last 3 years! We just kept saving tbh it took us 7 years to save the money 😩 but we just kept at it and eventually we could afford to buy - just about to complete

We did move to a different cheaper area though

@MayYouLiveInInterestingTimes

Some of us don’t have parents to either support childcare or give out inheritances. I want to keep the house so that I can give my dc a bit of a security blanket that I never had. There are many more like us still out there. It’s gone back to Victorian times, when all that mattered for your chances in life was who your parents were. Believe me when I say the waving of flags will not improve my feelings towards this country when set against that simple fact.

That’s like us. No one to help us. My eldest was a contraception failure and I didn’t realise house prices would do what they have

It shouldn’t be this hard to have stability and be able to paint your kids bedroom.

Sorry, I've just seen that you have four children. I thought you were child free. Different circumstances then.

We were paying 1300£ rent the whole time we were saving too annoyingly it was a hard long road

It was never going to be easy with 4 children tbh . My advice to anyone wanting to own a house is to buy it before you have a family . If it’s difficult before children, it becomes less and less likely after every child.

That is shit! how is it help to buy if it only applies after you buy?

You get the money you saved and put in you just dont get the bonus until after you bought a house.

So we used our bonus to pay the lawyers fees and the stamp duty.

It was very helpful

[quote PattyPan]@Dobbyafreeelf I don’t understand why carers are so badly paid, hugely undervalued profession![/quote]
Indeed we are! I earn 'well' for a carer (21kish) enough to get by on but no more. There are no extras, no holidays, no new clothes it sucks!!!

@LunaDeet

This thread has been a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of property threads on here where every poster seems to have 600K minimum to spend.

It's really hard. We moved to the cheapest area possible in the South East in order to buy. I was so happy when I realised we could afford a house where we are (2up2down). The choice of house we could afford in the area came up with 7 results :). We've been here for 3 years and have made it a home, although it's tiny we can't move.

I really irks me when Mumsnet slags off my poor town - there's a good reason we're here and we're not all high earners.

I'm sure it will happen for you OP, you we're nearly there once!

This has made me smile are you sure you should be on mumsnet? you're far too sensible

I'm sure most of you on here would be glad to know that taken your advice and I have realised I have made a huge mistake having children, although I will miss them dearly, I have decided to send them to the zoo so I can rent in a house share. sold my furniture and my right kidney.
We did it!

back in the real world 🌎 we are doing all we realistically can. but what we can do is just short.
we did almost manage it before and if they bring 5% deposits back then we will be laughing but it seems we have been unlucky so far.
does anyone know when zoos are opening back up? I want to get my children back

@BugsAndBeesAndBirdsAndButterfl

I think this is a real problem. Were the next stage on - I have a fairly basic house and had hoped to move up once we had kids hut esch year the gap to a better house has got bigger. Our house now is priced at the price we wanted to hiy the bigger house for about 10 years ago! We can't move.

Similalry Theres no way we could now have afforded to buy our basic house we live in if we were trying to buy now (if thatbmakes sense) so I really am aware that entering the market would be impossible for us if we hadn't already done so.

We are only just below average earnings too yet couldn't afford to buy an ex housing association house. It's all crackers.

This is our situation

In a decent home but it’s our first home and was alwyas the plan to move up the ladder

Now in just 4 short years house prices have gone through the roof and there’s no way we could afford to move

The budget announcement today will only make things worse for house prices increasing above people’s earnings