If you paid £1m+ for your house...

[propertydetective]

How old were you and how?
If just from savings/earnings, what sort of level were you at financially?

Sorry to be nosey. DH and I live in a three bed semi, we've been here a year and it's worth £550k. We don't have children yet but have dogs and realise that it's pretty annoying not having the space we desire and would prefer detached to not piss off our neighbours.

In our area a 4 bed detached can range from £850k-£1m+, we live by the coast in a commuter town so the closer you get to the sea, of course the prices rise. I found a house we would love to buy in the future just to figure out prices, that was listed for £950k. The houses are never on for more than a week before SSTC so they always seem to go for the asking price or thereabouts.

And my AIBU, is it just stupid to potentially have such a big mortgage? I'm 26 now and we have achieved everything with 0 financial help and we are really proud. But likewise, we will seriously need promotions/luck to get the money together.

We can currently get a mortgage for around £500k meaning we either need major promotions or to win some money. I like to dream though...

This thread makes me chuckle. The barely surpressed pride of some 🙈

In reality it's pretty pointless to consider the value of your house as some kind of achievement. If it's a 'forever home' it's neither here nor there if it's worth £100k or £1m.

My SIL's house in the S East is worth 3.5 times more than mine, over £1m. My house is still far bigger and nicer 😁

I would say that you shouldn't overlook maintenance with a huge house, it's not always worth the extra space - we are very glad we didn't go any bigger on our second home as there's a lot of work involved with maintaining a large property and garden - and even if you can afford others to do it for you, it's finding the right tradesmen who are reliable and going to charge you the right price, and right now, availability is a huge issue, everyone is ridiculously busy.

So true. There is an optimum size for a house that suits your needs. Don't go much bigger than that.

Think of people who live in stately homes but who huddle in a few rooms because the heating bills are enough to kill. Won't apply to London though - £1m+ does not buy you very much in a desirable area.

We have friends in £1m+ houses, bought in their early 30s. Both adults work FT in incredibly demanding jobs, took minimal maternity leave when they had DC, work every hour they can, DC have long days in wraparound care from very a young age. It's the lifestyle they've always wanted and they're very happy.

And we're over here in our £300k house, which is bigger but in a much less desirable area, we live rurally with beautiful countryside on our doorstep, I work PT and was a SAHM for a few years while DC were very little, although DH works in a similar job to our friends he's also home for sports days and parents evenings. Yes, he could further his career but right now it's not the priority. It's the lifestyle we always wanted and we're happy with our choices.

Also the thought of a £500k mortgage makes me nauseous.

We were about 34. We had bought another house 6 years before that for about £630k which doubled in value. So then we bought another place, a total wreck, for around the £1.2m mark, which was paid for with equity from the first place. We managed to hold on to that place too. So effectively we paid for the house with equity from previous house, some savings and a £650k mortgage.

My advice (contrary to some on here) is stretch yourself with the mortgage particularly when you are young. Go forward the best house you can afford as your earning potential will only rise. I was really nervous about the size of the mortgage on my last house. Now it's a a drop in the ocean because my salaries gone up. I bought my first £1m + property in my 40s but we have always ensured we have enough money for other things too

@Gwegowygwiggs

Fucking hell stealth boast or what.

This is a shameless excuse at promoting the fact that you can afford a £1m+ property. I live in one too, but I haven't given a second thought to how my neighbours or anyone else afforded it and why would I? Who gives a shiny shit. Get back in your box.

We can currently get a mortgage for around £500k meaning we either need major promotions or to win some money. I like to dream though...

I mean, it's LITERALLY in the op that she can't afford a £1m property

Just to give a slightly different perspective. My DP is a high earner (over 100k) and I'm not 24k. We live in a fairly affordable area (the midlands). Our mortgage is £1000 a month and we could not afford anything more due to childcare costs, DP pays maintenance for 2 other children and we have one car on finance.

We plan on moving to an area where the size of house we have will costs us about 200k more and we need a further bedroom so we really have to save where we can. With increases in salaries, not paying nursery (but possibly private school fees for older child) we will still only be able to pay about £1500 a month and to be fair I would be comfortable with much higher monthly costs

Our house is currently worth about 800k (bought for 400k and extended massively). We will move to a house that is about 1.5m in two years. This is down to income (I earn mid 6 fig at the moment) but before we move we want to make sure we could afford the mortgage if our wages decreased. Be careful not to overextend, its not worth woking yourself into the ground for a house - could you move area slightly to get more for your money?

Gosh, this feels like another world where people are discussing buying £1m houses. I have friends and family who live in social housing one in a caravan. I feel immensely privileged to have bought a house (well, with mortgage) it’s very big, but “only” cost just over £200k. Mind you, I’m in Scotland, and don’t know anyone who owns a house over £500k. At £1m you would be looking at something very special

@TheAudie

Gosh, this feels like another world where people are discussing buying £1m houses. I have friends and family who live in social housing one in a caravan. I feel immensely privileged to have bought a house (well, with mortgage) it’s very big, but “only” cost just over £200k. Mind you, I’m in Scotland, and don’t know anyone who owns a house over £500k. At £1m you would be looking at something very special

You can get a lovely house in Scotland for so much less. I think this is where we want to aim for.

We were quite late when we crossed the threshold. Our children were teens. We’ve never had any financial help but have moved around, taken jobs with accommodation and had big mortgages that were gasp worthy - but in secure employment.
Two of our children are mid twenties and have £500k houses. Neither is forever home, but both are lovely houses that will do for the early stages of being a family. They’ll want to trade up as their income increases. That will take a while.

The risk of moving up too quickly is you can take yourself away from peers. There are so few young families that can afford the £2 million price tag locally that the mother of one young family feels quite isolated sometimes. Older people are nice to her, they come to supper, we chat but she doesn’t have the closeness of people at same life stage as her. Beautiful house they bought after moving from London, swimming pool, tennis court, tree house but she’s lonely. I think that is quite a big price to pay for a bespoke kitchen and copper bath.

I think folks have to remember the price differential down here.

An example here is a million pound terrace in Wimbledon.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/89653555#/

And it’s not the only one, with semi detached going for up to 1.5 million.

There are vastly different prices in different parts of the SE/Home Counties though. OP said she isn’t in London, if she is in Brighton as I suspect then she can buy what she wants within her budget by moving a few miles to Hove or Worthing.

We have never had financial help nor inheritance. What we have done is buy well, improve the property, sell and move up. In our 20s an early 30s, we spent our holiday time doing work on our homes ourselves (decorating/gardening) and did not have foreign holidays. Instead, we improved our homes. Bathrooms, kitchens, converted a garage to more living space etc in the various houses. In the last house, we called in estate agents and asked opinions on doing various works to the house and what would increase value the most. We most recently ended up spending 100k to knock down walls and put in amazing kitchen, bifolds etc and it increased value of the house more than 250k, pushing it well over 1 million. All our homes have bee in commuter belt and walking distance to station.

It all started with my DH buying a flat in early 20s and building on selling at a profit with each move. Changing ratio of interest only to repayment mortgage as well as over paying the mortgage when we could.

Now is our 50s and have no mortgage on a 1.3 million home. We’re not big earners and could not have saved for large deposits. We used profit on each house as deposit for next house.

Early 50s.
We could have 1 worth a million but instead have our main home, two rental properties and a holiday cottage. All mortgage free.
So we could be rattling around in a huge mansion with lots of unused rooms (you can buy a pretty big house for £1 million here) and most likely having to work a lot longer. Instead we have the above as we are both part time and planning to retire soon and use the rental income to live on (as well as pensions and savings) instead of saving it, like we do now.
How?
Good incomes (not mn good incomes tho) buying property when it was more affordable, moving up, saving, investing, paying off mortgages early.

Out of curiosity I just looked at a 1.25 million property where I live and it comes with 6 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, 6 receptions, tennis courts, 3 gardens, games room, laundry room. Grade 2 listed. And basically looks like a fancy hotel. - I wouldn't have a clue how to use all that space

My house was 270,000 and its huge. We were chuffed to bits to get it and thought we had achieved massively well. This thread seems like another world to me!

Well done though. I'm sure with where you are at now you'll get the million pound house at some point in the nearish future.

I’d move fairly close by but to a different area. So for example if you live in Brighton then look at the prices in Worthing.

This is what £1 million buys here. Obviously it’s the view, river frontage and mooring that push the price up, not the kitchen!

The Avenue, Godmanchester
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-89682913.html

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/104154683#/ - the 1.25 one I mentioned. Sorry derailing thread slightly

Oh OP you should know mumsnet don’t like young people who can afford houses !

I am 29 and my current house is work over 800,000 we are moving soon though which is slightly cheaper at 750,000.

( we are nearly mortgage free )

We don’t own a massive house it’s not a mansion it’s just due to location.
We also have very old cars and live frugally in every other way.

@Troublewaters2021 do you mind me asking how you afford such a large house so young? Well paid job?

Agree though that it looks like in London £1m doesn’t really buy you that much. Those houses are fine family homes, but so expensive compared to other regions. I just wonder how average earners afford to buy at all in London

@TheAudie for me it was a mixture of a well paid job however also I live well within my means to.
So i know the average family can live on far less than we had coming in so for years I paid over the odds with our mortgage and we lived on 25k a year. ( massively less than my wage ) now we have more and we can expand our lifestyle it was worth it 100 percent.

It’s a good job we never know anyone irl on here. If I knew the people who justify their high salaries by saying “we worked bloody hard” I would line them up and shoot them.

It’s got sod all to do with it. Nurses work bloody hard, 10 hour supermarket shifts are bloody hard. Being home alone with a child with profound special needs is bloody hard.

Jammy, and made-the-most-of-our-good-fortune would be more accurate I should think.

I think it's achievable if you plan well and make sacrifices. I'm similar age to you and have two properties with my OH. Combined value of both is circa £550k and we probably have £360k in mortgage. We rent both out and should have mortgages paid off in 15 years. Both were bought cheap and done up well. We're both quite experienced with DIY so did most of it ourselves which obviously saved a bit of money. Our plan is to sell both in about 15-20 years and combine that with our savings (we have investment ISA's) and buy a property for about £1m in today's money.

Overpaying the mortgage is our priority as the more we pay off, the more rent money pays off the mortgage and the more of our excess income we can put in as overpayments and it snowballs. Plus interest rates are so low at the moment on deposits that we are better off paying off the mortgage than setting money aside.