AIBU to ask if you could afford the house you live in?

[IamnotH]

Just had house valued for remortgage and it's transpired that we could actually afford the house we live in!

Bought in 2016 for £185k. Borrowed an extra £50k for building work. House just valued at £380k.

This isn't a stealth boast- we're an average nuclear family, 2 kids, both worlds full time. Our house isn't massive (SE)- just a normal 3 bed. It actually means we're stuck here unless we move areas which we don't want to do.

AIBU to ask if you could afford the house you live in if you were to buy it now?

Just checked, not over the period of time we have left before retirement. But yes, on multiple of earnings.

@rawlikesushi

I can afford my mortgage payments comfortably but I wouldn't be able to buy my house now, as a multiple of my salary it is too expensive.

This. My house is worth £420k. I’m single - I earn £23k and I would have around £24k to spare from savings for a deposit. So no chance.

No. Infact we wouldn't have been able to afford any of the houses we bought since our first flat if relying on income based mortgage alone. Every property since 2002 has been bought based on equity from previous property plus new (higher) mortgage.

Yes, though it's gone up substantially in value. Our salaries have increased with it. I feel for people yet to enter the market, the prices are nuts.

I'd redo this, well I wouldn't as boring, but you'll just get pages of stealth boast as you didn't say what you meant. Not really a typo when the meaning changes.

Not sure about my current house but I certainly couldn't afford to buy my first house in Walthamstow now. I paid £23,500 for a 2 bed terrace, big garden at the back and nice leaf street, more or less exactly 40 years ago. The last time it was sold,a couple of years ago, it went for £500k.
I expect that is what our current house is worth, but we have no mortgage now and are about to retire.

We couldn't have bought our first flat as FTB for the price we sold it at, after 4 years.

Same for our 2nd flat which we kept 7 years.

However for our 3rd flat, we knew that our salaries wouldn't keep increasing and we wanted to keep a bit of wriggle room so we didn't go all in, neither for the deposit nor the amount borrowed.

Given the economy, we're very glad we were able to make that decision.

We bought our house in Jan this year and it was a real stretch (half cash, half mortgage, but borrowed to the max).
We've done a lot and added maybe £20-£50k of value, so no, couldn't afford to buy it now! It would be ever so slightly out of reach already.

At one point Santander said they wouldn't lend us the amount we already owed them we backed away slowly before they called in the loan!

Bought the house 22 hrs ago, with then husband. Divorced, he died, life insurance paid it off early. On my salary alone I could not possibly afford another in my neighborhood. I feel so bad for young families and how hard it is for them. I live in Florida and we have so many people trying to move here from New York, Illinois and other states that when a house goes up for sale, buyers bid higher and higher. They rarely go for asking price, which makes it even harder.

Based on the equity we put in when we bought the house 10 years ago (£100k), no - we'd be £250k short.

Based on the equity it has now (£345k thanks to quite a hike in prices and overpaying the mortgage regularly) - yes.

No
Worth about £450-000
We earn around £20-000 ish between us

Ps sorry forgot to,say was £80-000 when we bought it in early 90s

Well I definitely know I can because about 2 years ago I had to get a whole new mortgage to buy my ex out of the mortgage and off my deeds so yes indeed it seems even as a single parent that I can. Makes me very happy.

Yes but we only moved in 10 months ago.

Current one, yes. Previous however was an (enormous) ex-council flat that went from £180,000 to £350,000 almost overnight when everyone else discovered the existence of Brockley. No way could I have afforded it; I’d have ended up in Catford.

Bought for £200,000 now worth between 675 and 700

When we bought, the gated development nearby were double the price of ours but now they appear to be plateauing at 900,000

I can but it’s not gone up by much, about 30k in 14 years! My salary is 4 x higher than when I bought it but I can’t be arsed to move.

I am almost mortgage free now but I certainly couldn't get my house now or even the flat I bought first in 1992. I would be lucky to get a mortgage of 80 thou I expect.

Definitely not. DH lost his job and pretty much retired and I work PT. On our current earnings we couldn't afford a lock-up in Hartlepool. But mortgage is paid off now, and we will downsize once DC have finished uni. Whoever buys our house will be high earners or have parental help.

The Edwardian house conversion (made into 3 flats) that I’m currently renting a flat in was about 350k for the whole house 15ish years ago. The first floor flat is currently estimated to worth closer to 300k than 250k.

Nope. Our house has gone up a ridiculous £500k in 7 years. (Surrey).

Yes because we bought it 4 months ago. We have done a fair bit of work to it already so have probably upped the value of it a bit but we didn't borrow our max so could probably afford it.

Nope. No chance. We bought ours 2 years ago for 270k, did quite a bit in terms of renovation and updating. Would be priced at 600-700k if it went on the market now.

Yes. Probably not surprising as only been here 6 years so has gone up in value by 77k (zoopla estimate only, so not sure how accurate as we haven't had it valued since we've been here in 2015), and we were young so our salaries have also increased quite a bit.