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?

I doubt I would be able to now.

Not too sure what you mean we bought for £215k cash fifteen years ago now worth roughly half a million. I've no idea what deposit or mortgage we would need now though council tax and utility bills are twice what they were when we bought the house.

No. I bought 20 years ago and in that time my salary has doubled but the house is worth 5 times what it cost.

We would be better off if house prices had remained static - my increased salary could have funded a move to an area where the secondary schools have fewer stabbings.

No, I only bought it two years ago, but it was a wreck and only just mortgageable, doing it up was expensive, but not stupidly expensive. If it had been well looked after I couldn’t have afforded it then, I don’t know the value increase, but a near identical one in the building sold for nearly £200k more than I paid for mine.

I'm not entirely sure of the question. Could I afford my current home as a first time buyer with a mortgage?

No. But I didn't buy it as a first time buyer. I bought it 20 years ago - put 75% down from the sale of my previous house and took a mortgage for 25% of the value. Could I afford a mortgage on 25% of its current value? Yes.

Could I afford to buy my first home now as a first time buyer?

Yes. Because I bought it 35 years ago when I earned a lot less than now. I could afford to get a mortgage on the same property based on my current salary.

Bought a two-bedroomed flat for £91k 17 years ago when we were new graduates - recently valued at £210k, which is INSANE (also given the fact that houses around us are currently selling for 20%+ on the HR, do the sums).

Yes, we've improved and updated, but that sort of growth is mental and says a lot about why first time buyers are struggling so much.

Also paid mortgage off a couple of years ago.

No I couldn’t. House cost £23k. Now worth £600k. Bloody ridiculous. I wouldn’t pay £600k for it. I’m sure my kids will appreciate it when I die.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/90675190#/

This is on the same road as my first house - and WAY nicer than my house was when I bought it. This is like a show home. Mine was damp and needed renovating, but was a two bed terrace like this.

I could afford to buy a £90,000 house on my current salary.

@notalwaysalondoner

I'm the opposite - we bought a new build flat in London 5 years ago and it's the same price now as it was then. It's hard not to be jealous of friends who've made tens or hundreds of thousands in that time window doing nothing, just sitting on a property. I do find it bizarre that capital gains on a first home aren't taxed, considering you do literally nothing to earn them.

Capital gains on all houses are exempt if it's your principal primary residence, not just first homes.

We could probably afford ours as the 2 we sold to buy it would have probably seen similar rates of growth.

Yes. House price increased by 50% but me and DH have had pay rises and we didn’t overstretch when buying.

I suppose you also need to factor in being able to save the deposit, based on what? Where were you living before, at home? Renting? If renting you’d also need to factor in rent prices have increased? Even if you could afford it on paper could you save that? For us the answer is no. Rent was rising more then our wages

Well, I couldn’t get a mortgage to buy it now because I’m a divorced single parent and one of my adult children has SN. But I could have bought it on my own when I was working in my actual career rather than my current part time job. Instead I bought it jointly with my exH due to the massive negative equity in his unsaleable flat from the 1990s. But I own it now having paid off the mortgage so...

If we had the same equity as we did when purchasing the house as a deposit, yes we could.

If we were buying this house with deposit we used on our first house, then I think we could just about do it, depending on what the house would be valued at.

I've just done a mortgage calculation and apparently no, I couldn't, despite having a very good income and lots of savings for the imaginary deposit. I bought 27 years ago for 60,000. It's now 500,000. I honestly don't understand how anyone can afford to buy these days.

Probably not actually. We only bought it 3 years ago and it’s not increased much in value but we’ve lost a significant portion of income due to Covid so doubt we’d get the mortgage we needed if we applied now.

No because prices here are insane and not worth it.
Brought for just over $500k in 2005 then prices have gone stupidly high and a smaller house with less land and a shared drive in my street just sold for $3.8 million.

We definitely couldn’t afford to buy ours now. We run our own business so would probably struggle to get any kind of mortgage!

We bought ours 25 years ago for £90k and it’s now worth about £600k so well out of range for us...

No. Bought my flat for £295,00 20 years ago, which seemed crazy money. Flat underneath ours, which is actually smaller, has just sold for £1.3 million. Absolutely bonkers.

Absolutely not, bought it 2001.
We own it outright but couldn't get a mortgage on it's value now, we'd be laughed at.
We bought it for investment though, don't normally live in a house.

Mortgage wise yes
Stamp duty wise nope

No way, DH retires at the end of the month and I'm not working, we'd have to pay it all upfront.

Well, our house has gone up in value a LOT in the 17 odd yrs we've been here (even allowing for some improvements), but in terms of if we could afford it now......

Both our salaries have increased considerably, and we are no longer paying for childcare, so we are financially a lot better off now than we were then, but the crucial bit is, presumably the house we were selling at the time has also gone up in value by a similar % , so we'd be bringing more equity from that house to counter the additional rise in this house.

No not a chance. My 2 DDS know they get to share the house when I'm gone.

The housing market is insane, the only thing I have ever spent so much time and energy on is making sure my daughters always have a roof over their heads

What are you hoping to achieve with this thread? It would be easy for you to research the change in market values for comparable houses. So yes, stealth boast.