How do people afford to buy a house!

[Itonlymakesyoustronger]

Is it me or is buying a house a massive struggle!

Without boasting I have managed to save 45k, to some it may seem nothing but to me its a huggee amount. But after calculating mine and my husbands wage we could only buy a house for £290k, where we lived that wont even get you a decent 2 bedroom house! I don't know how people do it! when I search right move a two bed house is 320-370k.

How do you afford to buy a house, what jobs do you do?

[quote onlychildhamster]@flowersmakeitbetter but they will. interest rates are increasing which generally leads to a fall in property prices. look up the 18 year property cycle. I say this as a home owner. When I bought in 2019, I did expect property prices would fall at some point but probably not immediately so I would have some time to build up equity to upgrade cheaply (hopefully) and I didn't think I would save much by renting even if prices did come down. But OP is buying in 2021 and given that she is buying in an expensive area, it could be that the total rent she pays might still be less than the amount she saves by buying at a better time.[/quote]
First time buyers are always hopeful that we're going to have a crash but it rarely happens. I've watched the local property market like a hawk for the last twenty years. With the exception of a couple of minor blips, house prices have steadily risen. During the blips, prices stayed static rather than fell.

Yes, interest rates are due to rise which is probably even more reason to get on the property ladder with a fixed interest rate mortgage.

If you really don't want to move buy something small that you can improve/extend if at all possible.

LooK for a tiny cottage/semi detached maybe on an unfashionable road....forget wants and look for potential, buy the grotty property that puts some off (but have a survey)

If you buy a flat make sure you have no big service charges/cladding issues..

Better to buy a converted flat ideally.
Interest rates are the best they have ever been so better to buy something than wait. Fix for as long as possible.

@Upsky sadly housing in the UK is about profit.I love London so for me, that is QOL. I don't mind living up north though when I am old as I probably would prefer a slower pace of life then and who knows, maybe the levelling up would have worked out by then.

Looking at the inflation, I can see why people want to maximize the earnings- contrary to forum threads, most people still want to live where the jobs are (hence why property is so expensive down south). If inflation means that average household costs go up by 1k per year and this is likely to persist for the next few years, it means a lot less if you were earning 50k as opposed to earning 20k. And in London, its a lot easier to give up the car (saving 2k per annum).

Hypothetically, if I sold my london flat and went mortgage free in the north but was on minimum wage, I would be terrified about a 1k increase in costs.

Spent first 2-3 years of working life in a shared house renting a room very cheaply, working as much overtime as I could, spending as little as I could and saving.

Bought first house (alone) age 25 in 2000. House was small 2 bed in a nice part of a cheap area, in greater Manchester. No help or inheritance but parent was a solicitor so did get free costs.

House doubled in value, met partner (who had spent more renting than my mortgage cost). Bought 4 bed detached about 4 years later but did move further from where we wanted to in order to get a bigger property. (Think cheaper but up and coming area).

Sold that after approximately 10 years with about 50k profit and bought slightly bigger house in a slightly nicer area, where we are now. Mortgage slightly bigger but affordable. Made sure the area was desirable so should sell easily and at a profit in case our circumstances change.

It is doable without help but involves a lot of sacrifice and not always in the area you want, or the amount of rooms you want initially.

I do appreciate we were lucky to be doing this 20 years ago though.

@DeepaBeesKit

High incomes. People working finance, management consultancy, law, accountancy, IT, sales etc in london can easily be on 100k each.

Then I know many people in HR, marketing, comms, PR etc earning easily 60k plus.

Higher incomes are key.

Living somewhere cheap is key.

Bought in 2015 DH and I earned about £40k together after tax. We saved every single penny as we hated the rental we were in, it was cheap but cold (didn’t have heating other than wood burner).

We did car boot sales, eBay, second jobs… it was an incredibly difficult time but we managed to save £1k a month and got an ex council place in a cheap but ok area in Devon for £148k

It was so difficult and that was with 2 incomes, I couldn’t do that if I was single

@toconclude my friend lives in yorkshire where you can buy a house for 150k. she is late 30s and still can't afford to buy despite having a public sector job.This is cos her husband is a delivery driver and she is on a contract role. Now she has a baby so it would probably be harder, not easier. I live in zone 3 london and DH and I own a flat and we are in late 20s. She is very intelligent and has a masters degree.

There is a reason why some areas are cheap. We once compared outgoings and her outgoings were the same as me even though we live in London and she lives in Yorkshire (she didn't have a baby at that time). They each have a car and DH and I don't. Her council tax and bills were all higher than me. She paid £700 in rent, and my mortgage is 1k (though I do make an additional 1k in overpayments). all in all, other than having one extra bedroom and a dining room, I am not sure how much higher her quality of life was compared to mine and she was saving much less than me as her earnings were much lower due to it being yorkshire.

We got 5% deposit mortgage last year as FTBs. We moved out of the very expensive area we were renting in though and borrowed £275k, although we were offered 450k by our bank.

That was before COVID affected the mortgages on offer though and so I am unsure what FTB mortgages are available now. Our deposit was 14.5k, so small in comparison to a lot of people.

We don't regret moving out if the area for a second, and are actually more rural now and love it.

My DH and I have a joint income on 100k though. (I just hit 40 so not a young 'un). We also have a shorter term mortgage and that helps clear the capital more quickly.

To the people who think buying in the 1980s was a doddle: if you were single, like me, it wasn't. My first mortgage was 63K and that was for a shared ownership flat. If I'd been half of a couple, or if I'd moved out to the not so nice bits of Essex, I would have been able to get a mortgage on a whole flat or house. However I lived in London and always hated commuting, which has its own costs if you're a long way out.

Bought a house that needed a lot of work and did it up sold it - did this four times... Currently on our fifth house - would not recommended renovations during covid!

It's definitely down to area. Our combined income is 70k and our house was 80k 3 years ago. You'd get a house for 45k around where I live if you are prepared to put in some work on it.

The drawbacks of living in a cheaper area are less facilities, less opportunities for jobs etc so it's not all good even though the house prices are cheap compared to the U.K. average.

Live in Scotland. Bought a rural ex council 3 bed semi detached for 120K. Need a bit of modernising but is a solid house.

I've just moved to dodgy areas... bought a doer upper and then moved. I now live over 50 miles away from my preferred area which is where I grew up..

But I do have a nice house now I'm 50

We started small and worked our way up - first a studio flat, then a 2-bed flat etc. Finally many years later we have a house (and a big mortgage)

Buy what you can. Use the increase in equity to move in a few years. Or move areas.

I'm a single parent on a low wage and I bought a house. I live in a cheap area though and accepted that I would never be able to afford a dream house. I live in a 2 bedroom Victorian semi, bathroom is downstairs off the kitchen, no driveway or parking space, postage stamp sized garden that is overlooked from every angle. But it cost £100k and I'll have the mortgage paid off before I'm 50, I'd rather have that security than the perfect house.

We started very small £140k with a 10% deposit which a family member paid for.
Sold it 3 years later for £175k
Brought a house for 200k - haves lived here 8 years and just had it valued at 300k.
We will stay put - I’d rather have a smaller mortgage than stretch myself.
Husband earns 40k
I earn 12k (part time) not very good money

We aren’t rich but we are happy and comfortable

Honestly... We bought in 2009 just after the crash, house price doubled over the following decade, between that and overpaying the mortgage and the huge chunk of equity we'd gained our £140k 2009 price house gave us £230k deposit towards our current house before we'd even added any savings.

What I'm saying is maybe don't buy somewhere to live forever, buy somewhere that suits you for now and try to increase value over the next few years. It's a gamble though.

Inheritance was our way on the ladder...a bit sad as we both had to loose a family member to get that money. I do feel for you...it's shit.

As is common nowadays, we bought with family help. My FIL was in a position to loan us 55k for our deposit, so we ended up on a 80% LTV with good rates.

Ended up selling that for 65k profit 3 years later and coupled with salary increases, bought our current house.

We purposefully delayed TTC as we wouldn't be able to have met affordability with a child. We had our DD just under 2 years after we moved in. My FIL is also very relaxed on how we pay him back (we paused repayments when I went on mat leave) and we are now gearing up to pay him back in full (~44k) by remortgaging the house in 18 months time, as we've paid off a chunk and our salaries have increased again.

I know we are extremely privileged that my FIL could offer us that money. None of my family could do the it and in fact, neither of my older siblings have bought a house as they simple don't have the income to be able to.

Unfortunately if you are buying in the SE it seems you either get family help or an inheritance to bridge the gap between average wages and house prices.

We have a lovely 3 bed semi in a nice area, in the north west so we only paid £130k for it 5 years ago. I really don't know how people afford to do it in more expensive areas!

My partner managed to buy his home through living with his parents and saving every penny he could. It was eventually enough to have a large deposit on a small bungalow, not his style and needed fully updating but it was his own.
We sold it last year after using every penny we had to pay the mortgage off, it covered the costs of moving to a bigger house, which needs a lot of work over the next 5 years but is livable.
We are both quite low earners in the area, but instead have sacrificed over 10 years of holidays, hobbies, and saving instead

We live in the midlands and purchased our 3 bed semi for 173k we put 10% deposit down. There would be no way we would have been able to buy anywhere else. Some of the property threads on here make my chin hit the floor.

Moved out of Bath to a nearby cheap market town. Our 2 bed was £123k in 2008, it's worth about £175k now which is doable for a lot of couples working in Bath/Bristol.

I wish people wouldn't just say "move up north". My home valley in Yorkshire isn't a posh one and it costs an absolute fortune to buy there now!

I bought a cheap place, somewhere cheap.