Page 5 | How much mortgage to pay each month?

erhsla14 · 2022-04-24T21:34:57+00:00

How much do you pay per month either as a figure or % of net income? We are FTB and trying to decide what to do (used to paying a lot on renting, especially when living apart renting separately)

HardyBuckette · 26/04/2022 08:28

beastiev · 26/04/2022 08:23

And if you think the question was about whether it's the norm for FTBs to be buying these cheaper homes per se, you've entirely misunderstood the question.

So hang on

I write

"HardyBuckette my point was I'm not sure how many FTBs are only paying 20%."

Your response to that was

"Mine was that it wouldn't be uncommon in the cheaper areas of the UK. "

You responded to my point telling me it wouldn't be uncommon & when I questioned that bit I've misunderstood the question? 🤔

Sigh.

You mixed up uncommon for first time buyers with uncommon per se, which is clearly not the same thing given the number of people who don't buy houses. By definition when we look at the homebuyer population we're excluding all the people who couldn't buy.

Bear in mind as well that social housing is sometimes more easily available in cheaper areas than in wealthier too. It isn't that difficult to get where I am, for example, and some of the people I know who are in it could also afford to buy a cheap house. There are places where that's a much more viable option than it is in the south east of England, if I can be forgiven for introducing yet another non-SE concept to a discussion of housing on MN!

beastiev · 26/04/2022 08:28

@HardyBuckette You can call it a lack of belief but I stand by it's much harder to get on the ladder today then it was for me.
I also believe there is an issue with the housing market & in particular for younger people/FTBs. Again you can disagree.

beastiev · 26/04/2022 08:29

Sigh

Indeed 😆

HardyBuckette · 26/04/2022 08:29

BarbaraofSeville · 26/04/2022 08:26

Yes, and I thought the NMW part was very telling as well. Because obviously if you live in cheaper areas of Leeds, or northern Greater Manchester, or Belfast, or Liverpool, or any one of dozens of other places, that's all you could be earning

Rubbish. If you live 'in Leeds' or Manchester or Belfast no matter what part, you have access to all manner of jobs, graduate programmes etc, proper jobs with proper wages. People don't just work in the 'cheaper area' that they live in. There's thousands of employers within a few miles offering all sorts of jobs.

Exactly! But the default was to go to NMW. That's telling.

beastiev · 26/04/2022 08:30

Exactly! But the default was to go to NMW. That's telling.

It wasn't my default though...

HardyBuckette · 26/04/2022 08:30

beastiev · 26/04/2022 08:28

@HardyBuckette You can call it a lack of belief but I stand by it's much harder to get on the ladder today then it was for me.
I also believe there is an issue with the housing market & in particular for younger people/FTBs. Again you can disagree.

No, I don't disagree with either of those things. They're both correct, they're just not what we were actually discussing.

beastiev · 26/04/2022 08:32

Except I was discussing those points.

beastiev · 26/04/2022 08:36

and it's bizarre when I responded to another poster who bought up NMW you make the leap that I've assumed people only earn low wages outside of the SE. Yet i'm the judgemental one?

BarbaraofSeville · 26/04/2022 08:36

I mentioned NMW in response to comments about how it wouldn't be possible for people who had bought recently to be only paying 20% of their income on a mortgage, to illustrate that, for a household with two full time working adults, they would earn at least £2600 pm between them, because that's what NMW is so if their mortgage was £500 pm, it would be less than 20%. That is all.

Not that all people in areas of the country where house prices are more affordable don't earn more than NMW. Because that's not the same thing at all.

beastiev · 26/04/2022 08:40

Yeah & my point was to question how many people on NMW are buying houses since it's often not permanent full time contracts that are available. That is all.

Somehow this was extrapolated to me saying I think high wages don't exist outside the SE 😆

beastiev · 26/04/2022 08:41

Not that all people in areas of the country where house prices are more affordable don't earn more than NMW.

Again no one said that though...

BarbaraofSeville · 26/04/2022 08:43

But these threads always go the same way and from the outside, it sounds very much like people in high cost areas justifying to themselves that it simply isn't possible to have a nice life, buy a house and have a decent disposable income left over without the 'massive mortgage, long commute, long hours big job' life that they have.

On salaries, job security and what it buys here, nurses, teachers, emergency service workers and other public sector workers, of which there are many here have secure full time jobs and most couples who have at least one of these workers in the household will earn enough to buy a satisfactory family home by the time they are about 30.

BarbaraofSeville · 26/04/2022 08:46

beastiev · 26/04/2022 08:41

Not that all people in areas of the country where house prices are more affordable don't earn more than NMW.

Again no one said that though...

No they didn't, but @HardyBuckette said that 'Yes, and I thought the NMW part was very telling as well. Because obviously if you live in cheaper areas of Leeds, or northern Greater Manchester, or Belfast, or Liverpool, or any one of dozens of other places, that's all you could be earning'

Some people will only earn NMW, but many people earn a lot more. But still, even if you do only earn £20-30k, that still means that you can buy a house, especially if you buy as a couple.

beastiev · 26/04/2022 08:49

Some people will only earn NMW, but many people earn a lot more

Again no one said otherwise.

HardyBuckette · 26/04/2022 09:30

beastiev · 26/04/2022 08:32

Except I was discussing those points.

Well, you eventually crowbarred them into a discussion about whether it's unremarkable for people who didn't buy their homes long ago to be paying no more than 20% of their income in mortgage, after various other detours. That didn't of course make them relevant. Because they're completely different questions.

The existence of the cohort I mentioned hasn't meant that prices to earnings ratios aren't increasing, for example. Or that there aren't whole regions of the UK where this cohort doesn't exist, or that mortgage terms aren't increasing. They only mean that people who have purchased houses quite recently in some parts of the country can still have pretty low repayments as a percentage of income. This fact, and it is a fact, leaves plenty of room for a great deal of housing market dysfunctionality to exist.

HardyBuckette · 26/04/2022 09:37

BarbaraofSeville · 26/04/2022 08:43

But these threads always go the same way and from the outside, it sounds very much like people in high cost areas justifying to themselves that it simply isn't possible to have a nice life, buy a house and have a decent disposable income left over without the 'massive mortgage, long commute, long hours big job' life that they have.

On salaries, job security and what it buys here, nurses, teachers, emergency service workers and other public sector workers, of which there are many here have secure full time jobs and most couples who have at least one of these workers in the household will earn enough to buy a satisfactory family home by the time they are about 30.

It does indeed. And of course, we've seen this happen before on MN. What we have here is a number of people from cheaper areas of the country explaining that it isn't necessary to have bought a long time ago to have a mortgage of 20% net income, and then someone who demonstrably isn't familiar with the areas concerned but has just decided that doesn't sound right, based on nothing at all.

Kite22 · 26/04/2022 18:27

Some excellent and very patient posts by @HardyBuckette and @BarbaraofSeville
I'm not sure why, beastiev you are finding it so hard to believe.

HardyBuckette · 26/04/2022 19:02

Thank you!

FKATondelayo · 26/04/2022 19:06

34% which is high. But DH high earner (so we have generous disposable income and room to manoevre), I don't currently do paid work and we live in London so high mortgage.