To just be so upset about house prices

[spuddy56]

We started looking in December after scrimping and saving for years and its got more and more out of reach with every passing week since then. We've had two sales fall through due to downvaluations, so not only did we need the huge deposit we had saved up for years, we needed 10k on top of that which is impossible for us. We are paying rent and have no family help. We viewed a tiny house that we love and has been on the market since beginning of April with no offers but the seller won't budge on the price. Based on one year of sold prices in the area its about 40k too much, even taking into account the 10% rises over the last 12 months. Theres just no way a mortgage company would lend that much. Been to view another one and it's tiny, has had no offers and is worth a lot less but agents don't think they will go lower. We've had to adjust our expectations down and down despite being what we thought were healthy earners. How are first time buyers managing to buy right now without help?! I'm so so upset at not having somewhere to settle and call a permanent home.

No they aren’t.

In the current market, vendors are not reducing the price. Instead, they are expecting purchasers to make up the difference between the bank valuation and the offer price, with their own cash.

The money which is no longer being used to save for a deposit can instead be saved towards the work.

Do you have children ? If not, would you consider something drastic like buying a van/campervan to live in to avoid paying rent ? You could get a gym membership to use the showers, still cheaper than rent. It's drastic but the market is brutal at the moment and if you are desperate to buy, you need to think outside the box. Good luck

They really aren't. The value of our house has absolutely skyrocketed. We wouldn't have dreamed of paying the amount it costs now when we bought a couple of years ago, yet similar properties nearby are being snapped up very quickly at that price, agents are actively looking for more as they're getting so much interest, hence us deciding to start the process after briefly considering it sometime in the future. Unfortunately, I think waiting will just see prices continue to increase.

For FTBers buying with a 10% deposit, with current house prices, their mortgage payment is actually more expensive than their rent.

And even if it’s £200 a month cheaper - hey only 125 months of saving to go for that new kitchen and bathroom! 😆

I’ll post the link again and hopefully people will read it this time.

Rubbish. Utter prejudiced bigoted rubbish.

Most of the news reports are simply talking of the first step - a slow down in the rate of increase in house prices being mooted.

Welcome to Mumsnet. This is a discussion site - we don’t tend to just plop links and go!

As you like links though, here are some for you.

Salaries have indeed fallen in real terms since 2008.

www.independent.co.uk/business/realterms-weekly-pay-is-lower-than-before-2008-financial-crisis-b2015511.html?amp

www.newstatesman.com/chart-of-the-day/2022/01/uk-wages-fall-back-below-2008-level

amp.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/14/average-uk-worker-earn-third-less-than-2008-tuc-real-wage-report

amp.theguardian.com/money/2017/feb/27/uk-workers-wages-fall-one-per-cent-year-since-financial-crisis-tuc-analysis

The innumeracy being wheeled out here is quite something.

It’s not £25,000 for a new kitchen and bathroom. I think that the “problem” is becoming obvious here, people want the life they see in the Sunday supplements with their expensive designer kitchens and bathrooms and don’t think that they should have to compromise.

Why should anyone else care that we have delusional people expecting a millionaire’s home on average wages? That’s literally not a problem at all.

The claim was over the last twenty years. Your links don’t cover that time period. Can you honestly not found back twenty from 2022, or are you just dishonest?

Very keen to talk up the property market, aren’t you? Almost like someone who is heavily invested in it.

We're the same.
Were looking at fixer uppers, but don't have the additional £ to do the necesssary renovations (like put heating in) with a baby so had to change taxt.

Last year we could afford a 3 bed that needed a bit of work.

Now looking at flats / houses / shared ownership / anything to get on the ladder.
It's mental how much prices have gone up, mortgage interest has gone up, plus budgeting for energy.
It feels almost hopeless.

We wish we'd brought last year, but a series of bad decisions on our part mean we're still looking.
Trying not to kick ourselves too much and appease the regret of 'not' doing what we didn't think was right at the time.

@SlightlyGeordieJohn the refurbs we have been looking at are not needing new kitchens ffs. They have collapsing windows or no heating at all (not even electric wall heaters). Another was overrun with cats and would have needed new flooring throughout due to the smell of cat wee. One room made me gag, and I used to muck out horses for a living so not ridiculous about animal smells.

@yellow13 minus the baby we are exactly the same as you and I completely understand. I don't understand how people are affording to live with interest, inflation, energy and house prices. Everything we've worked for just doesn't seem worth it as everhtime we succeed with a payrise/new job the goalposts are moved out of reach again.

Are you seriously suggesting that, in a slowdown, houses in undesirable areas will hold their value better than houses in better areas? Really?

No. Houses in those areas sell well in an overheated market, like the current market, because people are desperate to buy something and can tell themselves that the area is ‘up and coming’ even when it isn’t. When mortgages become harder to get, and fewer buyers enter the market, and prices correct, what are those buyers who can afford mortgages at higher interest rates going to choose? The house in the ropy area or the house in the better area? Of course it’s the latter. This happened during the 1992 crash and again in the correction following the credit crunch. Thee were entire blocks of apartments in less salubrious areas of the northern cities that just wouldn’t shift, and the people who had bought them in 2006 at the top of the market got a very unpleasant shock. One agent told me in 2008 that nobody had sold an apartment in a particular major northern city for three months. History has a habit of repeating itself.

Who’s talking it up? People are posting house price data, but no-one’s really saying much about expecting prices to rise much from here.

So if you won’t buy one of them, or buy a flat, or move to somewhere more affordable then you’ll just need to keep renting or find a way to earn more.

You seem determined not to compromise but don’t earn enough for what you want. Millions of other people are buying houses, you maybe need to try to understand what they are doing that you can’t or won’t.

You’re talking rubbish. The North is not “ropey”, that’s just your prejudice showing.

We are trying to buy them but keep getting out bid or downvalued, this includes flats that have a suitable length of lease and parking for an essential for work vehicle. Some don't even have on street parking.
If we can't buy we will end up moving further north but can not look for new jobs at the moment. We only got new jobs last year to help us buy...but turns out they didn't as the market got even more mental. What's to say the same won't happen again as we try to better ourselves and still have the goalposts continously moved out of reach?
Cant you understand what that's like? To be just out of an age bracket where it would have been possible but now isn't it? The only thing stopping us is the years we were born.

As harsh as it sounds if you can't afford to buy then you need to either accept thr position you are in long term or short term or change something. There isn't a magic solution out there.

Unfortunately the prices are where they are due to others being able to afford them. Once others can't, or people on mass loose confidence in purchasing the prices fall it really is that simple

I don't know what area you are in but in every area there are people who feel prices are too high and guess what 10 years ago some people thought that, 20 years ago the same. My grandparents quoted the same when their house was 2,000 and yet 70 years on look where we are.

@SlightlyGeordieJohn I live in the north in one of those towns. Not everywhere is Harrogate or Knutsford 🙄

There are plenty of lovely but affordable places in the North; I grew up in one.

Yes, if you want a house for £5,000 it’s going to be somewhere awful, but £150,000 gets you a nice house in a nice town in a great many places.

My home in Newcastle is nicer than the one I have in the commuter belt in London but is worth about a million pounds less.

No point in giving advice - it's just a shit situation that won't end until we have a governement that doesn't seem to actively hate people under 40.

(I don't try to get political on non-political threads, but not building enough houses is a political choice.)