to think all this nonsense about house prices being too high is just that - Nonsense!

[RazahFluffy]

DH and I have long been in the property game. We actually met whilst working as Estate Agents back in 1999!

I've seen a lot in my time as an agent - 2008/2009 were a bit of a blip, but overall, there's one thing I've always had faith in, and that's bricks and mortar and that prices always go up. They aren't making more land after all 😁

As well as working in property, we've got a few of our own. We started off as accidental landlords after we got together and kept both our homes to rent out when we decided it was time to move in together and find a place of our own. Over time we've added a few more to the portfolio.

We are lovely landlords. We let our tenants have our houses as their homes, and we like to do little things like send them Christmas hampers, and know their birthdays so we can send a card and usually a Pizza Express voucher.

Anyway, there's a lot of rubbish being written recently about interest rates and the economy affecting the market. Nothing could be further from the truth where we are!

It's still buoyant and the buyers registering at the agency are no different to usual - excited to either 'get on the ladder' or move to their next step towards their eventual forever home😊Vendors are still confident. They agree with us that houses are actually a bit too cheap, all things considered because inflation is quite high.

The one thing I'd have to say is if you can't afford a mortgage at the moment - think about your expectations. You might have thought previously that you could afford a 4 bed, but if you can only get a 3 bed for now is that really so bad? First time buyers especially I feel need to be realistic!

Property always goes up and it's no different now. We're really confident and having seen it all in this game, we really think it's time to believe in the market💪

@RazahFluffy Its all well and good making these suggestions, and I understand where you are coming from especially with your personal circumstances and if you are in it for the long . But what if you are wrong....just consider for one moment that house prices do fall significantly because interest rates do rise. Then what? People stuck with negative equity or a mortgage they can not afford in a house/flat that is not sutible. You say the Government would not let that happen but what if they did? They can't keep bailing everyone out all of the time.

You will be fine though you brought your house in the 90s and its highly unlikely house prices would drop that low
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So lets say we are going to Airbnb route.
Where do we live given that we have rented out our home @RazahFluffy

@RazahFluffy are you Liz Truss?

@Furries it would raise the level of discourse.

There should be an MN rule that in certain circumstances when lines have been crossed and at the discretion of MNHQ it should be "open season".

Open season.
Clearly it is already silly season.

It's definitely exclamation mark season, I've never seen so many. Bizarre.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Has the op raised her sights higher than working in M&S do you think?

Perhaps she likes advising on food pairings to her tenants?

Gladly.

I bought my first flat at 21 years of age in 1995. I was at the time working in my first job, as a receptionist at a local GP surgery. I'd left school at 18. I had always dreamed of owning my house, so I put down 7k (I was quite a good saver), and got a 28k mortgage. It cost 35k, was a classic semi detached 2 bed and is in a town near Cambridge.

DH, who's the same age had stretched a bit further as he was already at the agency, and had a 3 bed semi which had cost him 65k.

I joined the agency in 1998, and we started dating. We found a 4 bed detached for 120k in 1999, and went for it, together. Buy to let had just started to take off, and as interest rates were reasonable we converted our mortgages to buy to lets and bought the 4 bed together, knowing that we would be getting a good income from our two existing properties.

Around 2002, we stretched to another 2 homes. At the time, you could self-certify, so we got a couple of quite expensive mortgages but you didn't need to provide income details. Since then we've re-mortgaged those to conventional IO buy to let loans.

In 2010, during the blip we traded up for the final time to a really lovely home in the heart of Cambridge - our absolute dream home. It cost £550k and is currently easily worth 1.2m, after selling our 4 bed for 300k.

That was a difficult sale because we wanted to keep it, but we just couldn't make the finances work. I remember at the time the 250k stamp duty threshold was a problem (long term property professionals remember it caused a difficult 'no mans land' because people really wanted homes to be around that level otherwise the duty was high) but we held firm.

It took at lot, but we see ourselves here forever.

I don't think we've been ridiculous. We have a total of 5 properties - one which we live in between the two of us, so it's not like we are some huge portfolio landlords!

I should clarify for full disclosure we have regularly refinanced our rental properties to take equity out of them, firstly in order to purchase our forever home and also to supplement income.

That's probably still not as many as in all the OP's posts.

Where you live at the moment, I guess!

There are now too many zombies, with too much to lose: over-indebted companies, too many homeowners and buy-to-let investors whose lifestyles, tragically, are only sustainable on 1 to 2 per cent interest rates, too many car buyers who thought that the cheap credit would be available forever. There was even more of a sense of entitlement to cheap debt, especially among the middle classes, than Truss realised, and they all blame her for their pain, even though mortgages are now nearing 7 per cent in the United States.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/12/zombie-economy-crumbling-real-culprits-getting-scot-free/

given that you traded up during the blip, don't you understand that its quite good for many homeowners who would have found it difficult to trade up if prices had continued rising. I think everyone on this thread would agree that esp in expensive areas, you often have to start with a smaller property. The problem is that many can't afford the smaller property and even after they can afford it, they find it difficult to trade up (and hence stay in their smaller property; meaning less supply for FTB).

if you haven't bought in the last 7 years, you really don't understand the affordability issue. I have bought in the last 7 years, which is why i understand.

It is very different now.

You didn't buy with your 3 brothers and 5 sisters and all live together in a studio flat. I am disappointed, I think it would make a better yarn.

I'm an agent, so knowing the market for both homes and mortgages is my bread and butter.

There doesn't seem to be any shortage of rich IT people in and around Cambridge over the past 7 years. Property never has and never will stay on the market for long round here, let me tell you.

Well, I don't have 8 siblings so it would be difficult.

I live in an area of north london where a 3 bed terraced house cost the same as your 5 bed detached house i.e. £1.4 million. Many are £1.7 million. There are plenty of rich people here (or at least people in middle class jobs with hefty inheritances from grandparents who also lived in north london). There are lots of reductions for those properties.

I bought my first flat at 21 years of age in 1995. I was at the time working in my first job, as a receptionist at a local GP surgery. I'd left school at 18. I had always dreamed of owning my house, so I put down 7k (I was quite a good saver), and got a 28k mortgage. It cost 35k, was a classic semi detached 2 bed and is in a town near Cambridge.

DH, who's the same age had stretched a bit further as he was already at the agency, and had a 3 bed semi which had cost him 65k.

This is all rather vague. What was your salary at 21 if you could easily save £7k? What were your living expenses, or did you live at home? Did you support yourself or live with your parents and they supported you, allowing you to save everything?

Your partner ‘stretched a bit further’. What does that mean? What was he earning? Did he receive a gift of money from his parents? How much did he put down as a deposit? How much did he save? How was he able to save?

These nuances are what I want to know.

@RazahFluffy Why cant you provide this expert advice based the possibility you are wrong! What would you advise the FTB to do who is stuck in a studio with 100k negative equity who took your advice to buy?

Fucking hell is this thread still going?

I was earning 11k, and yes I was living at home. I managed to save a little under 3k a year, as my parents didn't charge me any rent.

As far as my husband to be goes - I would have thought 'stretched a bit further' was obvious as his house cost 30K more than mine ! DH at the time was already earning quite decent commissions, he's a great salesman and put down a pretty large deposit for the time of 15k on his 65k property, so borrowed 50k. He was also living at home until 21, and had left school at 16.

He'd been saving if you can believe it since the age of 12 for a property, he's even more bullish than I am!

Yes, I have no idea how.