I’m never ever ever buying a house. How do people even do it?!

[misstartan]

I’m 26 and I just feel like giving up. I currently flat share with a friend but want to move in with DP soon.

I have £2500 saved up and that’s it. DP has about the same so we’re nowhere near a deposit. We’re both earning a decent amount but we’re not putting enough away. I’ve tried budgeting etc and put about £300 a month away if I’m lucky.

But realistically deposits will be around 30k now, so I’m only about 28 away… 😂😭

Thing is, I’ve always had it in my head that I’d have bought a house and got married before I have kids. And I’ve always wanted to start having kids by 30. Only gives me 4 years..
I genuinely genuinely do not see how this is going to happen and it really upsets me 🙁

How do people do it?! The

We own a house because we bought one cheap, if you can't afford to buy one where you are then you may need to look elsewhere or buy a flat.

2 bed terrace houses in Leicester start at around £150,000 if you exclude buying schemes and auction properties

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E789&minBedrooms=2&sortType=1&propertyTypes=detached%2Csemi-detached%2Cterraced&includeSSTC=false&mustHave=&dontShow=retirement%2CsharedOwnership&furnishTypes=&keywords=

So a 10% deposit you'd need £15k saved which you could do in a couple of years based on your salaries and expenditure. Your mortgage would then be less than your current rent so you'd be able to keep saving for 5 yrs to build at least another £30k, build equity in your home, potentially increase your salaries and move up the ladder.

You could both save 10k together a year.
If you save for for 8 years you have 80k.

You should also increase your salary as you get more experience.
At 34 you could be able to buy.

From 21 to 26 I saved 70k.

Whilst renting in a house share.
Enough for a deposit.

My friend (unmarried) lived in a bedsit for three years to save up and then bought a part share flat through a housing association. And was mid 30s when she did it.
She has bought a bit more of the share I believe. Well worth it for her.
Get rid of your timeline for starters, and consider flats.

Bought a I’ve bedroom at and part exchanged for a two bedroom new build (we really did well on that deal) stayed for 5 years until mortgage was under £100k. We then sold at profit and bought a 3 bedroom new build house…no parental contribution and no inheritance but we live in Scotland abc property is cheaper.

Yeah, if me and DH were to need to buy now we'd not be able to do it. Our area is medium expensive IYSWIM. Not London, Sandbanks, or Virginia Water expensive, but quite expensive. In our village, a 3 bed detached cottage is for sale for £465,000. Luckily we have a little 2-bed cottage that we got some years ago that is mortgage free, as we first bought many many years ago. 30+ years ago.

My DD (late 20s) knows many people her age (born 1990s) who cannot buy and never will. She is fortunate to have a high-earning husband, and be a high earner herself. So they managed to put away 25% of the value of the house they wanted (in 3 or 4 years.) They put it on a 4 bed detached house in a town 20 miles from me and DH. Homes are a bit cheaper there as we live out in the sticks in a more expensive area, but it was still over £400K. A £300K mortgage for them is very doable. Especially as they're less than 30 y.o. Me and DH could not afford it.

@Mooshamoo

Buying a house is not everything that we are told it is.

I bought a house and honestly it comes with a lot of problems. I want to move, but can't sell. So now i am stuck in an area that I don't want to live in anymore. If I was renting, I could move. There have been a lot of problems with the house. Very costly problems. That I have had to pay for. If I was renting, the landlord would pay for it.

There are some pros to owning a house. But there is definitely a lot of huge stress too. My friend who just bought a house said "there were a lot of hidden costs that he didn't realise". My aunt said once that she thinks she would be better off renting than owning financially. With all the costs.

There is good and bad to everything.

I agree with this. Unless you have a lot of surplus income, being a mortgage owner homeowner is a massive ballache half the time. As I said, my DD and her husband are financially very well off, but since they bought their house (2.5 years ago,) even they have been taken aback by how many extra/hidden costs have popped up, and how many things were wrong with the house/needed repairing/replacing ... They have also been knocked sideways by the cost of things.

Thing is, when you're a homeowner, it never stops. Maintenance is never ending. Me and DH struggled very badly for a number of years when we first bought. Wasn't til we became mortgage free and the DC left for good that we started to be better of financially.

I think the ideal for many is social housing. Private let is shit, and £1000 a month for a basic 3 bed semi shitbox in an average area these days. Buying is a bind, and very fucking expensive, and causes so much stress... You feel such dread inside when the boiler starts up and you can hear popping and banging, or if you have a leak, or the roof needs repairing or replacing etc etc. Costs 10s of 1000s of pounds over the years. On TOP of the mortgage. And you are NEVER prepared for it financially.

Buying a house before having kids is overrated.

You don't have much left over every month, forget the house how could you afford to have children to be honest?

You need to increase you wage (significantly). Even if you saved a 10% deposit you would likely find yourself unable to get a mortgage for the rest - therefore meaning you would need a much bigger deposit in the first place

How much were you earning and how much was your rent? That is a fantastic amount to have saved!

Can you go into details how you saved 70k in 5 years please? Income, rent cost etc. ? It sounds insane i mean good for you but i’d like to know how

I think a lot of people feel like this. Many won't admit it in real life, as it's almost like admitting failure, or that they got it wrong. Being a mortgage owner homeowner is definitely overrated. Shame there's not more social housing.

I'm the most stressed I've ever been since I bought a house! Now I need to maintain a building with a roof and chimney etc. A lot of those things need to be repaired, and they can be extremely costly.

Everything costs thousands of pounds to fix.

Yes it was good in one way to buy a house. But it is also extremely extremely stressful. And with the amount of money I've paid out to fix things that have gone wrong, it's a big worry.

You need to focus on your earnings! You’re so young, just keep working hard and progressing your career. I worked crazy hard in my 20s and early 30s, renting and having two small children. First property was when I was 35 and its house we could live in forever. There are many different paths to success.

How come you say this? Just curious as we’re looking to buy and don’t have kids yet

My DD and her husband (boyfriend at the time) managed to save £100K in 4 years. Low rent and high wages... They rented a cheap flat (only £300 a month) for 3-4 years - that his uncle owned... They have had £4.5 to 5K a month joint income for the past few years. They saved about two grand a month. (£25K a year.) Saved £100K in 4 years. That was their deposit on the £400K house they bought.

Agree however it pissed me off to be paying my landlord so much money every month! I wanted to buy my own house to be paying towards my mortgage and not his…

How do you feel now after buying a house? I'm interested.

We had to start from scratch in our early 40s. We'd bought in our late 20s but paid top-end prices pre-crash and it never recovered. We'd intended to move again in our early 30s but were stuck as we had to pay back the negative equity by overpaying the mortgage, and then save up a deposit again.

Took us almost 10 years. Did it by working an extra job at the weekends, never going out even for meals, not going on holiday, having one car between us (which was a total PITA), and being frugal with clothing. It was a slog but we got there eventually.

Buying a house before having kids is overrated

I couldn’t disagree more, if it’s hard to save now imagine trying to save for a deposit, rent a family sized house and pay child care.

Yes so they were lucky to be renting into their uncle’s flat. £300-400 rent is cheap! Good for them of course

How do people do it?!

I'm a conveyancer and honestly, 90% of FTB have help from some family or another. It's really difficult. Me and DH probably couldn't have bought without a gift from my father.

Can you move somewhere cheaper?

Only works if you're lucky enough to have a family member to rent you a £300 a month flat and have high paying jobs of course...

we are paying monthly more into the mortgage for sure, but we can now do work on the house without asking anyone’s approval or i can do whatever because its mine. I am personally happier to be owning a house even though our landlord was great! Took us 3 years to save so its a longtime coming for us and we are chuffed with ourselves that we managed to do it…