To ask if you spent every last penny to buy the perfect home?

[Outofblue]

Appreciate there is a property section but I thought I'd get more responses here.

I've been house hunting for just over a year and I'm starting to wonder if I will ever get on the property ladder. I admit that (rightly or wrongly) I am being fussy and there is a couple of things that I will not compromise on such as location and parking. Having lived in shitty areas with terrible parking before, it's not something that I'd like to go back to if I can help it. My next house will also be a long term/forever home so I want to make sure I'll be happy and won't regret the purchase.

I've come to terms with the fact that if I want to buy in one of the nicer areas this will cost more which my budget will allow, but it would be extremely tight and basically leave me with nothing after the house purchase and all the associated costs. It feels quite scary to me as I've always had some form of savings and whilst I could save the money back up again, it would take a long time as I'm a single household and as we all know trying to save whilst paying rent/mortgage, bills etc isn't easy.

I'm just curious to see who else was/is in the same position as me and if you ended up using every last penny to buy the perfect home, was it worth it?

And there's a big difference between using up savings to buy house, totally normal.

To taking on a mortgage that you then can't afford to actually live day to day. Not a good idea.

It's not clear which camp you are in

I was told a mortgage lender won't lend you a mortgage that you can't repay because they check your earning capacity and work it out from that.

So I went for the max sized property with a maxed size mortgage and locked myself in to safeguard myself against the rising mortgage rates, and because I didn't see how I would be able to afford a financial advisor in just a couple of years (it cost me 1.5 grand in total).

I made the choice with my children jointly, though - do we either: buy a small house where you share a bedroom but we have loads of spare cash each month, or have a lovely home that we all love with our own bedroom each and plenty of space but have no money left each month.

They opted for The latter without hesitation and so far have managed with that decision. Don't get me wrong, there are times when we hungry look at the takeaway menu and wish we could afford it but we can't and so we don't and I am a worrier when it comes to money, but it was a new build and nothing will need doing for a long time and has a 10 year guarantee, the school is close by, so saves petrol, and we've done things like ditched Disney+ channel, Tesco's delivery saver, installed timers for all of our lighting and nighttime fans during summer et cetera so every bit of electricity is utilised sensibly. I know from past experience that it's always hard when you first move properties, but I'm hoping that after Christmas things will begin to stabilise and we might be able to afford a bit more if we are careful. Worst case scenario, we can always bunch the kids up together to share a room and rent a room out to either students or a lodger to get us through for a short while, so we are quite private and not really like the intrusion if I'm honest.

Sometimes I wonder if we would've been better off living elsewhere and having no money worries, but I suspect I would just fritter away with lots of lunches out and more holidays than I've ever had before, but holidays only last a week and living in a property lasts all year.

It's a pity I didn't have this wonderful house during the lockdown period because I would've loved to be in lockdown here! But I hate it being locked down in my old house.

I remember many many years ago, applying for my first mortgage and a boss telling me that you should always go to the highest mortgage you can afford. Whether is it worth it will work out in due course. I've often thought about that, as I didn't go for the highest mortgage at the time , but this time I did. I guess time will tell which is the best option, time will certainly tell me which house is the best one to live in. I can't tell if it's still out of the house I'm in now or whether it's because it's a new build but I feel like I'm living in a lovely posh hotel which I quite like. Every time I drive into my driveway or open up my front door I'm met with this delicious sense of luxury that I've never experienced in my entire life before. Every time I wake up i am greeted with a beautiful bedroom and every time I'm in my bathroom it feels like there is no five star hotel that could even come close to matching it. Could I achieve that in a much smaller property that I like less? Maybe, perhaps home is where the heart is. All I can tell you is I've lived in a house that I didn't like for a decade before moving here and I used to feel heavy hearted when I went home to the property, but I can't wait to get in, in this one

Yes used every penny 10 years ago for the perfect house. It has been such a pleasure to live in it that we didn’t care about holidays. But our salaries have risen, things got paid off and the house is now much more than we paid for it.
It was the riskiest thing we ever did Bt it made our lives infinitely better.

Nope, we ended up buying 20% under our max budget, and with our mortgage jumping by £500 a month in November I'm bloody glad we didn't push it too hard

YABU

We spent every cent we had getting our deposit together for our last house. I think we just had enough to rent a van for removal and to pay our solicitors fees and absolutely no money for house renovations. I assume a lot of people at the bottom of the ladder are similar. I know a mum at the school is in the same situation so it seems normal enough. It was our preferred location and we are very happy here and financially we are now in a much better and much more stable financial situation.

I spent all of my savings when buying my home. But I did that to get a mortgage I could afford and still save. I wouldn't have done both (max mortgage plus all savings) because a safety net is important. Particularly if you are the only earner.

I think looking for a "forever home" is a mistake. It automatically means your expectations go up massively. The important thing is to actually get onto the property ladder and not waste time on unrealistic expectations. If you can't afford your dream home now, buy an acceptable home (even if the parking isn't great) and buy something better when your finances have improved.

Using all my savings wouldn't bother me if I could build them back up.
What would worry me more is month to month affordability
remember if you need to use every penny of your wages for mortgage, bills and living expenses then what will happen as prices go up

I spent everything to buy a home, but wouldn't ever be able to afford a perfect home. We were lucky it worked out, but I would not rush to do it again. Although I would have no issue with running the risk of going back into rented, I wouldn't have had the money to do so.

We bought when we had young kids when there were no savings to speak of (used a deposit scheme to buy!) I wasn't worried about that, I was more worried about what proportion of our salary the mortgage payment took up as I didn't want to scrape by month after month, so we were careful with how much we borrowed. It was a new build though so no up front work. This was a few years ago now and no regrets.

At the time, we spent every penny we had on the house. We had no holiday for 2 years after as every saving was spent doing something on the house . It was our first house and we’ve been renting for years and paying childcare fee for DD1 so it took so long to get that amount saved in the first place. (We didn’t borrow the maximum offered by the mortgage company though as didn’t have enough deposit for that)
The house wasn’t perfect and the location isn’t great but had 3 bedrooms, a study and parking.
We didn’t think it was our forever home at the time as we thought we’ll move before DD1 starts secondary school so didn’t mind that the area wasn’t great but we’re still there now and not even thinking of moving again.
The secondary school in the catchment area became outstanding last year and because of the new builds, there’s a new secondary school built that’s affiliated to another outstanding school . There’s lots of new build estates which has improved the outlook of the area and people are moving here because of the outstanding schools.
We’ve had more children but the size of house is still more than adequate and we’ve just build a conservatory now for more space. Also, we can save more now as earnings have increased as well over the years, no major work needed on the house so it wasn’t a bad decision in the end.

We had a house purchase fall through and then spent another 18 months after that looking again. When we did finally buy, we bought a house that was probably over 1/3 more than we had originally intended to spend. We took out a mortgage that was a bit bigger and we used up as much savings as we could. We have two incomes so there is a bit of a safety net, but personally I have no regrets about spending all that money. Who knows what will happen when we have to re-mortgage in a few years time, I hope rates will be better than they are now, but either way, we'll make it work. I love where we live and I don't ever plan to move if I can help it. And the property has been a great investment, even in just the few years we've lived here, as properties around us are selling now for more even than when we bought. Living somewhere that makes you happy is really important, so I would do it, but I do tend to live large rather than being overly cautious.

We spent pretty much all our savings but we could have had a bigger mortgage. We can comfortably afford the mortgage and able to save to build a buffer again.

Oh and it's not the perfect house but ticked all our essential boxes and we are very comfortable here. Our perfect house probably would be double the cost so we were realistic within our budget. We won't be moving any time soon! Probably not until children are grown and even then maybe not.

Two things

1. Will your ongoings let you save once you have bought? If so, no problem. We used the "savings" to sort out house for the first year but now they are rebuilding somewhat

1. Think hard about your real requirements. We looked at quite a wide range of houses from £650k all the way to £1.3m in terms of functionality there was surprisingly little between them in the £850k to £1.3m bracket!

We bought a house in the middle that was 100% not my DREAM... I wanted detached, carriage drive, garage huge garden etc. We did find one... for £1.3m and a 25min walk from the nearest tube 😱 In the end we got a semi with no garage and too narrow side access!!!! However location was 5mins to tube and it has off road parking and good, regular sized bedrooms which were what was REALLY important to us day to day. We are very happy here and the house works well for us.

Location and Off road parking are reasonable non negotiables if this is all that is your price range go for top end.

I haven’t and wouldnt spend every last penny on a house. It’s a pile of bricks at the end of the day, I want enough money to have experiences and create memories. I know from recent sad experience that no one ever talks about their house or car in their final days. It’s the holidays and memories and time spent with people that’s important. So no, no way I would put all my money into a house. I live in a tiny two bedroom terrace and I’m more than happy.

I didn't. I ended up buying under budget and I really like the fact I don't have to panic if something does go wrong. But I'm a cautious type.

Pretty much every penny on the deposit, fees and renovation before we moved in.
Was it scary? Not particularly. Once we were paying the mortgage we had hundreds less going out in a month vs rent. Savings soon accumulated back up.
The mortgage was a reasonable proportion of our income though, we weren't housepoor living in it, we simply spent all our savings to get it. We wouldn't have been spending the savings on day to day life so it didn't change out life at all.

For our first house we needed some financial security as went for a smaller house and a cheaper area than we could afford if maxing out our budget. Both me and my partner were in new jobs or about to start new jobs so wanted to be able to afford the mortgage on one salary if one of the jobs didn't pan out as expected. One didn't as it happened and my partners job made him miserable. Knowing he could hand in his notice if it got too bad was a relief. In the end he found a different job that did mean we needed to move fairly soon afterwards.
We maxed out most of our savings buying this house but we went with a mortgage that we could afford on one salary if our lifestyle was stripped right back.
Our second house we again put most of our savings and pushed ourselves a bit more with the mortgage. We do need two salaries road afford it but the second person just needs to earn something so that could be part time or a minimum wage job. I have a disability so this is important for me. This is a house where we have lots of room for growth, in a location that suits our lifestyle and work life. It could easily be suitable for is for 5-10-15+ years jobs and relationship dependent.
It is costly to move house so it is worth pushing yourself if affordable but not so much that it is an added stress.

yes we wiped our savings to buy the house - left about 2k but that was me overestimating a few things and could have gone

we did have pretty stable jobs though with full sick pay, insurances and the actual mortgage and bills were manageable on a month by month basis basis - i was more worried about this than wiping our savings (on a bigger deposit than was strictly necessary)

Yes. Every penny, plus a bank loan for new windows and doors. The house is perfect, the condition not. We’ve since had a new roof, put a new kitchen in, new damp proof course and we’ve still not finished!
I love our home. It makes me feel happy inside as I drive down the road towards it. I don’t care that half of it needs decorating and the patio has sunk.

I think it’s a mistake to buy into all that twaddle about “perfect” or “forever home”

No home is perfect, and as you have absolutely no idea what’s around the corner, you cannot know it’s a forever home either.

My advice is location above absolutely everything else.

This is dull, but I've never dreamed outside of my means, so i would say no.

No because we want to live our lives fully and that means holidays and going out. We prioritised location and schools over size