To think in London, your choice of partner matters more than a career?

[zippythetoad]

I work in London, came from a working class family in north, state comp, went to Cambridge, blah blah.

Work in a well paid job in financial services. You’d think my kind of salary would afford a nice house etc. You’d be wrong.

Looking around at people in the office, some of the same background as me, the only people who have actual houses or are starting families are those who have married someone with generational wealth.

It doesn’t matter how hard you work, you will never catch up to someone who has bern given a £1-2mil contribution to buying a house through inheritance or family. This all boils down to whether your partner comes from a family who bought London property in the 80s or 90s.

You’re wrong - not that London property isn’t absurdly expensive, or that it is difficult to get on the ladder when you get and without financial help etc etc

But you are wrong to think that partner is more important than a career, especially if you’re a woman.

Remember that working in a field like FS you will be exposed to a lot of people who do have a lot of wealth, and who send their kids to boarding school, and who couldn’t possibly live in X postcode, and wouldn’t be seen dead driving a Japanese car and whose properties are worth 2/3/4 million, and always ski in Switzerland and holiday in the south of France, and have country homes etc etc etc

But if you’re talking about being able to buy a house you’d need a 1-2 million pound contribution towards, I think you’ve been brainwashed by the environment you work in. How much is this house costing total?! Because honestly you can buy houses in London for less than 1m, and there are plenty of people in London earning not FS level salaries. So unless you want vast quantities of space and/or the swankiest possible area I think you can put this on the back burner as a bit of a non issue.

You might find a partner in a similar field and financial position to you, and jointly have v significant salaries for house buying. Or you might be a breadwinner. But being with someone with family money is no substitute for the security of being able to earn your own good living. And living in a big house with someone wealthy is no fun if they are an entitled, arrogant prick who treats you like shit (plenty of those to be found in FS sadly)!

Careers often outlast relationships, so focus on you! And educate yourself about different areas of the city which won’t be on your colleagues’ radar but could work for you and be sound investments. Actively go and spend time further afield than the city and don’t let your colleagues’ snobbery put you off.

You're not wrong OP. 1-2 million may be overkill but. As @TedMullins never misses a chance to point out anybody can buy a tiny flat in London, It's building the equity for the next step that's the issue.
I used to work in financial services. Back office role, many women quit or went PT after having kids as moving further out just didn't work. TFL is reliable but trains are not. Delays, cancellations at the drop of a hat leaving people stranded all for £££.
Also, flat prices have stagnated in the last 5 years. Your salary increases as you progress, yes but unless you make it VERY big people usually rely on increasing equity to move up the housing ladder. This isn't happening as much.

I moved to Manchester and bought a family house in my mid-twenties with my then boyfriend (now husband). Overpaid the mortgage, but prices also rose (we're close to the city) so much so that we're in a better position to move to London now, in our early 30's. Compared to if we'd bought a flat and stayed in London.

I'm in my 30s and the only people I know on the housing ladder were gifted massive deposits from parents.

I've got one foot on the ladder, in shared ownership, but I was only able to do that because I received compensation for something that completely fucked up my life.

I wouldn't want to buy somewhere with the help of a partner. I've had too many bad relationships to risk being financially dependent on somebody.

Can't help but laugh at the poster who considers 25K from her grandmother a 'small inheritance'.

The reason I love to keep pointing it out is because it’s irritating to see the fiction perpetuated that even people on financial services salaries can’t afford to buy ANYTHING in London and you need a million pound deposit. I didn’t buy a flat because I have some kind of special powers, I simply filtered by price on rightmove and bought what I could afford. Someone working in finance I imagine will have a salary much higher than mine was, and thus have access to a wider range of properties. If living in London is the priority then buy a bigger flat that has room for future children. You don’t need to “move up the ladder”, just find something you can afford that meets your needs. I can only assume people on high salaries have a very narrow definition of properties that suit their needs.

Should it be that way? No, the London property market (and the market in general) is out of control and I’d welcome regulation of house prices and more building of genuinely affordable housing, not to mention a fairer distribution of wealth, but while none of those things are happening, you either accept the status quo and try and work within it, or keep whinging without trying to find solutions.

My partners family had even less than mine and we managed to buy a decent house on not huge salaries, but then it cost a lot less than a million

I am in London in financial services, and I bought my house without a partner (although it streched the finances quite a lot). Not sure if it meets the definition of "nice" though, there's always SOMETHING wrong with it. Not given any money, quite the opposite - my parents are my financial dependants (their own income is negligiblle), and I am from the developing world, with absolutely nothing in family assets.
Comparison is the thief of joy, OP. You're not wrong, and this is why one of my key goals is to save a reasonable sum (say, a one bedroom flat in London equivalent) for each of my children - I want them to actually enjoy their lives and not having to graft from nothing like me. But it is not actually like you can do anything about not coming from money now.

OP you've touched on the two truisms that women know but don't talk about:

1 that having a high earning DH is more important and impactful to your quality of life than your own career/income and the best way to ensure financial resilience and

1. That having parental help on either side gives an absolute advantage.

These things are very very true and many people refuse to acknowledge them.

Totally agree.

You know multiple people who have been given or inherited £1m?!

Yes OP you are right.

Im similar to you - state school,
cambridge educated, senior in a city law firm earning big bucks (quarter of a mil). But DH is poor (works in the arts) and we live in a shitty run down terraced house in shitty bit of London because neither of us had any family help.

My colleagues are pretty much all either (a) from well off backgrounds, funded by BOMAD from private school through to large house deposit, (b) married to other high earners - lawyers, bankers or (c) both.

So they have amazing lifestyles with lovely houses, fancy holidays, kids in private school etc. on the surface you’d think they pay for it through their earnings but in fact it’s only possible because of huge financial input from family. They would probably say they worked really hard to get where they are today.

@Waferbiscuit

having a high earning DH is more important and impactful to your quality of life than your own career/income and the best way to ensure financial resilience

Does this statement assume that the woman will (a) have children and (b) want to put her career on hold while she raises them?

Because it makes zero sense otherwise. (and is highly questionable even without those assumptions…)

I think you are talking about London like it is only zone 1&2. Come out to zone 6 where I live and you’ll be able to afford something nice, much better place to raise a family as well

YANBU, OP.

I work in law. Even the best paid junior lawyers will struggle to save for a deposit. The idea of being able to have a family home and a baby is, hah, like no. And they are lawyers.

What age are you? DH and I earn just shy of 200k between us (we are both state school and Cambridge too and neither of us had parental help, parents have no spare money). Edit, I forgot DH’s bonus. It’s 225k between us. But still less than you and your DH.

We can afford a nice terraced house in a nice bit of Zone 3, we also have a rental flat and our son is in private school. The mortgage has about 20% left to pay. But we are in our late 40s. I bought my first property by myself when I was about 30.

We are 36 so that’s probably why - property prices have risen exponentially but salaries have not.

Even people who bought 5 years before us are significantly better off. (And I appreciate we are better off than those who bought 5 years after us, but that’s not really the point of this thread).

As a comparison, one of the partners I work closely with was an associate in the 1990s. By the time he was at my level of seniority, he had paid off his mortgage on a detached Georgian house in London in full and owned a flat in Paris and a holiday home in the Cotswolds. He employed a full
time nanny and had 2 kids in prep school. His kids are now in their 20s and they are the ones who are going to be able to afford property in London in the future!

having a high earning DH is more important and impactful to your quality of life than your own career/income and the best way to ensure financial resilience

Really? What happens if you separate or divorce? Thinking like this certainly can and does trap women in miserable marriages.

Yes I wouldn't have the house I have if I hadn't married my high earning lawyer husband. And while he lost any equity he had built up when he divorced his first wife (he gave it all to her so she could buy a house outright), I did manage to get a bit of equity which paid our deposit by buying in the 1990s. My career was in a creative field, and while enjoyed, it would never get the big bucks and if I hadn't married I'd be in a less affluent part of London for sure.

I think it’s very difficult to achieve the typical ‘middle class’ expectation of a 3-4 bed house in a reasonable area without either inheriting a lot of money or having a very highly paid career, for younger people.

The ‘housing ladder’ has also all but disappeared, given the high cost of housing and the impact of stamp duty at prices which are for London, not enormous.

For me to buy ‘the next house’ it would be another £300-400k (this a slightly larger terrace). So you need to earn another £100k to borrow the money - plus the stamp duty might be £100k. Very difficult to justify…!

I think for a lot of my peers they are now stopping and wondering what exactly they are doing, given a big salary doesn’t actually deliver anything close to the lifestyle they anticipated (mainly due to the cost of housing).

Not helped by the fact that putting two in preschool might set you back more than £4,000 a month.

Well, if @JumpinJellyfish is anything to go by, even a very highly paid career won’t help you, unless 250k not what you consider highly paid?

@Heather37231 When you were able to buy property here makes a big difference, due to the huge price increases in recent years.

I’d imagine an awful lot of homeowners in London wouldn’t be able to afford their homes at today’s prices.

All to do with timing imo.

I’m a first gen immigrant, no family behind me. DH same. We each bought a (shit) flat for under £200k in 2013-4, then a lovely flat together, then a £1.5m house last year.

Hard work, luck, and career choices focusing on employability and ££££.

@Heather37231 For buying a bigger house?

It depends what kind of house you are aspiring to buy - but, yes in many parts of London buying a family home would require an income of £250k+.

Not a massive mansion. A four bed terrace or semi.

Which is obviously insane.

Hence their asking about inheritances.

I think being married to high earning men is what has made the difference here (sw)
The men are all engineers or bankers or own business or Financial services. It mostly maths related.
Or as you say being gifted money
None of the women are the high earners. (Although they were at my work). They are locally TA or teachers or nurse. A few are GP though so i guess they vontributed a lot to their house purchases.
One of dp friends was gifted money by new wife family at the wedding. So went from a flat to large house
We were gifted money and our earnings were 20k each at the time. And could still only buy small ex council house.

It does worry me for my dc as not everyone is talented at maths. House prices so high and now have to pay soooooo much for uni.

This is exactly the problem – expectation. If you think a 4 bed detached house in specific gentrified areas of London is the minimum acceptable standard, then yes, of course you'll struggle. Perhaps it helps that I grew up just never expecting to own property at all, so I'm incredibly grateful for the tiny flat I can afford. It sounds from my perspective like a lot of people just don't know how to be grateful for what they have got and can afford. You call it a shitty terrace in a shitty area, I call it a sizeable property in a more down-to-earth borough that I feel more at home in than I would in Wandsworth. Plenty of people bring up children in flats.