To wonder how anyone affords to move house?

[towonderwander]

We are a mid 20s married couple with our first baby due next month. Earlier this year we managed to buy our first home. It is an ex-council house which needed significant improvement in an okay area. Not the best, but good schools around and convenient motorway links. With kindness, practical and financial support from our families, we are slowly turning it into a beautiful place to live. It is now a really lovely home with just a couple of rooms left to upgrade. It is technically a 3 bedroom but the third bedroom is very small and houses our clothes as well as the boiler so would never be functional as a third room.

We are glad to be on the property ladder and feel lucky we had so much support, but the cost to maintain and upgrade this house has been more than I could ever imagine. We have a 4 figure mortgage as it is, thanks to interest rates. If we wanted a bigger house/slightly more desirable area, I can’t see how we would do it. Anything that wouldn’t need this level of work again would be most likely well out of budget plus the new stamp duty thresholds mean we’d have that to factor in as a large cost too. Plus you know, childcare fees and the general cost of living crisis.

How do people afford to move? AIBU to think nowadays it is increasingly harder and not as simple as just climbing the property ladder?

(To add before anyone asks why we didn’t start with a flat, most if not all have been bought by landlords round here, the ones that haven’t are leasehold and exceptionally difficult to sell on.)

And in big cities you’re right. But we don’t all live in cities. There are barely any flats in the Midlands town where I live. In fact I’ve just checked RightMove and there is currently 1 for sale. Certainly not enough for every first time buyer. It’s also more expensive than the 2 bed terraced houses in the town.

I think this may be true for some parts of the country, but I bought my first flat (with some but not much help from parents) in London in 2005. It doubled in value in the decade I lived there and comfortably allowed OH and i to buy a house. OH had a flat in Manchester which had remained pretty much stagnant in value for the same decade.

The fact your parents raised a family in that house should show that it is desirable to families.

It's really important to remember this is very area dependent too- my son in a cheaper area but with a lot of varied housing has a lovely 3 bed semi bought for £185,000 2 years ago , in a decent area of the town too - you can buy a nice 4 bed detached ( old and new) for around £275k . The FTB in those areas aren't buying flats because most flats there are ex council or HA and not particularly nice and they can skip that level because they can also get a 2 or 3 bed terraced for around £140,000 . We are used to seeing flats mentioned because many of us live in areas where a 2 bed terrace will start at £350,000 or a flat £265, 000 etc

Just because something is desirable to someone else doesn't mean that the person that owns it should have to part with it.

No, that's right. But part of your reasoning was it's undesirable.

Just to give you an idea- Frome (Somerset) 10 miles up the road from us is a 'trendy' town and gets lots of young 'London' buyers who can work from home with young families. If you search there are actually very few flats anyway- so they totally skip the flat stage and buy things like this- still for £300k or less

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/147122381#/?channel=RES_BUY

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/150850019#/?channel=RES_BUY

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/143182469#/?channel=RES_BUY

I remember I asked a colleague who had just spent £650k on am executive 5 bed new build late 30s / early 40s the same question. How?!?

We were late 20s, had just bought our first. Also a doer upper. Average price on average incomes.

He just said well you do. I don't know how but he was right. 5 years later we bought a 2500ft detached house for 400k. It was a complete shell. I lived in a garage with a newborn for a year. 3 years in we are in the main house but still going with renovation.

By next year we will have finished and it will be worth around c. 650k, with less than a 200k mortgage. So in a roundabout way we have ended up in the same position.

Just keep on cracking on. Don't overspend on the renovation. Sell for a good price, buy at a good price and go again.

Goodluck 🥰

There is only a finite number of 4-5 bedroom houses. I don't think households with just 1 or 2 adults should have those 4-5 bed houses while households with children or multiple generations are squeezed into 2-3 bedroom houses. That is ultimately what happens.

My DP and IL in 3 bed where they raised their families both looked at downsizing - there was little appropriate stock and at time no obvious financial incentive- and as they got older the downstairs space became more important and they spent ever more time in the house. Having the space became essential as Dad got sicker - being able to have equipment and hospital bed downstairs meant he could get home.

We'll likely be two people in 4 bed house - kids will be at uni and taking first steps into world and we want to be able to offer a bed to them if needed (especially as likely only way they can save for a house themselves)- we are here definitely till youngest finished uni for funding reasons but then can't immediately sell as will have to factor in job moves - as we'll likely moved again to more expensive area so will be looking at 3 bed most likely - so we have room for kids to stop if needed and office space as DH often works from home.

Next door they are in their early 60s - they bought their house as a wreck - roof was missing on both properties at time - they raised their kids there and extended first to 4 bed with kitchen dinner ( like our) and last few years added office in new dormer extension. They've done a lot of work in it overall and recently to set it up for their retirement years and had their adult kids boomerang back.

Presumably you have some obvious cut off point where you stop being parents who need to consider kids needs - and where pervious work or effort to get a house and keep hold of it and maintain and improve it no longer matters.

I might shock you now but London isn't the UK.

I do understand the concept of some areas, usually cities, having lots of flats. Thus why I said "Plus it's very area dependent, some places (e.g. outside of cities) just don't HAVE loads of flats."

I was objecting to the other poster just saying "Most people buy a small flat as a first purchase" without qualification, extrapolating solely from their own limited experience without any actual proof, because I don't think they do, overall. Only 21% of the population live in flats and a lot of those will be rented. If they'd said "Most people in London buy a small flat as their first purchase," maybe.

Do you have a link to this

Idiotic comment I agree

I live in south West... Many pals have never been able to buy here despite professional jobs...

The only ones who own their own homes? They've inherited in their 50s/60s after decades of renting.

The other group are people who were lucky enough to get social housing quite young... Know several school contemporaries managed to get tenancies in their mid 20s and they bought them some years later with massive discount.

Depends on where you live I suppose. Childcare here is fairly cheap (£45/50 per day) and we'll be entitled to 30 hours and I'm planning on compressing my hours, so expecting our childcare bills to be minimal.

Even if you have high childcare costs, it's only for a few years, not the rest of your mortgage.

You don't get the house you are entitled to you get the house you can pay for. I can pay for it so I get it. If you want it so badly why don't you pay for it? Oh right, that's the problem here, you can't pay for it yet believe you are entitled to it for having kids. Sorry, the world doesn't work that way :)

Some people never manage it. I have two friends approaching 60. they bought a very small two bed started home in the early 1990's and still live there. They have brought up three kids there, one of whom still lives there. At one point they were sleeping on a bed setee in the lounge for years on end so that their teenage dd could have her own room. It's been pretty rubbish for the whole family. I think they will be there now forever.

Yes that’s exactly what it means.
you need more money to afford a better home