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.)

@towonderwander thanks for clarifying - I apologise if I was harsh - I thought from your post you were hoping to move.

Having bought so young, you have plenty of time to build up equity in your house. Childcare costs will come down over time. These are just the expensive years. We’ve done the same as you just 10 years later and as we saved for 10 years before we bought and have had pay rises over the years have bought a house that whilst definitely not cosmetically perfect we can stay in for the next at least 10-15 years then reassess.

As I’ve said elsewhere I grew up in a 3 bed house with a family of 6 until early teen years and only have fond memories of my childhood. Your kids whilst little won’t have an issue with sharing or care what their house looks like.

Again enjoy baby

I think as you are 'up north' and in a cheaper town you are in a lucky position to be able to do so- I'm originally from a midlands mining town and had a 3 bed semi by the time I was19 back in the early 80s! My son in his late 30s and still in that area has a beautiful 'done up' 3 bed semi in a good area bought for £185,000 - hence you will see couples around you with average paid jobs with nice homes probably from mid 20s onwards- they just take on bigger mortgages , use a bit of equity to pay stamp duty , often buy 'done up' places still at modest cost or new builds etc- in some parts of the country none of this is remotely possible at all without big family help, inheritances or very high earning jobs- and I don't just mean London- so count your lucky stars , finish off making it a palace, and look at the situation again in 4 or 5 years- even 2 young kids in same bedroom won't hurt them!!

Paying a mortgage of £1000+ per month is pretty normal now, so it's a bit unreasonable to be surprised by that. YANBU to highlight the increasing difficulty of moving now though.

When I was in my 20s, it was normal for people to buy a shit studio/one bedroom as their first home, live in it a few years, then sell it in order to get a 2 bedroom, live in it for a while, sell it to get a flat with a garden or a house etc. But I think that sort of ladder approach doesn't really work anymore, as the increase in property prices (and tightening up of banks and brokers on the availability of mortgages) hasn't kept pace with salaries, which have stagnated or, in many cases, gotten worse.

I didn't have the money to buy in my 20s and when I finally did, I had a finite window in which I should have sold to move up to the next step on the ladder, but I missed the chance through poor choices. Now I'm stuck in the same property.

You are doing really well mid 20s to own a house so you are ahead of your peers. I think the average ftb these days is something like 30 so ppl moving houses are likely to be at least mid 30s so in answer to your Q, they probably have 10 years of earning on you if they are moving house.

That's before I consider that you're also ahead of average to be having your 1st child so your finances are squeezed more than the average mid 20 something.

At 25 I was renting a room in a shared house and was financing myself only, not having to worry about childcare bills.So I'd say you are doing really well just to be able to get on the ladder. The affordability to move house will come with time as you pay down your mortgage , progress in your careers, build equity etc.

They fall under need test of need as well. Immigrants don't get priority automatically just for being immigrants.
If yes, I've been well cheated! Same like that free housea we apparently get🙄 still waiting for my free housing

Yes, they would. These are nearly our exact figures. Hope this helps.

In a word: yes! It’s a housing crisis and doesn’t bode well for the future or equality within the Uk. I would say you are lucky to own a home with an average salary. It’s depressing!

I completely agree with you @towonderwander. It is absolutely ridiculous that you are struggling so much as a couple working full time and earning an average wage. As you will have seen from a lot of responses to your post, there is a race to the bottom in this country. If you complain or expect your wages to go further, you’re inevitably told that there are lots of people worse off than you and you should be grateful for what you have. The government doesn’t need to respond to your genuine questions when the majority of the electorate will tell you that you should be so grateful to have a home in the first place. If you and your DP are good at your jobs you should expect pay rises as you progress through your careers. You will then find that the tax system disproportionately penalises middle and high earners. You will also lose out on tax breaks such as child benefit. Your question then will inevitably be “how come I am still struggling when I earn so much money? Why do we have to choose between a nice house and a holiday when our joint income exceeds £100k?” And as sure as the sun rises in the east and night follows day, you will be met with a chorus of “you make me sick / you’re so privileged / how dare you complain when there are people using food banks”. Like I said, a race to the bottom.

Monthly mortgage payments above £1,000 is totally normal to me? And why are you worrying about moving when you have a 3 bed house? We have lived for years in a 3 bed house with 2 kids. You’re very young to own a house, I don’t know anyone that has bought a house til their 30s.

A 30 year mortgage in your 20s isn't ridiculous at all.

Has the issue of what a "four figure mortgage" been resolved yet?

Enquiring minds want to know ...

The OP has said multiple times that she means her monthly mortgage repayments are 4 figures, ie over £1000.

Fab. Couldn't see that when I scanned her posts. It's an odd phraseology but makes more sense why she feels hard-done by.

A mortgage payment that is over £1,000 presumably? Not difficult to understand, unless you’re being purposefully obtuse which isn’t helpful to anyone.

Interest rates are historically low, and have been for years
17 % way back, remember that

• Earning more (this is the main one, I imagine)
• Adding a lot to their equity either via inheritance or windfall or saving very hard/living frugally so they have a bigger deposit for the next place
• Not having children/nursery to pay for (ties into the point above I suppose)
• Cheaper area (mortgage on my no-work-needed 3 bed is nowhere near £1k a month and wouldn't be even with a 95% mortgage. We sacrifice certain things living here, i.e. the cultural capital of a bigger city or posher area, but where we live is a nice part of a generally very cheap area)

People have struggled to move as much in the last couple of years as interest rates were much higher, so there's also the fact that you're right - it is harder to move into a bigger house at the moment. But plenty of people are still moving, through some combination of the above factors.

Yes, it really is shocking, especially when you see practically every country in the OECD spends so much less as both a % of income and of total spending.

https://news.sky.com/story/uk-spends-more-on-housing-than-almost-any-other-developed-country-and-gets-the-least-value-from-it-too-13099925

Labour's plans for house building should significantly increase supply and increase mobility, but it looks like being almost all private building. Unless they implement a programme of significant council owned house building, the impact on prices won't be enough to actually impact the housing crisis.

Those at the bottom will still be trapped in paying high rents and those that can't will still be in temporary accommodation.

M

You upsize as your circumstances change (increases in income or reduction in paid childcare) or you make your home work for your family and stay put

Someone working 37.5h/w NMW making a small pension contribution would indeed earn about £1500/month net. But they'd still have to pay rent and everything else. The average private rent in England is £1327/month. So a couple both on minimum wage would have £1673/month left to pay for everything else.

You would have nearly double that!

I don’t think the whole starter home thing really exists anymore for like millenials onwards in the UK. We are similar in that we bought an ex council semi needing renovation in a lovely but very rural area. I said at the time it would make a good first home….but not a forever home.

Now it’s looking like it’s our forever unless we relocate in retirement or inherit. I’m fine with it though, and it actually has enough rooms (3 bed, 2 of which are big) downstairs bathroom + one of the bedrooms (annoying but good for aging), nice garden views, big gardens and double driveway. We have a small mortgage but i really can’t be arsed to sell down the line only to have to do this all again at an older age. So only want to move to a final, final house near DC one day wherever they end up…but who knows what housing costs will be. We earn above average combined for the area but feel lucky to have even secured this house at our age (30 ish when we bought)

The idea of a property ladder doesn’t really exist any more because every prices are so high, wages have stagnated & FTBs are older.

I think you made a good choice bypassing the flat stage.

Plus lots of people have ££££ in equity which distorts the market but younger people can’t help when they were born.

We're 34, on our second house now and we need to move again next year as we've had another baby and our 1% fixed rate ends next September. We're now frantically saving £15k to move so we can put all equity into the sale. Our mortgage is currently £500pm and will go up to £1000pm when we move. This will be our last move for a long time now I suspect.

We moved 6 months ago after spending 9 years in what we planned to be a 5 year house. Covid happened, furlough, so much uncertainty, so we stayed put even though we had really outgrown it. When the time came though, we really needed to move for catchment area and the house was no longer meeting our needs. We saved hard, putting the money away monthly we knew we'd need for a new mortgage plus moving costs. Our 1.8% 2 year fixed rate was coming to an end so even to just stay where we were we'd have been paying a few hundred more. We'd built up a decent amount in equity so when we sold we took some of the equity out to cover EA fees, solicitors fees etc and to cover some renovation costs in the new house. We doubled our mortgage to move but in the time since we bought our previous house, both DH and I had significantly increased our salaries through promotion and we were finally out of the painful years of paying childcare costs which was a significant saving every month. Our new house does need further work that we are saving to do, it will likely take us a few years to save and do everything we want but we're fine with this.