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.)

You wait. We could afford to move now but that's because we have lived here 11 years and would take the increase in value plus paid-off equity plus savings with us for deposit and stamp duty and costs.

Well yes, that is kind of the problem. The cost of housing has gone up exponentially while salaries have increased marginally at best. That means only people who got on the ladder early with loads of equity or people who have very good salaries can afford to buy.

Rich people might have more than they need for sure, but you can't judge people on the size of their home or state that BC someone has a big home someone else has to have a small one. We are a couple, no kids, some animals, purchasing a 5 bed house. Each of those rooms has a purpose and are necessary for us. However we are in no way preventing a family from having a larger house, that is kind of absurd.

Why is it absurd?!
A couple with no children does not need a 5 bedroom house. You might want one, but you don't need one.

If you read what I said, I said, it's absurd to think that we are preventing a family from having a bigger house, if they want one they can buy one, we don't set the prices. And yes, we don't need need those rooms but we do feel they are a necessity for us, so we bought a bigger house. Why is me having a gym less important than someone else having a play room? Oh right, it's not.

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.

We are trying to move to an area with good schools, there are no (or very few) family homes that come up for sale in the area, in part because their retired owners (whose now adult children are long gone) don't want to downsize, and even when the houses do come up for sale, they're ridiculously overpriced. So there's a huge amount of competition for the 3 bedroom homes, and 4 bedroom homes are beyond the budget of most people with children in childcare/education. If people were more willing to downsize when they no longer needed the space, there would be more bigger houses for families.

Of course, no one really thinks like this, because we live in a capitalist, individualistic society, and everyone (understandably) prioritises their own interests.

It's very frustrating though!

"We don't set the prices"
Er no, supply and demand is what dictates the prices. You're occupying a large house which means one less large house for families to buy. When you bought it you were competing against other potential buyers who may have lost out because they couldn't afford to offer as much as you.
It's how the system works, and you benefit, but don't spout nonsense that you need a gym.

So I suppose every single person who has a house should feel guilty according to you, as they prevented someone else from buying their house. Forgive me if I couldn't give less of a fuck. And no, we don't set the prices, the market sets the prices. What people are willing to pay sets the price. So those buyers who lost out bc they couldn't afford to pay as much as us lost out to a competitive housing market, it's how the system works. I'm certainly not going to feel guilty about my very necessary gym, thanks.

I didn't say you should feel guilty. You are clearly being defensive about your "very necessary" gym! But your refusal to acknowledge the injustice of the system just makes you blinkered and selfish I'm afraid.

Luckily for me, in my life and work, I come across people with a lot less who still manage to "give a fuck" about others.

No one care how you feel, it’s irrelevant whether you feel guilty or not. How you feel doesn’t change the situation.

I'm not being defensive about the gym, I'm simply stating that you or anybody else has no right to say what is and is not necessary for me. If someone worked from home you wouldn't be scoffing at their home office would you? Or would you also expect that to house another person instead? Maybe people should stop having children they can't afford to house eh?

Anyway, I'm done with this convo!

You shouldn't be upset with @Childfreecatlady for wanting a gym, you should be upset that the government isn't building lots of homes for regular people to live in. And that taxpayers are not willing to fund it.

Lots of people don't like social housing because they say that people like them I.e. people on median incomes wouldn't qualify for social housing. But who sets those rules anyway. If there was enough supply of government subsidized/affordable homes ( cities like Singapore and Vienna do it), it wouldn't be rationed for the most vulnerable. And yes for that kind of housing you can set conditions. Like in singapore the largest flats are reserved for 3g families (3 generations under one roof). For the private market, it's 100% capitalist (and that's fine as long as there is an alternative for ordinary people or even people who don't want to be overleveraged on property).

I mean… My mortgage on a tiny two-up, two down is £1,800pcm (S.E) (more than 50% of my take home wage) and I will be paying it till I’m 70.. and I count myself lucky!

So yes, I feel your pain, and agree the housing system is a mess! We need way more social housing, and way fewer people treating houses as land as speculative investments rather than homes.

Who are you to tell me what I "should" and "shouldn't" be upset about?
And no, I am not upset with crazycatlady for wanting a gym, I'm irritated that she claims to need a 5 bedroom house to accommodate her gym.

Of course I think the government and councils need to take action on the housing crisis - and I vote accordingly. I wonder if how many of the people parroting this argument have done the same? Or have they voted for parties that sell off council housing, underinvest in housing, and maintain the status quo?

It's all very well to blame the government but people need to take responsibility as well.

I agree with you, though, that there should be a lot more social housing, and then there would be less pressure on the private market.

So people who have lived in their homes for decades and are used to the space should downsize and go though the stress and cost of moving house so someone else with children can have it instead? My parents live in a very very large house, way more bedrooms and space than they need. My dad recently passed and my mom plans on staying in the house he loved which is full of memories of him until the day she dies and rightfully so. If anybody told her she should go through the horrible stress of moving with the grief of my father's passing still looming simply so another family can have the house I would hope that she would tell them to do one.

Can't you see your issue is with the housing stock, not people who have bigger houses than YOU deem are necessary for them?

Sadly this is what happens to bereaved people living in social housing. Sometimes an adult has been living with their elderly parent or other relative for many years, all their life even, but when that older relative dies, they are not only grieving but they often find that they have no right to succeed to the tenancy and are unceremoniously kicked out by the council/HA. Those people have memories in the house, too.

But apparently it's only homeowners we should feel compassion for

Oh and my elderly grandmother is still living in the house she lived in with my late grandfather for many decades. Frankly it's not suitable for her any more. She struggles to manage to the stairs. She can't maintain the house and garden. I think it would be in her best interests to downsize tbh.

Man, it's hard to keep up with your mental gymnastics. Pretty sure you can care about both. Again, simply saying that expecting older people to downsize to make room for new families is unfair and not the answer, and I'm not surprised that many don't, esp if it's in a sought after area. We certainly won't.

I saved hard as a single mum to move to my dream home.
Look over what you’re spending and move as much to your savings as you can. It stops you from buying junk.

You clearly won't, and it's because of selfish people like you who claim to "need" 5 bedrooms that there are fewer 5 bedroom houses for people who do actually need them.

where have you got this "most people" statistic from? any actual sources? or just 'a few people I know?'

I don't know ANYONE who bought a 'small flat' as their first home. Everyone I know bought a house. The smallest were 2 bed terraces, some went straight into 4 bedroom detached. The cheapest flats are usually bought by landlords, but, tbh, in my experience people don't really want to buy them because they are concerned about cladding and short leaseholds or because, when service charges are added they are as or more expensive as houses. When I briefly looked at quite basic flats the cost was the same as the 2 bed semis I was looking at but with a service charge half again as much as my mortgage.
Plus it's very area dependent, some places (e.g. outside of cities) just don't HAVE loads of flats, the cheapest/most common housing options are small terraced houses.

The 'small starter flat' as the first rung 'housing ladder' idea in your early twenties is very 1980s. Now, as @@SovietSpy and others have pointed out, first time buyers tend to buy the biggest house they possibly can, much later in life, and then stay in it for as long as possible, sometimes extending, because the next rung up is so expensive, and moving costs are so huge. It's not possible to move every 2 or 3 years 'up the ladder' anymore because you're talking tens of thousands every time by the time you've factored in stamp duty, fees for extending/porting your mortgage, estate agent fees, moving costs...

A 3 bed at your age is really good, many of us grew up in similar houses, my room was that box room you describe!

People around here don't move. It costs too much with stamp duty etc. And they like where they are. They stay and extend instead.