To ask how you managed to buy a property in the South East

[Marghe87]

I’d be interested to hear from people
in their 30s and early 40s mostly (ie; not those that bought a house a long time ago before the crazy pruce increases of the past 2 decades.
How far from London are you and what type of house do you own?
DH and I are in middle management jobs earning over £110K between the two of us. We live outside London and have a DC in full time nursery and a high-ish rent + London expenses (ie: commute cost etc). I appreciate we’d be considered rich with our income in other parts of the country but we can barely save for a deposit whilst paying for childcare and all we’ll manage to get when we finally get there, will be a 2 bed cottage in zone 6.

A few clarifications as I know I might get these questions:

• our salaries have increased a lot in the past 2-3 years, before then we were on a much lower income and that’s why we never managed to save big amounts. Then we got DD and now the majority of our spare income goes to childcare


• our jobs are tied to London and we are not interested in relocating too far away from here (DH from here and I am from abroad and have no interest in living in other parts of England as feel no attachment to it)


• we want to buy somehwere nice, easy commute and with good schools

it just seems so bloody hard!

People buying in the 2000s definitely qualifies as “in the last two decades” 😉

I don’t either for what it’s worth. When I bought my first house a decade ago it was worth £200k and I sold it four years ago for the best part of £300k. But I answered anyway because she asked 🤷‍♀️

I think your issue is that you have a child and pay for childcare.

When I bought, I was lucky enough to be able to work 3 jobs on top of my Mon-Fri main job to save save save, and didn't have kids till nearly 20 years and having upgraded 3 houses later.

I'm early 40s (although H is older). We live in Zone 4 in south east London. House was bought 10 years ago for £400k but it now worth about £750k and we couldn't afford it now.

We bought our first place in the late 90s when I was very young and then traded up to a house a few years later. We extended that and then moved here.

Only 1 DC and once they were in primary school we had family help for childcare which was free. Before that we paid nursery fees of about £600 - more than our mortgage at the time.

Our income is about the same as yours.

This was a huge difference for us. Part of the concentrating on the career meant that we put off having children to our late thirties. It’s much easier to do well if you are able to out in whatever hours are needed, and never have to disappear for emergency child care.

My DS bought his London flat with just his wage in lockdown, age 25. He had saved hard since graduating, (whilst renting a room in his friends flat) paid off his student loan so mortgage multiples weren’t affecting affordability and took the Stamp Duty break that was on offer.
Family only helped with actual moving and some furniture etc.
His mortgage is eye watering but he earns a very good London salary to fund it. He needed >£100k to cover deposit and fees, and I don’t see how most couples (let alone singles) can do this unless they are top wage earners.

I'm around 30 mins from central London, bought a 2 bed house last year under the shared ownership scheme. I'm 32 and a single parent and didn't have the savings for a big enough deposit, earn 40k which isn't enough for the mortgage I would need to buy outright.

I saved 6k, moved an hour (by train) from London and bought a 2-3 bed house with front courtyard and back garden for 115k using the 5% deposit help to buy scheme.

7 years ago and the house is now worth around 350k apparently.

We afforded it by moving abroad to work for 3 years. Our kids had an amazing time and we saved loads of money to buy a really lovely home. We are a 45 min commute from London although neither of us work there.

Bought a flat in a bit of a rough part of town at 21 for 78k(I'm 42). Bought a house 3 years later on a better estate and just moved up from there.

@Milliways what does he do for a job, to bring home enough for that? My kids have career dreams of very socially worthwhile things that they'd love but said careers will definitely not enable home ownership going on current trends. I'm worried they will flee or end up doing something they hate or live at home forever

@Goawayangryman investment Banking. He graduated with a first class Maths degree and uses a lot of maths daily. It’s long hours and challenging but he loves it.

@Milliways good for him. Hope he succeeds and is happy.

We bought our current family home 3 years ago, in 2019. It's a 4/5bed in z5, south London. A bit of a walk to the station but then about 20 minutes into various London terminals.

My DM died and I inherited half a house in z3. So basically, we had a significant (6 figure) inheritance as a deposit, and we took out a mortgage on a multiple of just under 3x income to cover the rest.

The house needed a lot of work (full re-wire, new heating system, new bathrooms, kitchen, replastering, the lot) but we'd done it before in our previous house (that we'd kept) so we had our eyes open on what we'd need to do and how much it would cost... and what we were prepared to live like! Due to market movement and the work we've done it's worth about a third more than we paid for it now.

In a lot of ways, it was harder when we bought our first place, in 2012. It was cheap, but our deposit was small (15%), we had a baby on the way, the house needed work and our salaries were probably only just over a third of what they are now. Once I went back to work we had massive childcare costs to pay as well as trying to renovate the house and we had no time or energy to do anything! It's easier this time around - the DC are older, the childcare costs are minuscule and we have more money overall.

I agree its only really the last 5 years that counts. We bought 11 years ago and frankly prices have risen so as of I would say 2018 we could no longer afford our house. Having just put on the loft extension we definitely couldnt.

My parents bought in the same area a 3 bed house in 1999 and yes it was 50% less than when we bought ours but the 50% increase from 2010 to 2020 is the killer - from 200k to 400k to 600k+ (and perhaps more)

And mortgage deals my god nowadays! fixed are 3.5+ plus now

We’re from London. Worked very hard at school, both got into high paid jobs. Bought a 2 bed cottage in the commuter belt a 40 min train ride from central London in our 30s, then upgraded to the family house in our 40s.

Move out of London is my advice to you. There are some lovely places a short overland ride to London.

Both dh and I each had our own properties when we first met - bought in a cheaper part of the UK. We sold both and took advantage of the low interest rates in the mid 2000s, buying what we thought was a very expensive house. In reality the 300k we spent then is now approx an 850k house now, although we've spent nearly 100k on doing it up over the years. We'd eventually like to move to a slightly larger house with a bigger garden in the (nicer) neighbouring area but even that would not make any financial sense as anything even just a tiny bit bigger would carry an extra 400k price tag on top. Just not worth it. What we have done though is buy a small holiday home and that gives us somewhere to escape to and a modest income from renting it out a few times a year.

I live in one of the cheapest parts of an expensive Surrey town.

When we purchased the house, my husband had a decent salary (£50k), but no savings. I had no salary (I'd just given up work to be a SAHM), but had a large deposit.

The deposit was a mixture of equity from my first home (in a very cheap part of the country), inheritance, and a very generous gift from my father. Without the family help, we couldn't have bought a house.

@Marghe87 It is bloody hard, I personally don’t know anyone who has done it without a chunk of inheritance to work with. It’s not very fair. You will get commutable to London, but not sure you’ll get easily commutable too quickly.

As for other locations, I completely get it, London is a different universe in many ways to other parts of England, and what you get there is not easily replicated. I would say though, have you ever considered Edinburgh? It’s much smaller but still a capital city, lots going on, great arts, culture and food scene. Some really excellent schools and the childcare situation has improved recently. You can live pretty centrally for much cheaper than London. The people are great, and the weather is better than you’d expect. Great quality of life all round.

Will you be able to get as high a paying job? Not sure but 110k for middle management seems quite realistic, it has high wages than most regions in the UK.

If you are really committed to south east England, Hampshire or Surrey would be nice options, but you are talking 2-3 hour door to door commutes for most places you want to be, at that point will you even feel part of London anymore?
Ex London people seem to like Bristol too.

Spent 10yrs saving up for despite whilst on £36k and renting so no holidays, commuted to work on a bike to save on travel costs, had cheap phone, literally bare minimum bills and only a monthly cineworld card for entertainment and free things to do. Bought my 3 bed house in zone 4 which was affordable just as recession bottomed out. 30 mins commute into London.

Definitely wouldnt be able to afford it now. So got lucky.

Its interesting times. In 2019, we decided to buy a flat in London instead of a house in the commuter belt because we were expected at the office daily so did not want to spend in excess of £8000 for 2 rail season tickets(plus running a car). Fast forward to 2022, we are looking to upsize but still looking at a (bigger) flat in London as DH has begun cycling to work so basically has zero commute costs.DH also cycles to the supermarket. we can function pretty well without a car so no petrol costs. I just bought a bike so that I can also cycle to most places. i was worried about inflation when I bought in 2019 (though I did not expect it to be 18%) hence I wanted to buy in a place where I could have the lowest possible commuting costs as well as easy access to a wide range of supermarkets (to reduce food costs). I think actually living in the commuter towns is a luxury option. I compared a 3 bed flat in my area in London vs living in a commuter town and even if the house in the commuter town is 100k cheaper, living in a flat in London works out the same or even slightly cheaper even before you factor in the money you would save from not having a car. And of course this is compounded if inflation is 20%. while mortgage rates will rise, at least you can fix your mortgage; you cannot fix energy costs for a house or petrol prices and rail fares are linked to RPI.

It's probably not what you want to hear but everyone I know who were FTB in the last 5 years aged 25-45 had no or limited child care costs and substantial help from parents / inheritance. Those who bought in outer London also lived with parents for about 4 years prior to buying.

Others who rented before buying live on Kent cost but all had 5-10%, which unbelievably is considered a low deposit these days

Being prepared to live in unfashionable postcodes helps. For example, if the Medway is mentioned on MN there will be a rush of posts telling you how terrible it is. But it’s reasonably close to London, and you should be able to find a pleasant family home in a not-too-bad area.

We lived on the Kent coast and chose to move a few miles down the coast to a non-trendy town. This gave us a much bigger house and better quality of life.

Is it wise to upsize before having DC? My instinct is that it is. We did have help in the form of free rent as FTB but that's not possible to replicate now! An astonishing number of people I know have help upsizing too!