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!

Bought in 2012 (a different time tbh)
Lost a parent in 2011 which led to me being given a ~15% deposit
Bought with DH. House 25 min from Waterloo, just over £300k, neighbours now selling for ~£600k.
Still here, now with 2 kids and extortionate nursery costs but the mortgage is fixed at 2% for another 7 years. Joint salaries a bit higher than yours now.
Luck (good and bad), a few good choices and more luck.

I’ll caveat this by saying not having - or wanting - kids made it easier because I could comfortably buy a one bed flat and live in it long term.

I bought last year in south east London, zone 4, 5 mins walk from a train/overground station that gets me to London Bridge in under 15 mins. Flat in a converted house with huge communal garden that no one else uses. It was advertised for 230k but I got it for 205 as it had been on the market for a while.

I earned £45k at the time and put down a 10% deposit. I’d managed to save up 20k over the past 7ish years by a combination of living in cheap house shares and generally living quite cheaply - I don’t drink very much (and I also used to work in an industry where parties and free drinks were commonplace so I didn’t have to spend much on socialising). I didn’t go abroad much - less than annually, but I grew up never going abroad at all so it didn’t feel like a sacrifice. I had no financial help as my parents don’t have two pennies to rub together. My mum has helped me out over the years with a hundred quid here and there for food when I was really struggling but they don’t have the kind of money to give me thousands at a time. I’m happy with my flat but I doubt I’ll be able to upgrade to anything bigger in London, and I don’t want to live anywhere else in the UK.

Surrey is nice

haven’t heard Kent is a crime area

guessing most areas have some crime