Getting on the ladder in your 40s in London

[FreeBeeBird]

Is it even a ladder anymore? We have a healthy combined income of £125K (although not considered “high” for London standards) but due to high rest, previous lower wages and years of expensive childcare and other issues, we are only just now in a position to purchase our first property.
Just came across a recent post re housing ladder not being what it used to be anymore and this is certainly the case for us. I am interested to hear from people in a similar situation to ours who are buying or will buy their first home “late” in life and living in a very expensive area like London without inheritance or other types of monetary help from family. How did you do it and what did you purchase? Do you think you will ever be able to move up the ladder?

I really struggle to see how that’s possible for us taking into account our age, earning potential, current prices and high rates.

Anyone?

I am a lot younger than you. I'm in my mid 20s, but I'm buying my first property (no family help) with a 5% deposit and I earn just over £50K it is a doer uper in zone 4 have you considered buying something that might need a little bit of work?

I am like you. I am on a hefty mortgage solely based on our high income at the moment, high leverage no family support. My plan is to live in London for the next ~10 years on this high mortgage, build some equity, sell the place at high (hopefully) or at least not make loss, and move to a lower cost of living country

Buying late in life, the only consideration I would say is think a lot of about the location (Resale value in case your financials become worse and can't afford mortgage), and have plans for retirement since you will either need to pay back for a long time or be able to move to lower cost alternative options.

When we bought recently, we decided not to be too bothered by the mortgage and how we dont have much equity. If it becomes too much, we will turn to remote jobs, and sell the expensive property and move to another country. These days, future in the UK looks pretty bleak anyway (although I still love London now to have bought here haha)

Also, in our case, we didn't have any other options, no families nearby, rent kept increasing and we wanted to have a place we called our own finally.

The other thing is when we bought we didn't think of our next housing ladder, we bought in an area we want to stay for a long time.

@Onaladder same here, we hope to move abroad at a later stage when we are older but having DC here might make things harder as we might want to be close to family then. Can I ask, do you also have DC and did you end up buying a flat or a house?

We don't have children yet and we bought a flat. We need to be quite central unfortunately. We prioritized location and garden and thought this flat will work for us for at at least until our retirement (even with one child, with two may be tough but too old for two anyway...)

Some people may want a house further away, the important thing is to find a place that you can stay long term now, coming into the ladder later.

If you have family in London and want to be close, that's tough...in that case, maybe find a place near family that you can see yourself live long term?

@Onaladder Thank you. No I mean DC will be in London so we might want to stay close in that sense. We have family abroad so I don't necessarily see the UK as my forever home; in an ideal world I'd like a home in two places, London and my home town abroad. That might be too ambitious though!

How good your pensions are will dictate whether you can get a 25-30 year term, which will dictate your multiple. So that's likely to be the key thing.

Without a defined benefit pension, you're probably looking at a 20 year term, max.

Have you spoken to a broker?

On your salaries you should be able to borrow about £550k, how big is your deposit?

You’ll be able to get a 3-4 bed house if you look southeast, or a 3 bedroom flat pretty much anywhere for £600-650k. You have plenty of options.

Out budget is restricted due to childcare costs and so are the possibilities in terms of location as we need to be within a relatively short commute otherwise we won’t get to school gate on time. We have options, but not many and mainly for modest 2 bed places around here

Where are you commuting into?