What position were you in by your 28th birthday?

[RemainsOfTheDay]

I have just read an article that says the average first time house buyer is 29.

So in a few months I will have a year to go before I reach 'the average'.

DH and I don't have a mortgage. We are saving but have nowhere near what we need for a deposit.

We don't have any debt though.

Are we really behind?! Or does the average just included all the people that have massive parental help.

I think that the average is actually made up of the 1000's of 20 somethings who managed to get 100% and more mortgages.

Now that these are no longer available I think that the average age will shoot up over the next few years.

I wouldn't worry at all about it.

A better one than I am now at 35!

at 28 I was married wit 2 children, nice house, good job. Now at 35, divorced with 4 children, tiny rented house and a job i do becasue it pays the bills.

How depressing does that sound? its not too bad really but not how i envisaged things to be.

I am 28 next month and me and DH have 40k equity in our current place, taking in to account current price dip however it is a 2 bed flat we have (soon to be) 2 kids in and a bit of a damp /condensation problem in the bedrooms we cant afford to fix.

My aim for the next ew years is to save up to get air bricks put in and do up the bathroom. I do worry that it wont sell as nothing is at minute but I want to be in my forever house by 32 so we can have baby no 3.

I didnt have much parental help except when I wa 18 in 2003 my mum paid a years council tax for me which at the time was about 800 pounds. The rest I saved myself and my nan gave me 700 quid that she had saved from being little. Things were different then though and it is much harder to buy now.

Missionary

Seriously, we bought our first house 15 months ago. I was nearly 30, DH was nearly 29 and we'd been together 12 years at that point. It's a tiny, run down, 2 up, 2 down doer upper with less of the doer uppering and more sort of plastering over the cracks and hoping for the best. No debt, never have had. We save all our spare cash and try and do a job a quarter. A job equals doing the bathroom or doing the kitchen or painting downstairs. What happens in reality is that we save enough to buy a basic bathroom suite then the car dies and we have to pay to fix it so the bathroom gets put back. So we start again and then the washing machine blows up. Or the boiler implodes. Or the damp course needs replacing. And on and on and on and on. Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier to have continued renting for another 12 years.

I thought the average first time buyer was older than that. They mentioned it on the radio a while ago.

28th?
I had owned my own house.
I bought it in 1999 and sold it in 2004 (so around the time of my 28th birthday!)
I was rather rich, because of the massive increase in house prices.
I put that all into my business though, and now I have no spare money.

sorry meant to add I bought in 2003 as well

We don't have a 100% mortgage btw. They tried to get us to take one out in 2007 ish during the boom. We carried on saving and decided we wouldn't do it without a deposit. Definitely the right decision. We have saved every penny for years. It doesn't amount to much but I feel better knowing we waited to have a 15% deposit.

I'd just bought my first house, but was lucky enough to benefit from cheap property in London, plus an inheritance, so totally appreciate my good luck. I was much better off than I am now, had a tiny mortgage, lots of lovely new clothes, loads of weekends/holidays abroad with DP and no children. Happy days!

Now I am much older, still with DP, a stone heavier (and the rest), with one child, bigger house but bigger mortgage, and a wardrobe full of beautiful size 8-10 clothes that are too small for me but I can't bear to give up on them just in case.

I didn't have a house. In fact i didn't even have a coffee table.

One saucepan (only for pasta), few plates and few mugs. A duvet, 2 bed linen and 4 towels.
My pocessions were clothes and 100s cds and books.

I was not married and had no children.

I bought my first flat when I was 25 with a 95% mortgage and a deposit of £4000. We sold that after 5 years and a 100% price increase.

Can't see how I could do the same now without help in raising the deposit which would (on the same flat) be about £13,000 and over £30,000 for a 14% deposit.

at 28 i had 1 child and just movedinto 2nd house - it was a different era back then when prices were real.

We've decided not to get a mortgage until we have 25% for a deposit.

So banking on their not being a massive price increase in the next couple of years

At 28 I had no kids and was renting. By 30 I had bought my first flat. I think that the average age for getting on the property ladder is now nearer 40 with the amount of deposit needed if the person is having to save it all themselves.

I had two children, a job and a house with a huge mortgage on

I now, at 34, have 3 children, a job and house which I rent

I am really not that bothered that I had a house and now I don't have a house, my Mother is though but really it's not unusual at all

Bought my first flat in London as a single Mum at 23 BUT that was because I got my Gran to give me 50% of what my inheritance would be in advance (which helped with tax) which I used as the deposit and then got parents and grandparents to act as guarantors on the mortgage. Otherwise lord knows how I would have managed it.

Since then divorce(s), having periods of renting, getting no child maintenance (ex DH and father of DS1 did a runner to France so CSA couldn't get their hands on him), 7 years of private school fees, getting pregnant before I qualified for maternity leave etc has meant I have in equity about 1/3 what I should have aged 38 but hey, at least I have some, and what I have always been super vigilant about is paying into work/private pensions, rather than relying on property to provide when I'm retired.

Plus I've spent it on things that matter. For me, one of those has been holidays. DS1 and I have been alone for long periods and our globetrotting has been fantastic - expensive, but worth it, and got me through some difficult teenage periods with him!

I'm 28 in a few months, I have 2 mortgages, one is small on a house I rent out, that has equity in but more than enough problems - It is currently ruined and the cost of putting it back together has wiped out my savings (which were substantial for my age) and left me in debt for the first time.

My other mortgage is on our home and I'm now in £70k neg equity!

Two years ago I had 2 mortgages with equity and a lot of money in the bank, times change fast, and if I didn't already have the mortgages I would be avoiding going down this route for the time being and focusing on saving up as much money as I could to get on the property ladder when things have settled down.

There will not be a massive increase in house prices in the next few years - not for many years IMO.

Prices shot up because of the availability of mortgages - especially 100% mortgages and intrest only etc. They are not easy to come by now and they are not going to go back to those lending ways.

If I were you I would be focusing on stashing money away untill you are confident that you can afford a house you want, and want to stay in.

At 28 I had a two bed flat to myself and had mostly furnished and redecorated it with a lot of parental help (both practical and financial). I had also just inherited £5k when a grandparent died, which I put straight into the mortgage as I renewed it to an absolutely rock bottom lifetime tracker rate (2007 crazy times). I had paid off my student loans with my first few paychecks three years earlier - lived at home with parents for a while and they wouldn't have me pay even notional rent/board. I had however lived completely within my means for the previous 7 years on £500 a month they gave me as an undergraduate (to include rent) and about the same from a postgraduate salary.

DH is 5 years older than me but when he was 28 he was building up savings in ISAs while renting with friends - moving very frequently and accumulating almost no 'stuff'. No parental help. No student loans as he had been almost continuously employed after trying a year of university.

Nearly four years together, we have a house and a (rented out) flat and have (theoretical estimate) about 30% equity averaged between the two. Mortgages are our only debt and we have comfortable savings. We know we are very lucky.

Living in a one bedrom flat that I had a mortgage one and had lived in for 5 years but had negativie equity.

Two years on, had saved up neg equity, sold flat, bought 3 bedroom house and had a 1 year old son.

I was a woman of straw at 28, I had nothing. Rented a room in a shared house, no car, no mobile, no computer... and no debt though!

Wasn't until age 34 when I took out a mortgage (shared ownership property, no chance otherwise at the time).

And then I moved up the housing ladder a bit more over the next four years due to inheritance and buying a house with someone else.

I think there was a thread on here not long ago that said the average age for a ftb was 38 now.

I should point out I had help from parents with my first house (DF stood as guarentor - I was 19, and loaned me the deposit).

And my bank manager fiddled helped me get the mortgage on my family home in 2008 just before the crash!

I was moving in with a boyfriend and had been living in a bed-sit alone after a couple of years housesharing in London.

My dad and grandmother died in the next couple of years so I was then able to afford a deposit for a house. Had that not happened I would still be living in rented places.

At 28 I was single, in my second house, earning a pretty decent salary and had disposable income. Those were the days.

When I was 28 I was in massive debt. I'd had to take out a 16 grand consolidation loan the year before to try and fix my mess (I'd done a degree for which I owed money, then a masters for which I had to take out a 12k loan in itself, and I'd just let myself sink futher into it i.e. buried head in sand)

I'd paid it off by the time I was 32, which is the year I bought a house for the first time (and the year I had my DS1) with DH.

I/We wouldnt have been able to get a mortage without his deposit and his earnings though.

28 this year due 3rd baby have been married 6 years, about to embark upon an extension to turn out two bed into a four bed. No savings but also no debt except mortgage, no parental help.