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Original poster

Quick survey re Mortgages

60 replies

Skribble · 13/09/2006 23:09

How do you afford your present mortgage?

Was it a 95% mortgage based purely on your wages? Joint or single wage?

Did you save up specially to put down a bigger deposit?

Did you make enough profit on your last hose sale to allow a bigger budget this time?

Have you got family money? Like inheritance or Mum and Dad helping out?

Why do I ask? Well DH is now on what I think is a decent wage, but we still can afford a decent mortgage, we will make about £10,000 on this house which will help. Just wonder how do people afford all these houses at £250,000 upwards. We live in a fairly cheap area compared to some areas in England.

Go on, how do you afford where you live???

OP posts:

HRHQueenOfQuotes · 13/09/2006 23:14

It's a single mortgage based on DH's wages only. At that time his salary was around £16k (plus they included tax credits as part of his income). We put down a 10k deposit on this house (using money made on the old one.....the rest of the money we'd made paid off a loan that we'd used to do the house up to sell it LOL).

We got a mortgage for 110k for this house (more than most would offer us.......but he went directly through his bank and they sat down and looked at his incomings and outgoings closesly with him and then agreed on what he could afford to pay......and worked from there).

beckybrastraps · 13/09/2006 23:14

We are hoping to move house soon. We will make some money on the house we are selling, and borrow more. We will be increasing our term back up to 25 years from 15 and borrowing about 3 times dh's salary (currently we borrow about twice his salary). I'm having kittens about it, but at the moment we live in a two bedroom starter home with two growing children and we NEED more room!

KBear · 13/09/2006 23:15

We made £100,000 in ten years on our house so were able to put a big deposit on the next one but have a fairly hefty mortgage too. Could never afford to buy this house as first time buyers, the multiples of our salaries don't add up. Don't know how people do it. SE London.

KBear · 13/09/2006 23:16

Oh and we started again with a 25 year mortgage! Lots of friends of ours have had to do the same.

CountessDracula · 13/09/2006 23:18

we have moved a lot so have plenty of equity, and we both have good salaries

anteater · 13/09/2006 23:19

Bought in 96. I saved for 6 years for a 1/3 deposit. Rented flat with partner. The house we bought was a tip, only one firm would offer a mortgage. 10 years later the mortgage seems very low.. but times have been hard.

merrily · 13/09/2006 23:20

We are in the process of buying a small house in London. I am a SAHM and my DH earns a reasonable wage. We can only afford to buy the house because my DH bought his first flat back in 1995 when house prices in East London were very low, and subsequently made a substantial profit when he sold it in 2002. We will make a little bit more on the flat we currently share, plus a bit of money coming from DH's mum, so we will have 50% deposit to put down on the new house. We still need a mortgage of 4.5 times my DH's salary though. It's a bit of stretch, but we're hoping with some serious economising we will manage! If not, then it's back to work for me!!

beckybrastraps · 13/09/2006 23:21

We moved from up north to down south, and it was a complete nightmare. Hence the tiny starter home at our advanced age. I don't think we could do it now.

anteater · 13/09/2006 23:24

should say that we missed a great place last month, could not believe what we were offered for our place..
Not sure how long these advanced prices can last..

Gobbledigook · 13/09/2006 23:26

Moved recently.

We had a deposit for just under half the purchase price from sale of previous house. Our first good move was to go from London to here - we made £52K in about 18 months of living in our first flat in London (late 90s).

Still have a large mortgage though which is based on both mine and dh's salary.

We live in quite an expensive area and FTBs would struggle here.

Gobbledigook · 13/09/2006 23:27

Anteater - why would anyone want to move from your house?! It's stunning!

Gobbledigook · 13/09/2006 23:28

Hmm, my post isn't clear. We sold first flat in London to move up here, lived in another house here for about 4.5 yrs, then bought current house.

Quootiepie · 13/09/2006 23:33

Got given £25,000 to put down by mum, and have an 85% mortgage on DHs wage. My guess about people affording all these houses is that before it was easier to buy a big house - MIL paid £20,000 for theirs 23 years ago, someone across the road paid £60,000 10 years ago... now worth £230,000-£250,000. Its soooooooo hard to climb up nowadays. Wages dont seem to go up in line with house prices...

Original poster

Skribble · 13/09/2006 23:33

I think I will have to sell a child before we can afford a bigger house. Thing is PIL would happily buy our house but we can't sell until we find somewhere to go. Willing to buy a plot of land and live in a static until we build our own but we can't even afford a plot.

OP posts:

Original poster

Skribble · 13/09/2006 23:36

3 times DH's wage plus deposit would mean houses about £85. Not much on the market for that aprt from really bad run down areas. I want a detached rural property (doesn't have to be huge) not much chance of that.

OP posts:

CristinaTheAstonishing · 13/09/2006 23:52

Skribble - rather than a static, how about a yurt? Your kids would love it.

I have no idea how people afford huge mortgages either.

Original poster

Skribble · 14/09/2006 00:05

Perhaps I can milk yakks and weave lentils too . Perhaps not. I would love to have to statics a day van and a night van at right angles next to each other. All mod cons of course. PIL lived in a static for about 6yrs and loved it, vistors were always surprised that she had a 3 piece suite, full size cooker and fridge and a log burning fire. Late 60's early 70's.

OP posts:

holidaysoon · 14/09/2006 00:40

By all accounts (well recent media) increasing numbers of people are affording it by means of long term and interest only mortgages together with sharing. Prices here are currently climbing at 10,000 pounds a month (small 3 bed terrace) which by my rough sums means that you need to work for about 10 extra months with no outgoings to be able to afford 3.5 months of mortgage increase or just be nuts to agree to pay over the ods. Those who have family money, moving (in the past) from S to N or realised large profits on places thay allready had are laughing those who don't are desperate (and presumably hoping for a crash) or depending on which side of the fence you're on.

Yorkiegirl · 14/09/2006 06:42

Message withdrawn

anteater · 14/09/2006 09:53

Our local plan allows on a tiny few new electric gate houses, but no restriction on 'affordable housing' whatever that is..
Saying that if the council can noy sort basics in Town, ie parking and toilets what chance have they got behaving like social engineers??

DontCallMeMalImMaloryTowers · 14/09/2006 09:56

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

CountessDracula · 14/09/2006 11:20

I think you are right about the bigger houses being more affordable in the past. DH grew up in a house in Richmond that would probably go for about £6 million today and it cost them bugger all.

DH always cites a family they knew at the time - they lived in a house in Putney that would be about £1 million (so average 5 bed terraced house really!) The father was a schoolteacher and the mother was a SAHM, they had 4 kids. Nowadays I bet the salary of a teacher wouldn't buy a one bedroom flat in Putney!

It's not fair is it?

Bozza · 14/09/2006 11:34

How do you afford your present mortgage? By DH working full time and me part time

Was it a 95% mortgage based purely on your wages? Joint or single wage? It was a 90% 21 year mortgage 6 years ago based on joint salaries - but I was 14 weeks pregnant at the time and have not worked full time since!

Did you save up specially to put down a bigger deposit? Yes plus we had about 6K equity from our first house which we were not in long. But wanted to put down 10% in order to get better mortgage deals.

Did you make enough profit on your last hose sale to allow a bigger budget this time? No but we had significantly increased our income in that time. DH by more than 100%.

Have you got family money? Like inheritance or Mum and Dad helping out? £1K from DH's nan went into the deposit - not much in the scheme of things but certainly helped us hit that 10% deposit when we needed to.

Go on, how do you afford where you live??? We live in a 4 bed detached modern box. It is worth 250K ish but we bought it for 110K 6 years ago with a 99K mortgage. Also we live in a relatively cheap area. We stretched ourselves 6 years ago and I wouldn't want to increase it at all now because of me only working 3 days and £500/month childcare being a big dint in our finances.

portonovo · 14/09/2006 11:35

We have had our mortgage for 16 years now, so prices much lower.

Having said that, we still needed both of us working full-time to get our first house. That was 95% mortgage on joint salary. And when I stopped working it meant quite a modest lifestyle, but luckily we're fairly frugal anyway.

We moved house 9 years ago - didn't make any profit at all because we'd bought near the top of the market 7 years earlier, and sold for exactly the same as we'd paid. But we didn't increase the mortgage at all - got slightly bigger house in slightly lower-cost area 40 miles away. Best thing we ever did.

We hate mortgage or other debt so our priority is not climbing property ladder but paying off the mortgage, hence we overpay each month.

foxinsocks · 14/09/2006 11:36

Was it a 95% mortgage based purely on your wages? Joint or single wage?

Joint but I have stopped working now. Deposit was both dh and my savings that we had pre kids and pre going out with each other!

Did you save up specially to put down a bigger deposit?

Did you make enough profit on your last hose sale to allow a bigger budget this time?

Have you got family money? Like inheritance or Mum and Dad helping out?

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