Buying a house

[Annamaria14]

Hello,

I inherited a sum of 100,000 2 years ago. I know that I want I buy a house with it.

However, the issue is that I have become asolutely paralysed with fear from making any choice.

Small houses in my area are 80,000 to 90,000 , so it would be nearly all of it gone when I buy.

I know I am lucky to be able to buy a house, but I seem unable to get over my fear to do it!

I keep being afraid because it is such a big cash purchase - it is all coming from my money, I don't want to waste my dead parent's money - who worked their whole life to earn it - and I am afraid of making a mistake.

I started the process of buying a house and I pulled out after conveyancing, so I still hd to pay the solicitor 500 pounds. I don't want to fo that again! I need to buy somewhere, It is two year's on and I am staying in a friend's house at the moment.

Does anyone have any advice?

Are you in a position to secure a small mortgage that way you wont use all of the money and have some saving for repairs/ emergencies. That may ease your anxiety.

I agree with getting a small mortgage. When this lockdown is lifted it will probably be a good time to think about buying.

I think you just need to take the plunge - property is a very safe and responsible investment on the whole and providing you use a reputable firm of surveyors, solicitors etc and insure it properly, the chances of you 'losing' the money are slim (and an equal or greater level of risk would apply to other investments).

I am guessing what you are really worried about though is buying a house you ultimately end up not liking/not working for you and having to sell up and move again? I get that fear and of course it's not ideal to have to pay costs and taxes on selling again if it does transpire, but it's hardly a huge disaster either, most people do move at least a few times before settling in their 'forever' home (ick!). I think this is a small concern providing you aren't a hugely fussy/sensitive person about where you live. Personally I have lived in lots of less than ideal places over the years (too small, noisy setting, bad neighbours, unfashionable/rough neighbourhood) and the prospect of having to shell out £££ to move really focuses the mind on what is a minor irritation and what is something you really, really want to change (and if the latter, gives you excellent motivation to save up towards the next move!). You can always put aside the money you save on mortgage/rent into accessible savings towards a possible future move and that way it will be 'your' money rather than your DF's, if that helps you? And agree it might be a good idea to get a small mortgage (you can get very good deals on a low LTV rate especially if you have a good income and credit rating) and keep some of the money in other investment routes e.g. pension, ISAs, bonds or managed funds as well as keeping an accessible 'rainy day' pot for things like essential/emergency house maintenance, this is another way of minimising your risk on the house purchase...

@maxelly I realised what my problem is aswell. I was originally very excited about buying a house, I inherited the money from my dead father (my parents were divorced).

When I started looking at houses, my mother kept ringing me warning me about buying houses with big mistakes in it, that if I bought the wrong house it would be a disaster and a terrible thing. She kept ringing and ringing with potential disasters about buying propert, and all the problems about buying houses. She knocked the whole joy out of buying a house out of me, and put fear into me about buying a house.

Now , I think about it , she was probably jealous, and she has form , she has knocked the joy out of a lot of happy times in my life.

I am just going to go ahead and buy a house, and limit contact with her

Thank you very much for the advice @maxelly. That was very helpful

I was exactly the same. Finally took the plunge last year and no regrets at all.

No worries, you go for it . I have the odd person in my life too that has a special gift for finding the negative side to the happiest events and/or prophesying disaster and doom from the most innocuous of situations. You just have to tune them out, it must be such a horrible and depressing way to live, perhaps it is a defence mechanism (don't ever get your hopes up, they might be dashed) or perhaps like you say it's jealousy or fear/low self-esteem, a line of thinking that goes that if you as their relative/friend become happy, successful and fulfilled you'll never want to be with them again because they're such a loser, so they have to put you down all the time, ironically enough that only pushes you further away of course!

Thanks @Lampan! That is so great to hear! What pushed you forward in the end?

It was a few things but mainly a colleague/friend having a word with me about how I should do it, how nobody could really know what would happen with the housing market (at the time Brexit was the big issue), how people will always need to buy and sell houses, and how if I ever suddenly needed or wanted my money back I would just have to sell up. Now I have my house I don’t think about the money. Really it’s not much different being spent on a house or house deposit than just in the bank. And finding the right house helped make my decision too.
Yes a house could always lose value but if you are buying somewhere to live for the foreseeable future that’s the main thing, not how the value might fluctuate.

Thanks for the input @lampan

I felt like this when we bought our first house, and also more recently when I inherited a sum of money I felt an awful pressure (that I put on myself) to make sure I spent the money wisely.

Do you have a partner, close friend, other family member or colleague that could act as your sounding board, someone to talk through pros and cons? It can be a huge help to talk these decisions through with someone who doesn't have their own agenda.

Good luck when you take the plunge OP

Its quite hard to lose money on a house if you buy something and are prepared to stay medium to long term.

We bought our first house not long before the 2008 house price crash. So we paid top price for it. Within 6 months the boiler failed. We had done everything right, got it checked before moving in etc, just one of the those things - big bill. We also had to install double glazing as the heating was costing us a lot. And then we redid the kitchen. Unsurprisingly with the crash we made a small loss overall on that house after all the money we put in. But we were paying someone else's mortgage for 7 years not our own. And when we moved, the crash had affected everyone else's house prices too, so we got a good deal.

Another 7 years on, we couldn't afford to buy this house now. We missed out on all the first time buyer incentives and the cheap prices after the crash, but we benefited from another quirk just as we bought this house, as we bought it at the £250,000 stamp duty threshold which artificially held the price down. Thats gone now. (Rightly). Incidentally the boiler in this house died a few months after we moved in too!

There is no perfect time to buy because you can't predict the future, and unless you are a multi-millionaire, no perfect house. Just go for it!

We were paying our own mortgage now someone else's!

And we didn't have the horrendous landlord.