If your house is worth quite a bit of money, how did you afford to buy it?

[hazelnutlatte]

I'm genuinely interested here, and also green with envy! Me and dp are both professionals, in our thirties, and we have bought a house, but it's a bog standard semi in the least desirable part of town. Mostly I'm happy with this, we have a roof over our heads and no financial difficulties, so this is not a thread to complain, I'm just interested in how people find themselves living in lovely big houses on tree lined streets!
I'm in an NCT group and we have recently started meeting in each others houses. They all have seemingly normal jobs and are in their late twenties / early thirties. But every one of them lives in an amazing house, which must be worth triple the value of mine.
Whilst it would be rude to ask them how they afforded their houses, hopefully it's less rude to ask on here!

watching with nosey interest...

Big mortgage when could get them, luck with either deposit saved or gifted or bought at right time of market?

Bought early, have regularly added value, big mortgage no holidays

Luck! Managed to buy somewhere that needed lots of work and this was when we both had decent jobs, no loans or kids! Wouldn't be the same story now!!!

Bought when we were young and have always overpaid the mortgage, even when I was on mat leave. Came above nice cars and holidays for us.

Big mortgage, saved for as big a deposit as we could manage, offset mortgage so that as our savings increase in future our mortgage decreases, bought carefully when we were in our 20's and added value.

Some of it was luck. We first bought in 1994 just before house prices started going up. We also lived frugally, with second hand furniture and no car.

Bought first house in mid 20s, extended and refurbed to add value, sold and bought similar in nicer area, moved to less expensive region and got big mortgage, now in the big victorian house I dreamt of, but no spare money for other stuff.

My MIL made my DH buy a flat when he was 19 in what was then a very undesirable part of London.
When we got together we managed to pay off the mortgage with a lot of hard work and few luxuries. We then bought a wreck in the same suburb (and hung onto the flat which we rented out) then the property boom happened and we watched our properties triple in value.
For us it was a mixture of luck, being in the right place at the right time and prioritising paying off that first mortgage.

In my case bought a flat from a developer when I was 22 on basis of first job. Didn't rent as it was cheaper to buy. Deposit of 5% paid for out of savings (which I know I was lucky to have when I was 22). Good price as devloper had sold out the development apart from our flat and therefore anything we paid was stright profit, Interest only mortgage, rather than repayment. Used money saved by not having repayment mortgage for investments.

Invested money wisely while living in flat, inherited a little, bought 3 bed victorian terrace in prime location 4 years later, borrowed quite a bit more from bank and small amount from parents. Again IO mortgage, again used money saved by not having repayment mortgage for investments. Sold up investments 1-6 months before lehman brothers collapsed (luck not judgement) in order to buy forever house.

8 years later increased deposit thanks to some inheritances and good investments, general nervousness about housing market meant all of a sudden prime property was not selling for ridiculous prices, bit bullett and took out new mortgage without selling old house. Bought 4/5 bed semi in prime location had 2 mortgages (1 on old house 1 on new house - to turn us into serious contenders as buyer for house) when banks would still just about lend to people with equity and steady jobs.

Sold victorian semi 9 months later not at top of market or anything near top of market but beginning to feel wary about level of debt. Reduced mortgage on house we now live in. Could possibly pay it off in full but still not sure its better than investing money in other vehicles than property - which I don't udnerstand as much as shares, bonds, and various other financial products. Some in bank as cushion against possible loss

Overall managed because husband is very shrewd with investments, good and leverage on savings/investments (we always make more with money than banks chareg in interest - high risk but high reward if it works). We earn a lot between us now, but even when we didn't always looked at savings, and how to make money and investments, had nerve to buy when no-one else wanted to, plus some luck with a little parental help and then some inheritance at good times.

Both DH & I worked full-time in reasonable jobs. No DC until late thirties. I have sinced worked p/t and we may now downsize to go mortgage free.

Bought young with 100% mortgage during the boom, made 1000s in the rising market to put down as a deposit on current house which is not amazing but a lot more than we could afford if we were first time buyers now.

So buying before house prices went bonkers seems to be part of it, but not the whole story. Those with big mortgages - did this then mean you struggled to afford other things you needed?
Has anyone bought in recent years, if so how did you afford a big deposit? We saved for ages but were only able to afford a deposit when dp got a redundancy payout.

I got here by losing loved ones and beneffiting from the London property market. DH and I both work in teh public sector but have a gorgeous London home. I would, however trade it all for living parents.

If you want details here they are:

As a child: lost my Dad, inherited £12k in mid 80s. Mum invested it for me by using it as part of downpayment on small home for her and I. She is a teacher so not rich.
2002: mum sells family home, gives me my percentage, the £12k has turned to £30k, I use that to buy a £200k flat jointly with a friend by best friend. Flat is in London.
2004: sell flat for £250k, split profit with friend, now have a £55k downpayment. Move in with DH, due to luck in london property boom in late 90s he has made £120k on his first flat which he originally had a £25k downpayment on. This means that together we have a £200k downpayment, we get a massive mortgage which we only get due to large downpayment (it is much more than 3x our combined salary). We buy a £500k house.
2010: Sell the £500k house for £780k. Mum dies. As an only child I am sole inheritor of her £350k estate. DH and I have also saved £55k. We now have £900k downpayment to use on next house. We take on HUGE mortgage and buy a £1.3 million forever home. We can't afford to do much due to mortgage but we love our home and garden.

Bought a practically derelict flat as soon as I finished University borrowing the deposit off my mum and then taking out a loan to pay her back once the flat was bought. I was mid 20s and never wanted to share with strangers ever again!

I worked on it constantly with my dad, sold it and bought a small house with my DH that needed lots of work, then another and then bought the one I'm in now further out of town which also needed huge amounts of work - we have never bought a house that was done up. We then extended this house a lot but releatively cheaply, DH and I are in the construction industry so called a few favours. We did this before children came on the scene, as much as I love them they have drained us financially!

Saying all that we still have a huge mortgage, never go on holiday anywhere 'nice', don't buy a lot of clothes and rarely go out. Also drive a 6 year old car bought second hand.

We just have a massive mortgage. We are mid thirties too, with one child and I am pg with our second.

Bought property number one when you could get a 95% mortgage at a low interest rate. Sold that for half as much again as we paid for it, right at the top of the market.

Bought property number two at the top of the market, Sold it three years later for what we paid for it.

Bought property number 3 a couple of years ago. It is our forever house. We have an offset mortgage, and have about 30% equity in the house.

We've never been given anything by parents/inheritance or the like, and the only time we've ever borrowed money is in a mortgage. We are fortunate to earn decent money - DH works full time and some, and I work part time. We've made some profitable investments, but others have been poor decisions eg buying shares in Lloyds TSB.

It might become clearer how people can afford what they do have, if you assess what they don't have: less luxuries in other areas, less kids, early loss of parents or other family, less free time as they work longer hours, less savings/financial security etc.

Bought our current house for £500k in the late nineties with a mortgage of £380k. Paid it off over 10 years by scrimping and saving, house now worth over a million, so all that's equity.

Looking further back, though, dh and I separately bought houses when we were 21 and 22 respectively as it was easy to do that in the mid eighties.

At the time that we were scrimping I wasn't overly happy, I couldn't afford decent haircuts and drove an old banger and we lived v v cheaply but I'm glad we did it that way because we now have a lot of spare cash each year, having paid £60k per annum in mortgage payments. We still don't blow money on stuff, as we're used to living reasonably modestly with occasional blowouts.

a) by being old enough to have bought first home before the boom (in 1994)
b) by selling at the peak and taking on biggest mortgage we could afford (in 2006)
c) by both having full time jobs and earnings slightly above national average.
d) oh, and by not having children.

We've got a lovely home in a ravishing part of Devon. But we are just two or three pay cheques away from homelessness, like a lot of people.

Ciske, you have a good point! A big house does not necessarily mean a happy family. It doesn't stop me from browsing rightmove though!
I do wonder now why on earth I lived in rented houses for 10 years though, I suppose buying seemed like too much effort and commitment at the time.

We saved for our deposit for the 10years that we lived abroad, in a third world country so life was cheap and we saved a lot and did not go on many hols.

Bit extreme though and not for everyone!

We loved our time abroad.

Also, we started out very poor and working hard so were not in the habit of eating out a lot, buying clothes or going on trips.

Lots of choices and decisions adding up in the end. And luck, as we bought in 2008 just when recession hit and were able to negotiate 20% off the price.

We started out mid 90's by using the money my Dad gave me to buy a car to buy a small flat instead (didn't need much of a deposit in those days but interest rates were high) and rented 2 rooms out to start paying mortgage off. I remember friends scoffing that I'd used the money to buy a flat instead of a car but it was the best thing I did. We got on to the property ladder when it was affordable and most of them left it longer and ended up paying more for their first house. Then we moved twice after that- both times we bought somewhere needing done up in slightly less popular areas and were really picky about trying to maximise our profit.
I think the main thing was we overpaid on our mortgage and any extra money went to pay off the mortgage -we didn't have big cars or fancy holidays or expensive tastes in general -we are very boring. It meant when we moved last year we could buy a bigger house and have an average size mortgage.
God I sound so dull.

The property boom did benefit a lot of people. I know 2 people who made £150k each on modest flats in London. Not me unfortunately. I think this counts for a lot of it. I'm sure it would become apparent if you rewatched old Phil and Kirsties .

Hazelnutte- I also rented for 10 years in London. It cost me £110,000 in total. I bought once I did this sum! But then I didn't earn enough to buy when the boom was on...