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!

Purchased 1st house at 22. DH had equity in his flat of £50K and savings of £50K I had inherited £15K
£100K deposit on £280K house. Saved, and scrimped, mortgage was a killer.
8 years later sold house for £375K and brought house that was huge, lovely but a wreck! for £495K. At that point had a £220k mortgage. Have spent 10 years in this property, have done everything to it, added bits, taken bits away, wiring plumbing etc etc. After my FIL and MIL died we inherited enough to pay off mortgage....just. Recently had house valued at a Gob smacking 1.5 million! but I dread to think how much we have spent on it over the years. It's home, we love it.

I don't have a huge property, just a regular Victorian terrace on a tree lined road. Bought my first flat in a third world country with 5% deposit (equals £1300), the flat tripled in value in 3 years time and after selling and repaying the flat mortgage, I was left with >30% deposit for a decent home in London.
We are family of 4 working professionals with two small DC.

By the way, I also wondered the same question, but realised so many people bought before the price boom.

I wouldn't want to declare our house as amazing but we chose to make a leap from 2 bed flat to 4 bed house (tree lined street!) to avoid having to move again for a long time!!

I bought my first flat at 21 (2002) with a 100% mortgage (plus 10 grand car loan squillions of credit card debts, student loans and max overdraft). By 26 I had cleared most debts and got a flexible mortgage which absorbed some. I met my (now) DH who had lived very frugally and put some savings into my mortgage.

After we got married (2009) we sold the flat and bought out 4 bed house (2010) by the sea :) we've kept the flexible mortgage and had some help from his family with the cash needed for deposit/moving costs. I bought my flat for 50 grand, it was valued at 100 grand 3 years later but sold at 85 so wasn't the biggest boom time but obviously did ok!

The only debt we have now is the mortgage and although this house needs bits doing to it we are doing it slowly must get carpet out of toilet the flexible mortgage really helps as we can overpay but then take it back for home improvements when needed. As we intend to stay here for a long time its nice doing things to it that we want - not always thinking about whether it would affect the value!

I have always worked in the public sector although now working mostly for myself and by DH has a crappy job as he is still studying.

Luck, location and when they first got on the property ladder. DH and I left it late because of PhDs.

Having a mortgage agreed before the crash makes a difference. I know several people on interest only mortgages who are waiting for inheritances (from their still living and active parents!). I have a similar mortgage which is capped at 1.5% above base rate for the entire lifetime of the mortgage (another 15 years or so). So currently a £500k mortgage costs around £625 per month for some people - much cheaper than rental prices.

We could have afforded a bigger house in terms of monthly payments, but when we bought the banks would only lend 2.5 x joint salary. (Of course, if we had been able to borrow more, as I sometimes wish, so could everyone else and house prices would just have been higher.) If we'd saved for longer to get a bigger deposit, I don't think that would have helped as house prices at the time rose faster than we could have saved.

So, we are both professionals with an unassuming semi.

We haven't been bothered about moving again as we'd rather do other things with our money now, so we will maybe be in our semi for the rest of our lives.

1. given some money by parents

2. work in City jobs, so high salaries

3. lived with parents for 3 years while first working to save up, instead of renting

4. due to 1 to 3 above - were able to buy first properties a few years ago (2002 and 2005), so benefited from last few years of the boom and built up fair bit of equity

5. also built up equity by being frugal and paying off the mortgages on our first properties

6. took on large-ish mortgage. (though not very large relative to our earnings).

I think the main factors financially are 1) 2) and 4).

I was just thinking about this the other day - someone else was asking about it on a Location Location Location thread.

Of the people I know who have expensive houses without obviously having the means to pay for them:

• One person was orphaned young, and inherited a large sum of money.
• Two people had families who had family businesses which were sold, giving them effectively an 'inheritance' quite young in life.
• One inherited money but lives extremely frugally - unmarried, no kids, no car, no holidays, etc.
• One is the only grandson of a millionairess and a gigolo who she picked up on the Riviera, and the expensive house (and his public school education) was the entire remains of the family millions after the gigolo had run through all the rest of it. My friend keeps this story very quiet...

I'm not sure that you'd necessarily want any of those life stories, apart from the family businesses.

Both bought separate houses/flats when they were 'cheap', sold at good prices, bought somewhere with huge mortgage (part repayment, part interest only) and on a relocation deal so didn't pay moving costs, stamp duty, solicitor etc so had an extra ~30K in the pot. Both earning a fair whack throughout this. Now we have remortgaged to all repayment - but it was a few years of sailing close to the wind at various points.

Most people I know: parents downsized after retirement, gave children large deposit, and/or grandparent died at a convenient moment. Plus buying a small place before prices went bonkers.

In my case, small contributions from 2 and 3 above but then bought large semi-derelict house and have lived in it while doing it up for 6 years now - think Beeny's Restoration Nightmare only a semi in south London, less poshness, and less-blonde kids...

Similarly, went to a school reunion (was boarding school), and after an hour there was a split between people who 'of course' were sending their children private, almost all paid for mainly by their parents, and the rest of us who weren't doing at least for primary as we don't currently have the money.

Us- gains from London property prices - made 50% gain on first property, 30% on second and third. Then moved out to where properly is a little cheaper, and earn quite a lot so can take on decent mortgage. Similar story for many of our friends; if you bought in London 15 years ago as many did, you generally did well!

1st house - 1999 bought with 95% mortgage. Sold for 100% profit in 2005.
2nd house - 2001 bought with 90% mortgage. Sold for 100% profit in 2005.
3rd house - 2005 bought with 70% mortgage. Sold for 30% profit in 2011.
4th house - 2012 bought with 30% mortgage.

I'm 40 and didn't buy particularly early in life (was 27 back in 1999 but it was definitely boom time since we nearly got gazumped even at asking price back then on a £100K ex LA house). No inheritance or parental handouts and we've never extended ourselves mortgage wise (always less than 2x joint salaries) but we did have relatively high salaries and no children until early/mid 30's by which time we had discovered the offset mortgage on house no.2 and was paying down the mortgage with my entire salary. Having modest expenditure/lifestyle relative to income helps. Not quite in the million+ house value stakes. All houses outside of London.

Sorry - 3rd house was bought in 2005 with approx 35% mortgage not a 70% one! By the time we sold it last year, we could have paid off the mortgage on it in theory (due to savings/liquid investments exceeding loan amount). 4th house, we could have bought it purely with cash but we decided to get a small mortgage (relative to income) for the renovation work required.

Bought first house when I was 32 for 47k and sold 2 years later for 90. I then used this money to buy next house which also increased by about 60% in 2 years. I was an interior designer but when I got ill and gave up this I started buying houses and doing them up and that was a quick way to amass capital. My ambition was to be mortgage free by 40 which I was but atm have no house as I sold earlier this year because there was a mini boom where I live. I am now looking to buy a large flat so that I can be mortgage free and have a retirement fund. It is a stressful but quickish way to do it although I think the days of huge increases are over!

Not me sadly, we rent. But all friends own and have nice houses. Majority have either had help from parents (gift or loan), inheritance, or bought before prices went silly and sold at massive profit. Some had any combination of the above and then met wives/husbands who had also had the same, then sold individual properties and bought big family home together easily.

Oh how I made some bad decisions!!!

Oh and a decent salary definitely helps!

How are we defining 'quite a bit of money'?

I doubt our house counts either way, but then it was bought on just DPs salary, hopefully the next place will be a bit of an 'upgrade'. There are advantages to our situation though - we might not have the biggest house in the nicest area, but because the mortgage was pretty small compared to our joint income, we've been much more financially secure than some, able to save a lot, and never needed to worry about being able to make the payments, even if one of us was to lose our job.

I would like somewhere bigger and nicer when we start a family though. It's getting a bit crowded already with the two of us and two big dogs!