First time buyers..

[SonShines]

We been renting for years, never really looked into buying as assumed we can't afford it, but don't actually know just how much it would cost us.

Can anyone give me an idea of roughly how much money we would need to give upfront and how much we would need to be earning to by a house for say, £250,000?

A lot for £250, sadly. Its all about the deposit - for example, we're looking at about 180, if we put 10% deposit down, we'd be looking at up to 900 a month, put 20% down and its about 700 a month.

So say 20% deposit would be 50K? Not sure what wages would need to be. Why not go and see an advisor? You can get free ones.

250 is a heck of a lot for first house, are you in London/South?

Best case scenario you would need 25k deposit, 2.5k stamp duty, maybe 2-3k fees etc. and earn at least 57k (4xincome) more lenders would require 75k (3xincome).

Obviously higher deposits etc. make you a better bet etc. from January there should be better deals on 95% mortgages as the government will underwrite the extra risk. That would mean 12.5k deposit but then a slightly higher income needed to cover the extra borrowing.

Does that sound doable?

We are in a similar position btw. We need closer to 300k to buy a very basic house here :/

We are in the south... 5 of us to house. We are paying 1K per month to rent a house.

25K deposit urgh

How does anyone ever get that kinda money together?!

Parents normally I think. We're nearly there, we've got 10k equity in current house, and have saved 9k and been very lucky in that shares have done well (sharesave scheme at work).

It's a heck of a jump for a first house.

We are first time buyers in the south east - £250k sounds cheap to me ;) You need a 10% deposit - we are only able to do this with help from both our families. We are buying a house for £322250 so we needed £32225 deposit, £9667 stamp duty, £500 mortgage app fee (our broker is a friend so helping for free), £250 mortgage valuation, £250 survey, £1350 solicitors fees. We earn £90k between us and our monthly repayment will be £1350 a month. It is an absolute nightmare to be honest - we are veyr lucky our parents are helping and DH shot up salarywise in the last 5 years.

There are some schemes for first time buyers with new build homes and only needing to have 5% deposit plus some banks now do a thing where parents can help with deposit but they get their money back with interest a few years later. One of them in called Lend a Hand - look it up if of interest :)

Don't forget the Help to Buy scheme for new builds up to 600k. There are limited lenders that are writing mortgages on them at the moment but you would only need a 5% deposit initially.

How about a buy half, rent half scheme offered by some newbuilds?

Also look at Nationwide's save to buy savings accounts where you save a minimum of £50 per month and after 6 months you can apply for their 95% mortgages. You need to have a squeaky clean credit record though.

We are in a similar situation Op. We have been renting for years. We're in our early 40's now, so getting on a bit for house buying. Asking prices round our way are anything from 250k for an absolute wreck to 300+. We have 3dc and have been saving for years. Have roughly a 10% deposit, but would still be looking at repayments of well in excess of £1100 a month even with lowish interest rates. I am fed up with all this government interference to be honest as it will do nothing to help first time buyers. It will just make prices even higher. I worry too about what will happen when interest rates rise. We are really not sure what to do at the moment. Our thinking has gone from interest rates will go up and prices will fall and now we are thinking that the government is hell bent on keeping prices high so we might as well jump on the band wagon and hope for the best. Our rental is pretty reasonable though, so that what's been keeping us here so long. I think we might keep saving for another year and see what happens.

We are in a similar position too but are lucky to be renting long term (have been here nearly 6 years) in a fab area.

I have just turned 40 and my DH is a bit younger. We save every month but haven't got enough yet for a decent deposit. Have never been able to buy and haven't got any parental help financially from either family.

Sometimes feel like I am going to be too old to buy when we eventually are able to but also don't want to buy with a small but just enough deposit as the payments a month would be high.