Do most people who buy a 300k+ house...

[PinkTriangle]

Have a hefty deposit (possibly from making a profit on a previous house sale?) in order to afford mortgage payments?....

Or are can you tell me your secret? What is your line of work?

Our budget is £200k, we only have a£20 deposit ( from our last mortgage, we made a loss in the sale but had paid of about a 1/3 of mortgage). We have okay paying jobs (£25k each) but we're so not looking forward to paying £1000 in mortgage each month. It makes me wonder how others do it :/

We're on one salary and have just bought a £300k+ house (upsizing from a flat). We can only do this because DH's parents are giving us a large sum of money. There's no way we could do it otherwise, not for at least 5 years and we need more space now.

We were lucky in that an inheritance gave us a lump sum that brought us up to about 25% deposit. We still pay over £1k per month mortgage. It was a sad reason (beloved grandparents) so didn't feel "lucky" at the time iyswim, but we definitely appreciate that not everyone has that kind of opportunity given to them by kind family.

Oh and our mortgage will be390k so 2k per month! And I'm I mat leave - but we just wanted proper house in our late thirties...wish we didn't live in London but couldn't get the salaries elsewhere - catch 22!

Ours was £350 but we both had our own houses bought in the early 2000s so £100k from that plus £50k family loan. The low interest rate has really helped and we rarely go on holiday, buy expensive gadgets or go out. But we do have a 6acre Smallholding so we are kept pretty busy here

Dp and I bought out first house together at £270,000. DP is a doctor, I am a nurse and we had £30,000 in savings and made £20,000 profit from the sale of both our separate previous properties (£50,000 deposit) He was 41 and me in my late 30's when we bought together a few years ago so it was a lot of years worth of our savings and we don't have any left now so have had to start saving again from scratch.

We bought our first home a few months ago.

It cost a little more than £400k.

Nothing fancy - just a 3-bed new build townhouse (4-bed at a push) about an hour away from London. It's in a nice town, and a nice development full of London expats.

We would never have gotten anywhere without help from parents. DH's parents paid the deposit (close to 10%), my parents paid the stamp duty. We also took advantage of Help to Buy which we could have gone without at the time, if we bought a slightly smaller place. But we didn't want to move again in 5 years time, and therefore paying stamp duty twice.

The reason we couldn't save ourselves was that (a) DH was doing a PhD until just a few years ago (so it was basically like living on just one income - although he got a grant, so had a bit of money), and (b) living in London during that time depleted any savings we could have had.

Our mortgage payments are absolutely fine. We have also been very lucky over the last year. We signed up to buy this new build almost a year ago. It took a long time for them to finish it, and between the time we exchanged contracts and completed, I got a promotion and a nearly 30% pay rise . My husband also got a nearly 10% pay rise. So we now have about 20% more income than we had when we first applied for the mortgage. Now that we've furnished the house, I will start overpaying the mortgage.

We would never have bought this house though if we didn't think our salaries would rise. DH and I are working hard on our careers. He is due a promotion this year, too, but we would never rest on our laurels. We both agreed that unless there's a lottery win (we don't even play!), I will never be a SAHM.

Our combined income is currently over £125k - which is a pretty nice sum, considering we don't work and live in London (for now). We want this to be considerably higher in 5 years time.

To add to my already long post above ^.

Most people I know who have bought houses in this price range as their first house has had some help from parents.

To counter what someone else said on this thread... I would never take a long maternity leave. 3 months tops.

£200k deposit, joint income has varied a lot over last few years, somewhere around 40-70k after tax. At around 40k end we were just paying off interest, and even extended the mortgage a little one year.

My sister lives in a 300k house, my dad bought it for her.

Jaaaysus!!

I'm looking at a mortgage of 75-90k which will get me a decent 2up 2down. I would be paying less than 500 a month.

I bought in London when I was in my early 20's - got a 2 bed house for 85k with a 5k deposit. Sold it for 125k after 3 years then bought a bigger house with DH for 325k. Sold that after 6 years for 600k so have just been very, fortunate that the market has risen so much in London. Have now moved out of London and am mortgage free as had over 400k in equity from our last sale. Lucky as have been told we couldn't get a big enough mortgage to buy now anyway.

Oh... and since you asked about what we do - I'm in finance and DH is in software development.

I think it just depends where you live. We were really happy to be able to get a house where the repayment was £1000 per month and I find it hard to imagine ever paying less (on the basis this house would probably cost another 50% on top to rent) although obviously if we were older/ had paid off a lot of mortgage we could pay less too. But for us, it's totally expected.
I have a professional job and DH works in sales.

Saved approx £30k between us whilst renting. Worked abroad and saved another £60k. Moved back to the UK on joint earnings of approx £80k and bought our first home costing £340k. Put down a 20% deposit.

We've always been savers. I get twitchy with £300 on the credit card!

All of that was in the space of 5 years. I don't think it was that hard tbh. That's saving an average of £750 each per month. We still had holidays etc

When abroad we had a great tax break which helped massively and lucked out with good salaries and a good fx rate. Back in the UK I think our salaries aren't wonderful but are ok.

We had a deposit of £80k, which we'd saved over 5 years.

We pay 1200pcm mortgage, our home was bought 7 years ago, now worth about 300k. I think it's manageable on our income of around 60k. If we budget reasonably well we can save another 1k pcm, something we're trying to do to save a pension fund. We aren't very flash though - one old car, not much spending on clothes, uk holidays mostly, rarely eat out.

Yepcomfortable.... We live up north :). Quite pleased about it!

We have (almost) 300k mortgage on a 680k house. Its our third house. We bought first in 2002 for £168k but had 53k deposit. Next move was 2006, sold for 245 and bought for 385. Sold that last year for 545k which gave us the equity to put down on this, our forever home.

We were lucky to have money in our early 20s from tax free earning, inheritance and high salaries to let us get on housing ladder and keep saving. Thanks to last move we now have lowest level of savings and highest level of expenditure we have had in last 16 years and that won't change unless we win lottery.

Some major house prices on this thread. And I thought my mortgage was a lot! I bought my first house in 1995 , just a one bedroom end terrace for £36,500. At the time I thought that was a lot. Sold it in 2009 for £102,500 so we had a decent deposit for our house now. Dh had no equity in his. We did have 20 years left on mortgage but have just re mortgaged and by paying more we have got it down to 14 years. The plan is to remortgage every 2 years and knock an extra 2 years off each time so it is paid off before dh retires.

Yepcomfortable We have never had help from parents.

From my experience, people who bought over 15 years ago (like you) didn't need help from parents. I know a girl who bought a 2-bed flat in Fulham for about £95k in the late 90s. That same flat is now valued at around 700k.

The same job that girl did 15 years ago, would NEVER pay you the sort of money that gets you a 700k flat these days. Never.

There's a big difference these days between people who are now in their 40s and those who are in their 30s. It may only a 10-year gap, but that's all it takes to make them a world apart.

For people who live in the South, getting onto the housing ladder often means needing help from parents. Unless, of course, you make a lot of money as soon as you leave uni. Most have to work a few years to earn the sort of income that allows you to save.

We sold a house in 2007 for just under £600k that we purchased ten years earlier for £117,500 (South Coast). Using the equity from that we bought a £300k house mortgage-free (we were 40) in a cheaper area and have been fortunate not to have to resort to borrowing on future house purchases.

DS was even more fortunate in that he and his GF were able to buy a half share (with her two younger sisters owning the other half) of a £230k flat in SW London in 2011 with cash from inheritances/family. They were 21. They sold it last year for £385k and after sharing out the proceeds DS/GF purchased a flat in Brighton for £210k cash.

Even though they and their friends are all privately educated, hardworking graduates, they are the exception to the rule in that they are the only ones to own a property outright......

They are very, very lucky - something they are fully aware of and incredibly grateful for!

All these figures sound bonkers to me. Paid £11k for our first place in 1978 with a £1k deposit and an eye watering 15% interest rate on the remaining £10k . Moved upward and onward over the years but never had more than a £30k mortgage which we paid off years ago when we retired early to live abroad.

Friends of ours bought their first place for £250k. Just sold for £400k. Have £200k to put down on new house which is £580k so they'll have a mortgage or £380k. Earn £180k between them.

They're the same age as us (30) and we haven't even managed to get on the property ladder yet as we can't raise the money for a deposit, but our rent on a 2 bed terrace is £1200pcm!