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 :/

[SpecialHandsMummy]

We're about to exchange contracts on a house next week, costing us £375k. We will have a mortgage of £190k, and it will cost us £1100 per month, although we've gone for a relatively short term (18 years). Our joint salaries come to over £75k.

This purchase has only been possible due to a combination of savings, inheritance, and equity gained through two other houses. First bought 2 bed apartment in 2000 for £108k with £20k deposit and sold in 2004 for £145k. Then bought 2 bed terraced house for £162k and selling now for £193k.

We have been incredibly lucky and really, house prices are so crazy now that it's difficult to see how younger people can get on the housing ladder. We are late 30s/early 40s.

[Openup41]

It is all so depressing!

£300k houses on the very outskirts of South East London (Welling/Bexleyheath/ Eltham) are deemed highly affordable but yet still £100k out of our reach.

A year or two ago I cried almost daily at the thought of being priced out of London forever. I contemplated shared ownership, government schemes, private renting - all out of sheer desperation to move back to London.

I have now accepted our situation and am embracing the commuter town in which we live. If the opportunity to move arises, we will grab it with two hands. With barely any equity and less than 10% deposit, it would take a miracle.

[Apatite1]

We are both mid 30s and bought last year for first time for approx £650k, minus all charges. We worked abroad and earned £££ and saved a very large deposit. We bought a complete wreck, are spending a lot doing it up but it was the only way to jump several rungs of the ladder at once. It would have been completely impossible on the nhs doctors' salaries we are on now, even though we are top % of UK earners. If we hadn't said goodbye to friends and family and toughed it out for years abroad, it would not have been possible. Scary thought that it took so much graft to afford a nice but ultimately ordinary home.

[Openup41]

GotToBeInIt - your friends earn £180k between them at the age of 30?!!!

[Barbarella]

We paid over £600k for our house 6 years ago - we had a hefty deposit and both earn well (good six figure combined income) but it wasn't our first house.

As our mortgage is about £200k we pay £1300 a month

[Devora]

My first flat cost £50k; I bought it with my first dp and I think we only put down a few grand deposit. When we split up and I got together with current dp (over 20 years ago!) we took over the mortgage that a relative had on a small central London flat - £100k mortgage. We sold that flat for a daft amount of money a few years ago and bought our current house out in the suburbs. We're paying off a £170k mortgage.

So a combination of having been in the property market for nearly 30 years, inherited privilege (having a relative with a mortgage for us to take over; we wouldn't have got it ourselves), and the sheer stupidity of the London market has put us in this position. Mind, I'll be paying off this mortgage till I retire.

[birdslife]

We paid £500k for our London flat 3 years ago, first time buyers with a 40% deposit. High six figure combined income, no inheritance or parental gift though. Saved the majority of salary since leaving uni until we bought in our early 30s and invested it wisely. We didn't rent a self-contained place either, we flat shared until we could afford our own place, which kept renting costs lower while we saved, and did without things like cars and gadgets - pretty much lived like students despite our incomes.

[Cantdecideondinner]

I bought a flat for £65k in 1997, sold in 2001 for £140k. DH had a house for £120k with an 80k inheritance sold for £180k I think. We sold both and bought a house for £350k with a £140k mortgage and sold for £465k 5 years later. Bought current 4 bed detached for £445k as a major fixer upper with a £240kmortgage. Spent about £100k fixing up the house and increased mortgage to £300k and current value is about £750k possibly more. Current mortgage is about £270k and our income close to £200k. To move to anything better would cost £1m+ and we are not keen to increase the mortgage so it's likely we will stay here indefinitely.

[shabbycaddy]

I'm amazed on here with the amount of people assuming their wages will go up by quite a bit, does the thought of someone younger coming in and costing a lot less factor in? When you reach such high wages and like during 2010 onwards when people lost their jobs there was a lot of previous high earners employers didn't want to touch, maybe I'm boring but I would stay with the cheaper house with a pretty standard wage and actually enjoy life with going on holidays and going out, seeing my kids without the worry about losing a job/paying a mortgage and excessive child care for essentially a pile of bricks and blocks

[rainyandwindy]

Not quite 300k here, but not far off and could have afforded that if we had wanted to (I think max budget was 350k). We saved up ~65k for deposit and fees ourselves. This was our first house and we had no parental help. We are early 30s and both work in technical-type fields earning a total of about 80k between us.

[rainyandwindy]

Not quite 300k here, but not far off and could have afforded that if we had wanted to (I think max budget was 350k). We saved up ~65k for deposit and fees ourselves. This was our first house and we had no parental help. We are early 30s and both work in technical-type fields earning a total of about 80k between us.

[CPtart]

We bought our first house for £67k late 1990's and sold for £165k in 2005, so yes a nice profit. But no inheritance or handouts from anyone.

[ipadmad]

We each had a house worth about £60k, both sold to buy a house together for £150k, sold that for £220k but saved up in the meantime before buying next house for £500k. At each point we overpaid mortgage significantly and have no mortgage at all now. Now any excess is going into pensions - we are both early 40s.

[GotToBeInItToWinIt]

Open yes! An investment banker and a corporate lawyer. We're the lowly poor friends .

[Feckeggblue]

Shabby I think the issue is people don't have much choice, if you can't get a suitable house for under £300k. What do you do?

[Ragwort]

Don't assume that being 'mortgage free' means you can retire early - we first bought our own homes (we each had our own home before we married) in the 1980s and obviously benefitted from the house prices rises - we haven't had a mortgage for over ten years but unless you are in very well paid jobs with great savings it doesn't always mean you can retire. I've taken a practically NMW job in my late 50s and DH has two jobs - neither of us can imagine retiring until at least our mid 70s. .

We managed to become mortgage free by staying in one house for a long time when a lot of our friends constantly moved to 'bigger and better' houses - we also had a child late in life (and only had one) - a massive saving . And relocated to a much cheaper area of the country.

[Perfectlypurple]

My dh has to retire in 8 years. We can afford to pay the mortgage after that but I want it gone asap so when he does retire from his current job he can get a part time job and I will have the option of going part time.

[TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams]

No, they take out 95% mortgages, live on air for a year or two and hope their salaries rise fast. In my experience

[lotsofcheese]

We've just bought at that level, using 60k deposit (mixture of savings, redundancy payment, profit from sale of DP's flat). Payments £1050 monthly. We rented for 5 years paying the same rent, following redundancy & self-employment.

We have a 30 year mortgage in our 40's & pay £800 a month for childcare, so things are tight.

Our saving grace is my flat, which has only a £23k mortgage on it with less 10 years to go. It gives us rental income & when it's paid off we'll use the rental income to pay off this place earlier.

[TeddyBee]

DH bought first flat with his brother at £90k in 1999. Ex local authority in London. We bought his brother out a few years later and he took his share of the equity and bought another ex LA flat. We all subsequently sold up and bought in 2009/2010. We took £180k profit or so and bought a four bed semi for £350k. He went in with his girlfriend and bought a four bed flat for £600k having sold his last place for a big profit (London). So between us all, that one starter flat went a long way.

[OublietteBravo]

We bought our first house (3 bed terrace) for £140k in 2004 with a 10% deposit. We sold it in 2013 for £165k and bought our current house (6/7 bed semi) for £335k with a 25% deposit (combination of equity and savings). Our mortgage payments are ~£1160 per month. The real killer was the £10.5k stamp duty - our finances are still recovering from having to pay this 2 years on.

DH and I will be 40 this year. We earn ~£130k between us. I work in law and he's a management consultant.

[TinyCaterpillar]

Why would people take out large mortgages/ assume their salaries will rise? Because they have no choice! There's quite a bit of judgement on this thread, I would hope that people who have managed to buy a few years back for a reasonable price would have some sympathy with the people struggling to buy a tiny place for a huge amount right now! We missed out on the huge price rises in the 90s/ early 2000s but I still feel incredibly lucky compared to those starting out now.

Our house is worth around £400k. It's an expensive area of the SE so only a 3-bed semi. We bought it as a fixer upper just over a year ago for £285k which was a bargain even at the time and have spent a fair bit on it. We bought our first (tiny) flat in 2005 for £125k on a 100% mortgage and made £50k on it in two years due to the rising market, then bought a larger flat for £250k and sold it for the same price in 2013 during the dip in prices, however due to the previous equity we still had a big enough deposit for the current house which we got for a good price due to the market dip.

I work part time and earn very little, DH has a good job but not crazy money city/ banker standard, our income is around £80k.

[TeacupDrama]

The average house price in uk is just over 200k because of regional variation this may buy a tiny flat or elsewhere a 3-4 bed detached
Here a nice 2 bed flat is 90-120k the same price as small 3 bed terrace, for 200 a nice 3 bed semi with garden and garage

[Beaverfeaver2]

Me and DH are 29 and bought our +£300k house last July.

We sold our first house for £295k (purchased for £225k in 2010) and came out with £90k from the sale. After fees and stamp duty the £75k left over went on our deposit.

The house we then bought was £355k and our mortgage for it is now £280k.

Our mortgage adviser got us an excellent rate of 2.9% (helped by large deposit) fixed for 5 years and so our monthly repayment is £1050. (Far cheaper than the equivalent rentals around here!)

At the time I earned £25k per year and DH £40k.
That has since changed considerably.

I hope this gives people mirror an accurate idea.

P.s. It's still just a 2 bed terraced house which makes me crazy!

[filigree2015]

I bought with DH in London in 2012 - we were in our late-twenties and this is our first home. About three sets of friends bought around the same time. We all had help from our families. Our house has risen in value by about 30% since then, so we couldn't afford it if we were first time buyers now. So much with the housing market seems to be about whether or not you're in the right place at the right time.

Maybe I'm naive, but I didn't realise when I was younger how much help some people have and what a head start it gives them. I heard somebody we know a while ago talking about how he'd saved £70k towards a deposit - the clear inference being that he'd been very disciplined and sensible. Turns out that these savings were from various inheritances and generous gifts he'd been given over the years (he wasn't a particularly high earner).

That's fine - he's very fortunate - but to suggest this money had come about via his own sacrifice / hard work was a bit much. He seemed to think that all his peers would have the same if only they were a bit more careful...

Sorry, I digress!