Mortgage - 2k per month?

[frank2011]

Does anyone pay this much for their mortgage? We have seen the house of our dreams but can only afford if we up our mortgage to 2k per month. Seems like a massive hike & makes me feel so nervous. Husband feels we can do it as houses like this hard to find. At the minute we have no major money worries- can eat out, have nice holidays etc. Hate the thought of struggling when we have a nice lifestyle now. House is gorgeous though & actually good price for the location, space etc

Think what I mean is has anyone doubled their mortgage then totally regretted it?

I have a similar mortgage and slightly higher income. 2 young kids. We went from a VERY comfortable mortgage on a flat to a large forever house. I absolutely don't regret it but I am definitely conscious of the financial burden. We live fairly modestly, no other debts, no big monthly commitments (gym, car, big mobile bills) but we don't live on baked beans. There's not much left each month but we usually manage to save some or pay for a big bill that crops up. It's frustrating not being able to do things we would have before. E.g. a new bathroom would only take a few months to save for, now it takes longer just to gather the money for a piece of furniture.
I hope that helps!

What's the equity like? I think that is a factor as well.Could you remortgage for a longer term if essential.What happens if house prices decline?

We had a similar mortgage to income and it was tight.Every month the budget was swallowed up.It lead to tensions as dh is more of a spender.After 3-4 years it got easier with payrises.

Dcs are more expensive as they get older so could you pay for school holiday trips,save for Uni.

In the end however I am so glad we did it as I love the house and it suits the family.

We would be moving to a bigger house and a nicer area. Heating costs likely to be more considerably as older property.
Feel so fortunate to have never worried about paying bills or had to watch ourselves for last few years but we have never taken risks when maybe we should have! Feels like a big opportunity but also a massive risk! Honestly swing from thinking 'go for it' to thinking 'no way'.
Not made easier by limited availability of family homes in the area we want.

Our mortgage went up to £2k a month when we moved - it was £1.8k before that so not such a big jump. We felt comfortable with it as it's about 20% of net income, and we only have 2 dc and no plans for any more, plus we also have a lot of equity. It only gets us a 3 bed flat where we are though!

Personally it would make me nervous. We earn a similar amount to you and pay significantly less for housing. If one of us lost our job or was not able to work, the other could easily take up the slack. I'd not like to be in a position whereby I was mortgaged up the hilt and had the pressure to keep making that kind of money every month.

We thought about doing something similar but the stamp duty we would have to find was more then I paid on my first house. We ended up deciding to do a loft conversion and create a whole new suite with living up there. It will cost us about half of what the stamp duty would have cost us. If we get in financial problems the suite would bring in a nice rental income, not what we want to do but is a back up plan.

Some good points here about equity and back up plans.

In some parts of the country 2k is astronomical but in others that's not a crazy amount for rent or a mortgage. We did not find it difficult to borrow that amount, either when we bought or when we remortgaged earlier this year.

I think we need to see the house!

Perhaps something to think about is how you'd feel about the length of time it might take you to do the house up, if there isn't going to be much money left over. For me, I can only afford the 'next house up' if we take on something that needs a fair bit of work. I can't face living in a house like that for years, saving up to fix bits and pieces slowly slowly. I get though that people have different priorities.

So true about decorating costs. House good condition but very 'grandma esque'.
We have furniture that suits a smaller house & would cost so much to replace curtains on big sash Windows & bathroom etc. Kitchen quite modern thank goodness. Everything well maintained but just old fashioned.
We would definitely only be able to do one room per year I imagine. Garden is massive so would need a gardener - at the minute my husband mows our lawn in half an hour!! We actually have quite a big garden but minimal plants etc to upkeep. Think if it was just the mortgage would be more doable but the upkeep of a big old house might bleed us dry

I don't have a mortgage that big but I absolutely 100% regret buying a house as big as we have. I wish we had a smaller mortgage and could afford the holidays, eating out and enjoy life more. Also how old are your DC if you have any? DC cost more as they get older not less. School trips, eating out, holidays, cinema seats, it all costs much more as they get older and it adds up fast.

So yes I absolutely regret increasing our mortgage. The house is not as important as everyday living.

four can you downsize?

That seems a lot on one wage OP, my concern would be could you cover mortgage repayments if needed by increasing your hours? If not then l probably wouldn't.

We have similar wage and we pay 1/3 of that. We're in London and have looked at buying a bigger house but honestly, l can't bring myself to spend that much when we have enough room for us, just that I'd like more.

On one income without 6 figure savings that would make me twitchy.
I am a disaster planner though. I do need to know that we could exist for a minimum of 6 months with no income. DH & I have been made redundant multiple times and I plan for that happening, house prices crashing and interest rate raises.
If you could weather a storm then go for it. But do your figures carefully.

We both work (I am parttime )- my husband earns much more than me. If he lost his job I could go back to work full time & cover mortgage but we would be on beans on toast!
Making me feel really nervous now anyway- it's the decorative costs and upkeep of such a large house. Would need a gardener & probably a cleaner as couldn't just run the Hoover round quickly!
If we decide not to go for it, think it will be the 'one that got away'.
Gutted but like another poster said maybe this is too high a jump. Problem is we have a big house now but moving to nicer area means even though we are prepared to pay more we may have to downsize.

Feels incredibly jealous of your monthly income and people who can afford this

We do, but by choice, as we overpay.

We probably bring home about £7.5k, and with that we have just enough for house repairs, car repairs (including husband's moneypit 'fun' car), and a fair amount of holidays. We do sometimes need to dip into savings for big items though.

I think it is doable, but it will be tight and you will need to watch what you spend. If you don't spend shitloads on food, holidays, clothes etc. then you can manage it - also depends on your expectation of incomes going up or down. So I guess my view is that whilst you can do, do you want to - to be worrying about money and future payments etc?

We bring in 6K a month and are if we ever bloody exchange about to embark on £1500 per month which feels totally doable. I think yours sounds fine. Sometimes you have to just take the leap of faith!

We took this leap of faith on a similar budget (slightly lower income). We don't spend a lot on holidays, socialising etc and felt we were happy to pay a lot for the house we really wanted. Don't regret it at all, but what I should add is that you should have a few months' mortgage payments put aside 'just in case'. DP very unexpectedly lost his job five days after we moved in and we could have been in dire straits had it not been for savings.

Personally I would choose no financial worries over financial worries every day of the week.

But sometimes you just have to take a bit of a gamble - if it pays off, great. If not there's always the option to downsize. That's just my way of approaching things - obviously not everyone is the same

I go by the formula of 1/3 on accommodation, 1/3 on bills and other expenses and 1/3 on savings. However, DH and I are not there yet but we are aiming for that.

At the moment we are paying 38.4% of our take home pay towards mortgage and have about 25% left over after all bills and groceries. The 25% is the pot for family presents, xmas, savings and any debt payments if they exist, so not a big pot at the moment. It is not ideal but when we started, our mortgage, was costing us 43%! We had a tiny deposit(hence a higher interest rate), landlord was selling our rental flat and I could not put up with move to another rental only to be given notice less than 12 months later. For us, the roof over our heads was more more important and we were willing to pay a little extra to have our own home.

If you really want this house, and that you believe it will bring you plenty of happiness and that you might forever regret not getting it, then I say go for it. You learnt to adjust your lifestyle accordingly. Whilst our mortgage payments and bills have not gone down, we have both since had several pay rises to improve things a little.

Now that we about to come to the end of our fixed rate, things are going to improve a lot more. Our house has since accrued enough equity that taking a quick look at the current interest rates, we shall have a LTV of about 70% and about £350 shave off our mortgage payments from Dec 2016.

What I am trying to say is that despite the financial limitations to enjoy nice holidays/ lots of meals out, we don't regret the move. It hasnt been as bad as we thought it would be, we took care of all our bills but didnt have much leftover for luxuries for the last 4 years.

Word of caution though, we didn't have a decent cushion of funds for when if one of us lost our jobs and so you could say we were winging it. Things have improved now with a little savings behind us, able to manage on one salary (albeit very tight). The other thing is that we do not have DCs. Maybe our approach could have been different.

Please excuse the spelling and grammatical errors. I did not proof read my post.

We did this, we went from £800 pm to over 2k. We took the mortgage over 16 years.

But before committing the house didn't need any money spending on it it. I also calculated what our rates, council tax etc would be and added it to the cost of the mortgage to see if it was feasible. Also as we are a single income family we pay a whack on our life insurance too.

The mortgage provider will assess you and take into consideration affordability for a rise in interest rates.

We have much much less disposable income now, but the space and the area make up for that.

If the house is going to be a money I would think twice.

*going to be a money pit

I know this is a bit of a zombie thread but I stumbled across this as I'm in a similar position.

How are you getting on @frank2011 ?