Financial buffer for buying a house

[Sengah]

I'm interested to hear what the norm is for buying a house and how much of a buffer people keep back to cover unknowns. Friends seem to have a wide range of responses to this, from using a credit card to meet the last couple of £k on their house purchase 😱 To insisting it is crazy not to move with a year's worth of mortgage payments saved.

What did you do?

Thanks for the responses. Looks like the majority go for broke, understandably.

We bought last year with just under 70% ltv (our second home). That still left us with a decent cushion in various savings, at least a year's joint income. We're about to spend a fair bit on a new kitchen & some building work but should still have almost 2 years' mortgage payments in savings once that's all done.

We definitely had less available when we bought our first home but also didn't massively stretch ourselves then - we were able to build up savings pretty quickly.

I guess we're pretty risk averse and tbh the commitments we have now are enough for me, I already feel stretched compared to the tiny mortgage we'd ended up with on the old house.

I'm confused.

Do you mean 'What do I need for buying costs?'
or 'After I've moved, how much should I start off with in my savings?'

Because if it is the latter, then I've completely cleaned the pot out all 3 times I've bought. Indeed, when we moved into our current house, we borrowed from the dcs' savings accounts

We had about £1500 left in our savings after we’d bought our house and decorated/furnished etc so we went on holiday to recover from the stress of moving

Think we’ll have 5-10k left after all fees and stamp duty etc are paid. Some of that we will spend on carpets etc. But we have 75% LTV so an ok equity buffer too, and should be able to start saving again as mortgage not too terrifying a chunk of our salary.
When we bought this place as FTB we had basically £0 left after the purchase, and nothing much spare each month (I was on Mat leave) but I am so glad we did it!

ihavetogo

We had about 7 k left in our savings account when we moved. Having to immediately replace the boiler knocked us down to 4 k a week after we picked up the keys

Oh and then being pushed out of a job a couple of weeks after completion means we are now down to just DP's wages. Thankfully we're in a good enough position for us to be able to cope on one salary for a little bit and could have coped if it were DP who lost his job instead of me. Plus obviously have the 4 k savings but we'd rather not have to touch it if we don't have to so if by some very unlucky chance DP does lose his job too we can cover the bills for about 2 months.

3-6 months of expenses minimum, I think, plus a buffer of maybe 10-20k for unexpected work.

We had £3k which is 3 months worth of mortgage payments and it's stayed the same for 8 months as we've managed not to touch it but spend any left over money on house repairs and decoration (some planned and some not!)

We have £700 a month that can go into savings so I plan to top up savings now and try to get back to our usual £10k buffer. With going on holiday in the summer I anticipate reaching that target this time next year without too much scrimping.

We had very little the first time we bought. We may have had a few hundred, but in the month before we completed, we acquired a very big vets bill and a huge car repair bill. We had anticipated having £4-5k, but it all went wrong. It was a good year before we were in a position to save, and I did find it all a bit scary.

Four years in, we moved again, and did it with over £10k in the bank, although that it not a years worth of mortgage. Fortunately, we are now in a position to save a little and overpay a little on the mortgage each month, which is a much nicer position to be in.

With house prices so high for most, I think it can be very difficult to buy a first house with much wriggle room.