Did you put every last penny into your deposit?

[user3274826]

If you saved the deposit yourself, not had a gift from family. How much money did you leave as emergency after deposit? Or did you not have any back up savings left?

I guess everyone’s circumstances are minute and different. Our rent is the same as our mortgage and that meant being unable to save a lot. We have 3 DC, it was always just bad timing. We got together just before the 2008 crash and had just moved into together in a rental as the house market crashed. Suddenly you needed massive deposits and it was out of our affordability.

We got married, had children and tried to save within the last 7 years or so. Eventually managed to save enough for a 5k deposit plus fees and surveys. We got very lucky in our corner of south London and found a run down two bed flat that we offered £30k less for and were accepted. It doesn’t need anything major needed - we decorated on a budget and the kitchen is perfectly functional until we can afford to have it changed. We’ve spent 3.5k having new windows put in but that’s it. It’s in a purpose built Estate with loads of other flats some of which recently sold for 50k more than the asking price for our place. So I suspect we got it for a steal, current expected house market crash not withstanding!

We chose to put a decent deposit on our first house, and kept a small amount back for emergencies... but basically spent as little money as possible on stuff when we moved in, so we sat on boxes or the floor, we didn't buy a bed for 6 months (2nd hand bunk bed mattresses on the floor...) or a sofa for over a year, we got an old chair off FreeCycle, wardrobes and chest of drawers were those fabric ones from Argos which I carried home on the bus. Not quite sure how we lived like that now!

However I don't regret it because it meant that we had a better LTV and a smaller mortgage (this was pre-2008 so interest rates were 5-6% then). The house was a 2-up 2-down in a 'dodgy' area so wasn't expensive and didn't have much that could go wrong with it, so we could afford to put more money into the deposit, and then overpaid as much as we could rather than spending money on nice things (or even basics to be honest! I can't believe we used to sit on the living room floor because we didn't want to fork out on a sofa...). If you can afford to put more in to move to a more preferential LTV then I'd recommend it. We're about to buy a new place and have a 40% deposit (this is after many years of living frugally), which means that the mortgage rate is very low (fixed at 1.44 for 5 years).

@Notyetthere

For those with £30k held back for renovations and emergencies, how long did it take you to save that amount? it would have taken us a long time to accumulate this amount on top of the deposit that had taken us years to save for

I hadn't intended on having the extra cash, I was in fact looking at more expensive properties and my deposit amount was based on that. When I then decided I'd rather purchase a cheaper property and thus have lower mortgage repayments, this meant I could also dictate what my deposit amount would be. The cheaper property did however mean a property that would require some work on it, so I knew I needed reserves for this. Essentially, I opted for a 60% LTV with the property I ended up purchasing. If I had gone for the more expensive property, it would have probably been a 75% LTV. I'd have still kept some money back though. Mortgage providers to advise you keep back enough to cover 6 months' payments should something go wrong. I'd caution against this and say keeps a year's at least.

We kept 4 months living expenses back. We’ve increased it to 6 months living expenses. Very glad we did now as DP is on furlough and looking like he may not have a job to go back to.

It’s also good to have a bit in the bank in case something goes wrong on the house. My sister had some bad luck when she bought - boiler broke and roof started leaking in the first 12 months.

For those with £30k held back for renovations and emergencies, how long did it take you to save that amount? it would have taken us a long time to accumulate this amount on top of the deposit that had taken us years to save for

It took us about 18 months to save the £50k that we kept back. If we'd found somewhere suitable to buy during that time we'd have bought earlier, but there wasn't much available for our budget at all.

We weren't planning on keeping that much back though, but because of various delays even though we offered in March we didn't move in until almost 6 months later, so had saved another £15k during that time.

Buying our first home (flat) we spent everything we had and it wasn't fully furnished until around 6 months later. Fortunately it was a new build so no decorating was required.

We had less than £1k left.

But, different times. We were newly married, used to living a bit more hand to mouth, no children, young professionals who could rely on annual pay increases. In this current climate I would not want to be pushing it at all, especially if we had children.

@updownleftrightstart 50k in 18 months is very impressive! You must be on a decent salary.

We used every penny we had so had nothing at completion. This was the case for our first house. we took a leap of faith and had our fingers crossed. I'm sure if something big had gone wrong then the 0% credit card would have been well used at that time.

However, with prices having risen in our area by over 35% in the time we have been here, we have accrued more equity than we had anticipated. We considered moving to the 'nicer' road in our area and having looked through the figures we could have been able to hold back about 40-60k after the sale of our home and a 75% LTV. The house would have needed work hence the money held back and in combination with our savings. There is absolutely no way we would have been able to do it with the first house.

*@chrissiekeller61

First home, yes, we sat on milk crates not even joking and bought a 2nd hand sofa with my child benefit* 🙈

These kind of posts bring back memories. I remember sitting in my empty living room my first night with 2 secondhand chairs, an upturned box as a coffee table and a big gifted christmas tree watching bats fly outside in the dusk (no tv yet). I was so happy to have my own flat! Such a nice memory.

@Notthereyet it depends what you class as a decent salary. I feel like it was OK but it's actually pretty low for London. We were on 72k between us when we bought

Oops dunno why it changed the tagged name. Sorry!

@updownleftrightstart Is that a combined salary or individual, because I have to say, I earn similar for London and I sure as hell don't think I could save anywhere near as much in 18 months!!

I agree that is a very impressive amount to save in only 18 months @updownleftrightstart and unobtainable for most, your living costs must have been much lower than average for London? Were you living rent free somewhere?

I'm surprised so many people have mentioned furniture expenses as a standard cost, haven't most people accumulated years of furniture before buying? It's not common to buy a house straight from uni/living with parents at a young age is it?

An incredibly impressive amount to save in 18 months - no way we could have put aside nearly £3k a month when our London rent was so high. And our earnings are higher than yours!

@user3274826

I'm surprised so many people have mentioned furniture expenses as a standard cost, haven't most people accumulated years of furniture before buying? It's not common to buy a house straight from uni/living with parents at a young age is it?

I had no furniture at all. I've always rented in furnished flats and for ease of moving, it was best that I didn't have lots of different bits of furniture to lug around. Also, and out of principle, I always felt it would be best I purchased furniture when I bought my own place, so that it 'went' with the rest of the decor. For me personally, it's all part of the excitement. I like the idea that every thing is 'new'

72k joint salary. I was on 30k, DH on 42k. No free/subsidised rent unfortunately. But we made the choice to live in a house share with another couple to enable us to save as much as possible so it's a choice a lot of people could make (as long as they don't have children), but most people don't because they would rather have their own space.

We kept about 8-10k back for emergencies and some towards renovations (this was separate from budget for the few bits of furniture and white goods we needed)

User - we rented 14 places in 7 years across 3 countries, so we were completely starting from scratch.

Our last rental was unfurnished, but we’ve gone from furniture in a one bedroom flat, to buying a 4 bed house.

We’ve been in almost a year and have basically bought a spare bed and desk. We still dont have a dining room table for example.

@updownleftrightstart Sorry, but I still can't get my head around how you were able to put so much away. You must have been living on absolute peanuts

@Smallgoon not at all - at least it didn't feel like it. We went out regularly and had a holiday during that time, we were just really frugal with how we spent. We were picking up about £4400/month and paying £675 rent and having cheap bills as we only paid half.
Now we pick up 1k a month more due to recent promotions, but our outgoings are so much more that we have less money spare now than we had then!

@updownleftrightstart fair enough! I didn't realise your rent was so little. Did you end up buying in London? Surely even though you feel worse off now, it must be cheaper than if you were both renting your own place in London?

We bought just outside London in the end as it was so much cheaper. And you're right that if we hadn't bought and were renting our own place, not sharing, we'd be paying so much more in rent than our mortgage is. Plus our mortgage will hopefully reduce a bit soon but that doesn't often happen with renting does it?

@updownleftrightstart If you were renting your own place in London, you'd be looking to pay a minimum of £1400 for something half decent, but that would still be a 1 bed! You're deffo better off paying a mortgage, and essentially the money is going towards something you will own, as opposed to you paying somebody else's mortgage! And, think of it this way, but your salary is likely to continue to increase, whereas your mortgage will decrease. And given how good you were at saving, hopefully when you're in a position to, you can pay off as much of overpay on your mortgage and pay it off quicker.

I'm surprised so many people have mentioned furniture expenses as a standard cost, haven't most people accumulated years of furniture before buying? It's not common to buy a house straight from uni/living with parents at a young age is it?

We also didn't factor it in as a standard cost, but for almost the opposite reason. We expected to just make do for a while. After we'd bought the house, we prioritised money for paint etc first, and then a cheap sofa a while later. We had acquired a fridge and a bed along our renting journeys and didn't need much else. We brought chests of drawers etc from our bedrooms at our parents' houses. My parents had put every penny into their first flat in the 70s, lived without a fridge or curtains for months, and moved up the property ladder quickly so I was brought up to get on the ladder as soon as possible. But as I said, different times. I don't think now is the time to be jumping into property at all costs.