We are a married couple with a 7month old baby. We rented in London for over 10 years, moving up north during the pandemic as our employers switched to working from home. We now rent a house up north near Manchester and love the area we are in.
Our only hope of ever getting on the property ladder was through saving up for the deposit whilst also paying the eye watering London rent. Neither of us have wealthy families so parents lending / inheritance was not an option and obviously the cost of living in London is crazy, hence why it has taken us a decade to get the deposit together.
Due to progression in our jobs and bonuses, we have managed to save just over £100k and between us our joint annual income is £140k.
I really appreciate just how fortunate we are to have that amount saved, and to earn what we do particularly coming from low income families and childhoods. I am also really proud of having saved what we have.
It means that we are now looking at buying a big family home with a garden, with a budget of 650k-700k. We want this to be a house we are in for 10/15 years.
We are looking at a 10% deposit of £65k-75k, with £25k for stamp duty.
The dilemma comes with the following situation.
There is a new build estate near us (Redrow built) that is really nice and extremely family friendly. Primary school being built, lots of shops and commodities. Annoyingly it is very close to to the footballer postcode (Cheshire) it is also extremely expensive especially at the minute.