How do buy a house in London. Just, how?

[Shinebright21]

Married, two kids, mid thirties, husband is not a first time buyer but I would be.

How? It seems absolutely impossible, and house prices are through the roof.

Anyone successfully done it? How did you work?

Buy a large flat in the best part of London. I don’t get what’s wrong with living in a flat. So many do in Europe. Instead people choose to move to god knows where just to get a house (smaller than the size of my flat). Bought mine in 2016; about to be mortgage free in a couple of years. Not going to forking out £1.5m for a run down house in the area - just so to claim I own a house in London.

Cancel you Netflix. Stop going to Starbucks.

Obvs joking. Realistically I got on the propert ladder at 19(15 years ago) and got lucky with the sale of my first flat to get a bigger house and start a family. My partner had done the same so we had double equity in lucky investments.

Not helpful for you I know.

It's so tricky because the amount of deposit needed for a London property is absolutely unattainable for most people to save who have already had children and are not still living at home.

Buy a large flat in the best part of London.

because that's affordable to most?

I want to do that. I live in a 2 bed flat and I want a 3 bed flat. I shared a 3 bed flat in Golders Green on this thread, its £630k. My budget is around that too. But I would not dream of saying that this is affordable for everyone. Its more affordable than a house of course and its something that a couple with 2 ok salaries could definitely get if they saved hard/lived with family for a year or two/had kids at the 'right time'.

It's easy! Just stop being poor

Why so desperate to live in London anyway there are loads of safer, cleaner, less polluted, quieter, more peaceful and salubrious areas that are commutable with way better schools and sense of community to bring your children up in. Lived there for 30 years. Glad Idl don’t now. London is not the centre of the universe 🤷🏻‍♀️

Commuting costs a lot of money. Only I am paying to commute now as my DH cycles to work in the City. It takes him 45 minutes because its zone 3 (and also saves on the gym membership). Inflation will be 15% next year and rail fare increases are indexed to inflation. As we spend less time commuting, we have more time to prepare lunch in the morning so we basically spend £0 going to work. Our mortgage is fixed for the next 2 years. I am glad we didn't move out because we don't have any big costs other than the mortgage. We live in a flat so we benefit from heat rising from the flats below. And because we have such low costs, we can afford to spend more on childcare (which isn't forever) and hopefully we can also afford to upgrade (will not live outside zone 3 to ensure that we can continue saving money on the little things). At least whatever you pay into the mortgage, hopefully you can get back one day but commuting costs is gone forever

I live in a city center flat, in one of those overseas cities where people are quite happy to live in a flat. I'm very pro living in a flat.

However, cheapest flat I can find in Belgravia (ok, fine, Pimlico) is 1m. That's for a 800 square foot 3 bed with a tiny outdoor space. It's not exactly get on the ladder cheap pricing. DH is at a bulge bracket bank and I've got a reasonably well paid job, and we would struggle to afford that, even with the familt leg-up we got to get on the housing ladder.

(I picked Belgravia as the "best" part of London, but I'm not a Londoner, so willing to be corrected.)

I don’t know how people do it without family help. My daughter recently bought her first flat in London. 450k for a 1 bed and we gave her 200k deposit from an inheritance. Without that she could not have afforded London unless shared ownership

@allfurcoatnoknickers Belgravia is not Pimlico! Lots of flats are 2 bed: so wanting 3 adds to the price. Look at Chelsea and you will find eye watering prices.

The best part of London for raising a child, I meant. Belgravia, Pimlico etc are not, in my opinion, the best areas for a family. I am referring to the leafy North London suburbs.

Many couples we know sold their great flats and end up paying £800k-£1.2m for a small house outside London (commuter towns). As to them raising a family in a flat is sad. It’s more sad to me to commute for ages to work and be stuck somewhere with not much to do on the weekends. Each to their own, I guess.

Definitely family help
My aunt gave my cousin over 100k for a deposit. She then gave him another 80-90k for renovations.

I’m buying a 2 bed flat w/ garden this year as a solo FTB, early 30s, no family help, and average wage (far far far far less than people have cited in this thread, and with no bonuses, overtime etc). Reason I am able to is I have been saving solidly for ten years, during which in some years managed to have cheap rent for various reasons, allowing me to save more, and only looked at zone 3/4. Had v limited options though!

Having a partner helps a lot. Our deposit was 70k for our first flat. We did get help by living with parents rent free but that really does not add up to £100k or £200k! I think MIL's help amounted to £50k in terms of rent/bills which is a big leg up but it's not going to help you buy if you aren't earning £70-120k (combined or otherwise)!

I wonder what will happen to it all with higher interest rates. Most of the gains in house values over the last few years were due to such low rates. London prices will either stay stagnant or crash. That's just simple maths - possibly go down and then stagnate. In the meantime, the gap between those who go inflationary wage increases and not will widen i.e. bits of London that are affluent will remain so and house prices will hold, but everywhere else will drop. I am not saying this as a FTB either but as someone who owns a family home so I dont automatically want prices to go down.

When FIL passes away (morbid and probably sounding terribly grabby, I know) what he leaves to DH will just about be enough for us to finally consider moving to zone 1. Maybe. But most likely by then (and hopefully it's a long way away) prices will most likely mean it won't be an option any more.

statistics actually show young people have less disposable income now vs the past.

Do they? The past is a long time. I'd like to see those statistics. Do these statistics do back to the 1950s or the 1930s? Or is their start date carefully chosen to make a sensational point?

Around my area its all parents helping out so they are fueling the increases and bidding wars....sales are brisk and go for lots over the asking price even this week....some of the people moving in seem to all have pots of cash...flash cars...only one works...kids...sit in cafes all day chatting...huge refurbs...skips all over.....

Is this a joke? That’s no way to live, and the harsh truth is that even this is not going to allow the average person to save enough to buy a house in London and many other parts of the UK.

My neighbour bought his house for around £25k in the 1970s. It’s a very small terrace house and he had a very average job. Today no scrimping and saving would buy you that house as it would cost more than a million.

Do you need to stay in London? I love London, work in London and spend a lot of time in London but I don't live there and personally I would rather raise my children anywhere else.

We live 40 minutes outside of central London - my commute to work in East London takes the same time as my colleagues who live in SW London. I have a three bed detached for the price of a 1 bed flat near to my work, we have parks, shops, pubs, bars etc, great school and and a beach. Most of my new neighbours have moved out of town or London boroughs so it still has a distinct friendly 'east London feel'.

Just bought a 4 bed in zone 4 London with fast links to Waterloo

and a lot of it was luck and timing - not family money but in other ways

The truth is that we are now lucky to be high earners. But we weren’t in 2013 as quite early in our careers but bought our first property in zone 2 london then - a tiny two bed but it went up a lot in value since then and that was before DC which meant we could save what we earned

Since then we have had promotions at work etc and so then used that money saved plus equity to make this next move up the ladder for our family house- it meant we did need c150k in cash which is sickening

We could stay here forever or 5 years - not sure.

Move further out to less desirable boroughs/areas

The reality

Any young couples currently buying on London either have massive family help to the tune of £hundreds of thousands, or both work in the high paying industries with household Income £200k+

In addition to having windfalls from family and lottery, realistically I think you have to be open minded about area. I never put in an area when fantasy house-searching in London. I just put in central London plus 3 miles, number of bedrooms and a price cap. This can root out some really surprising jewels. like a newly decorated 3-bed house in Archway for £665k.

Or beautiful 3-bed maisonette in Wandsworth for £600k

There's always one or two things on that are lower budget than you might expect and if you have a handful of areas with good schools and transport in mind, you're more lucky to find somewhere than if you set your heart on one area.