Buying first house - is this realistic?

[cokezero26]

We’re looking to buy our first home, probably between the 160-180k mark.
We have a £10k deposit and £10k set aside for the various fees involved.
Does this sound doable or have we missed anything?!

Is your credit record absolutely immaculate because it will need to be to get a 95% mortgage

Your deposit seems low, but also it depends on your income / expenditure as to whether you will be allowed to borrow that much. Play around with some online mortgage calculators for a rough idea of if you are on right tracks

Fees won’t be £10k just for buying, less than £5k I’d say.

Do you need to buy furniture?

£10k is low for a deposit but can be done.

Are your salaries enough to get a mortgage of £170k?

Have you got a mortgage at 95% ltv? Very risky at this time for a small deposit as houseprices are reported to be unstable

I'm out of the loop on this one is there still stamp duty? Is that included in your other 10k?

Emergency broken boiler fund, 3-4k.
Fees: survey 500, conveyencer 1600, removals, how long is a piece of string.

@BeeBelle16 no stamp duty for FTBs up to 425k. After March 2025 it goes back to 300k.

Deposit seems low.
Fees are generous.
Will you get a 95% mortgage for 170k?

It does sound doable although some key information is missing. If your current position allows you to save significantly I’d be tempted to save more of a buffer as the market is currently falling and has lower to go. If you’re in more of a hurry haggle HARD and be wary of overpaying. Use the pre covid level of pricing as a guid for what a property is worth.

Really, you need £17k minimum for a deposit. You will miss out on some mortgage deals only having a 5% deposit & most likely pay higher interest. Why not wait & save like mad for a year, the market may have settled down by them & waiting could save you a lot of money.

Look in to the fees. From memory our solicitor fees were £2k ish. Plus a bit for moving etc. if it was £17k deposit and £3k fees, that would put you at a 90% mortgage which is more realistic than 95%.

My son is buying at the moment ,

He has he’s got a huge deposit so managed to get a five year fix at 4.8
check with some solicitors as the one my son is using gives a £300 discount if you are a key worker

But solicitors are 2k ( as he is having a deed of trust written to protect his deposit )
moving from his flat to his house 1500
Sons partner parents is covering this

survey level 2 is 600 inc vat which I'm paying for and I’m paying for the white goods and blinds

if you put 4K each into a liSa this year that will get you an extra 2k. - 1k each in each LISA

If you do the same next year that’s a further 2k extra for free so that potentially boosted your deposit by 4k in just over a year

I agree with everyone else. You don't need that much for fees because you're not selling anywhere, and because you won't be paying stamp duty on a house at that price. 5k for fees will be plenty, bung the other 5 towards your deposit and see if you can bump it up a bit further still to get to a 10% deposit.

It's not advisable to buy with such a small deposit in a falling market, but sure it is possible. Why not focus hard on saving and wait for the prices to find their new level ? You will get more choice of products if you can at least get the deposit up over 10%.

You may struggle to get a 95% mortgage with how the market is. That a very high LTV. What’s the plan if the property you want to buy is down valued?

Although some are saying it is difficult to get a 5% mortgage, I have recently gotten one with Skipton at 5.03% applying back in April so if your going to try I'd recommend them. Their mortgage advisor was very useful. This was on a property for 210,000.

Only note is that I don't drive, no nursery fees and pretty much no outgoings that would have effected it. One child.

You'll be looking at £1200 monthly repayments, in the current market it may not be advisable.

Good points everyone. We most certainly don’t want to pay anymore than £700 a month for a mortgage….. is this a ridiculous thing to say?
If we up our deposit to 15k or 20k for say a 170k house, would the monthly mortgage be lower then? 🫣🫣

Not that much!

Use a mortgage calculator. I suspect for a £700 repayment for a £170k property you'd need a 50k deposit

Probably more than the mines around 700 and I have a mortgage of about 125 on a 3.9 mortgage rate, which is long gone.

Just did the maths for a £180k property you need a 60k deposit for £700pcm repayments.

I calculated that with a 5.5% mortgage over a 30 year term

It wouldn’t lower it by much. That’s a pretty small deposit. Could you look at a smaller property?

You can use this to play about with the numbers - https://www.moneysupermarket.com/mortgages/welcome/hub

you can have a 5% mortgage so your deposit is fine; first time buyers you wont have stamp duty. Think about: Solicitors fees, survey, any extra checks (gas/electricity), then to move out, hire a van etc. Ben i think you’ll manage!

Oh jeez good luck with that! You need a far bigger deposit then.
we bought on 5%, house value £230000 few months ago and mortgage payment is £1200!

We've just bought a house for 173k - we put down 30k deposit and our monthly repayment is £840 - we got a pretty good deal for the current climate as well