FTBs in London and surroundings: what is your mortgage like?

[AfterTheRainComesSun]

We are late 30s and planning to borrow around £450K to buy our first (modest) property near London. We have childcare fees too somour broker advised that we take on a 30 years mortgage to make it more affordable and then overpay after we finish with nursery. Still seems a lot of money now the interest rates are so high :(
I don’t see many other options as we have a DC and need a 2 bed place near good schools and with a good commute etc and prices for decent starter homes don’t get much lower than this. When I browse through similar posts on MN everyone seem to have a very small mortgage. Is this just because they are based in cheaper parts of the country or are we planning to do it the wrong way??

I think it’s largely because they are based in cheaper parts of the country.

Mortgage amounts often seen small to me too because I’ve bought in London and am now living in an expensive part of the south east. I mean, my mortgage is small now but I’m in my 50s. I’m amazed when I see so many people apparently paying off their mortgages in their 40s or even 30s.

Lots of people here aren’t on from London & loads bought property yrs ago.

Surely the amount you’re borrowing is relative to your income?

You should read through this post- https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4849732-to-ask-how-much-your-mortgage-is

Some absolutely eye watering figures on there, made me feel much better about mine!

Late 20s & 1 child, 50 minutes from London our mortgage is £120k. No way we could afford a £450k mortgage but if you can afford it then I don't see an issue

I think there are many larger mortgages around. £400,000 feels normal to me: all the decent houses where I live are at least this much.

I have a friend in London who has a mortgage for around £540,000 (for a flat). I'm well outside of London (east anglia) and my mortgage is £300,000 but this feels cheap- I had to move far out of town to find a house this price (3-bed semi). I have a friend in Manchester with a mortgage of around £400,000 (4 bed semi).

We're all FTB in our late 30s (before people mention 'starter homes') with 10% deposits, and bought in the last year or two, paying a large amount of our incomes to the mortgage.

I was paying a similar amount in rent per month to the cost of my mortgage, so it didn't feel that expensive. Before people start going on about all the "additional" costs of owning, in the last year I've paid out £140 (plumber and locksmith), so that argument feels like bollocks.

At the same time, interest rates have rocketed since I bought, so my monthly payment would be more if I had to borrow now: I pay around £1400 per month, but that might be more like £1900 per month at today's rates (I haven't done the maths recently, so I might be a bit out).

We have a house in zone 4 and our mortgage was £425k, which is less than 3 times our combined income. We took out a 30 year term but overpay to bring it down to 25. We took it out 2 years ago, so still on a 2.59% rate. Our mortgage amount is pretty typical among friends in a similar financial position.

Thanks all, makes me feel a bit better. I think MN is not a good representation of the reality I live in as London & surroundings are a whole different bubble compared to the rest of the country.

I feel that London is over-priced and wouldn't buy there unless I had to work there or couldn't bear leaving family. I'd also want to feel very, very confident that my job was not at risk if there is a big recession. With all that said, just avoid daft increasing service or estate charges that will swamp you 5 or 10 years down the line.

It is easy to have small or no mortgages if you were lucky enough to buy when house prices were geared around 2.5 Joint Salaries. It's a shame that lending loosened so much to allow prices to go bonkers.

It really depends on how much you earn and the prospects of your job. If your combined salary is heading toward 200k its perfectly reasonable. If your not much over a 100k combined your overstretching. London really is a different bracket. For most of the country a £450k mortgage is unusually high for late thirties.

If you can afford the payments, accounting for worse case scenarios, then why does it matter what others do. We’ve got a 33 year mortgage term, I’d rather have lowest possible payments and have money to enjoy ourselves