If you are a millennial and own a property in London and surroundings

[FreeBeeBird]

How did you manage to do that and what type of place do you own? Do you have a partner and DC?
A big house with a garden seems to be such an ingrained staple in the British society but I struggle to understand how millennials (and even younger generations) can easily afford that in London and surroundings, given the crazy prices and high rates at the moment.
How did you manage to buy a property here?

One premature death of a parent for us. Would rather have still the parent to be quite honest.

Was born in '79 so is that a millennial?

Own a house and have three children. My partner left his perm job and worked as a contractor for a few years and we saved the money.
Then we bought in a scuffy area.

I reckon 99% of people were given money by their parents or inherited it.

Aimed myself at a high-earning career,, took on a second job for a bit, bought a v small flat in a good SW location in my 20s, now in my 30s having traded up to a 3 bed with a garden in a gorgeous bit of SW London. DH was a post-3-bed additio to my life and moved in with me (my property, my mortgage) and is renting out his flat. No children, no plans for any.

I feel very lucky! Also to have been at a uni which opened my eyes to high-earning careers I had never heard of before.

Not a millenial myself but my DD is (just, I think!) and she owns a flat, without inheritance or significant deposit help from us. How she did it, a combination of factors really, she's a bright, hard working person (not to say that others aren't of course) and got a good degree followed by a well paying graduate job. She lived frugally for some years in London (shared houses, no holidays etc) that enabled her to save a significant amount as deposit, she also invested wisely/luckily so grew her savings well. She got a 5% mortgage a few years ago back when these were more possible/affordable which enabled her to buy a small, not particularly attractive one bed flat in a rough area of outer London. She does have a partner which I guess has helped to some extent with her living costs again enabling some economies, although he hasn't contributed financially to the purchase of the flat. So a combination really, start from a place of relative privilege (good education, good health etc enabling you to get a high paying job), work hard and live frugally, add a dose of good luck then if you are prepared to make substantial compromises on size of flat, area and cosmetics, it is possible, but by no means easy and it's certainly gotten harder in the last few years with rising interest rates for mortgages.

As someone else says, having help from parents or an inheritance of course helps financially as does having two incomes to combine. I don't know many millenials even those doing very well in their careers that live in a big house with garden in London unless there's substantial family wealth behind them.

My father died when I was 21 and left me money. I bought my first flat in a very rundown area in SE London and it went up in value by the time I sold it. Now own a small terraced house in zone 4 SE London, it cost under £300k when I bought 10 years ago but houses have gone up since so couldn't buy here now. Can't afford to do it up either but at least it's mine. Single and childless.

36 now - Worked in pretty average salaried jobs but rents weren’t anywhere near as terrible and managed to get a deposit. Jumped on the help to buy scheme at 30 and got a 1 bed. It’s no use to me now, and a significant financial burden, and it won’t sell because Liz Truss destroyed the economy.

The low mortgage for five years allowed me and my partner to do a lot, but now we have a kid it’s a massive millstone round my neck.

That whole scam/scheme is a ticking time bomb, and it’s going to hit millennials the worst.

We bought a £520k property at age 28 near London. We had £120k gift from parents, £350k mortgage and £50k of savings. We have since spent 10 years extending and renovating it, and it's now worth £1.7m. Stretched ourselves to buy top of budget and lived through years of dust and chaos to get our dream home. Our mortgage is on a very low interest rate too. We've worked hard for it, but have also been very lucky along the way.

No you’re gen X

I’m 35, bought 2 years ago in an “upcoming” area of zone 4. No help or inheritance, grandparents all already dead and had no money and my parents are poor AF, never earned above min wage.

I saved a 10% deposit over about 10 years, found a very cheap (by London standards) 1 bed shoebox flat for 200k. I earned 45k at the time so a decent salary but not hard to achieve in London. No partner when I bought so I did it totally alone and honestly? It wasn’t that difficult. Saving 20k took a long time as I started off on a much lower salary when I moved to London a decade ago. I always chose house shares with cheap rent.

I’m not bothered about having a 4 bed house with a garden. I don’t really get the obsession with 4 bed detached properties to be honest, I don’t see it as a sign of status or achievement. My favourite kind of properties are European apartments with high ceilings and massive windows, but I’d settle for a bigger flat with an extra room for WFH

A big house with a garden seems to be such an ingrained staple in the British society

Only recently has this been a first home that people want and expect. Gen X and previous generations would have started with a flat and progressed to a bigger house with a garden as earnings increased and you had more equity.

Yes this is what we did. We're both millennials. We started with a flat in london, then a two bed house on the outskirts of london, and now a family home in Surrey. All three were renovation projects so we made some money on the second on in particular. We got a 5% mortgage on our flat and just getting on the property ladder was so helpful as we weren't then paying rent, everything went towards our mortgage. So our first deposit was £16,000ish for £315,000 flat. Since then we've worked our way up the ladder with bigger deposits each time.

Millennials too. I’m mid thirties and started with a tiny terraced starter house after saving for years, then progressed to a bigger house a few years ago. There was no way we could have afforded to go straight into a family sized house and we didn’t expect to.

Dh has a good job in tech, and I run a small business, both from working class background, no kids. Zero financial help from parents, no inheritance, not even a property bought in cheaper times that went up in value. I pretty much saved all of my 20’s and early 30’s so the deposit came from that and DH salary got us the mortgage. We live in a leafy 🥬 🫣 suburb in zone 2/3 in a cute little cottage.

Lived abroad in a country where living costs are lower, saved 3/4s of my salary over three years. Moved back to the UK and bought alone in Surrey aged 35, 15% deposit. Had to get a 34 year term on the mortgage though as interest rates are so high. Helps that that I managed to massively increased my salary and responsibility in that time, wouldn’t be possible on the £40k salary I had when I left London. If I had stayed in the UK and tried to save it would’ve taken far far longer, might not have happened at all.

Just moved out of London, but we owned 2 London properties.

First was a 2 bed flat in z2, NW (2015); 2nd was a 3 bed semi in z3 SE (2018). No parental help, and mortgage was eye-watering (but we have overpaid a fair bit). First property was 10% deposit.

DH is in the right career at the right time (and very good at it to boot) and I also earn decent money in a professional career. We also benefitted from living below our means for a long time, didn't have a child until a little later (and only had one), had a small wedding etc. Left London and now have a 5 bed house with .5 acre in a rural location (LTV c 50%)

We are older millennials (1983-85) so also benefitted from the tuition fees being lower, and the period of low interest rates.

I have two friends who have their own properties. One's dad died so the inheritence money from his death helped to pay for it (she would prefer him being alive to owning in London), and one's father also died when she was a baby but her mum already had quite a bit of wealth and a decent job so gave her a leg up on the property ladder, something I would never begrudge anyone for.

We did it the old fashioned way, saved for years firstly on modest public sector salaries, then ramped it up as we went into managerial roles. We are both from working class families so no help from our families.

The two things that really boosted our savings and enabled us to buy in the more desirable area on our shortlist were my partner doing a stint of short term but high paid project work, then COVID.

We live in a flat though, a house with a garden would have been unrealistic (unless we moved further out which neither of us fancied).

Both my children bought in London - they did trade apprenticeships. We paid their legal fees only.

I brought a flat in a rubbish part of London in 2012 for £170k stayed there for 2 years and sold it while there was a London property boom for £270k.
Moved back to my home town brought a house near a main crossrail station in 2014 with the profits from the sale of my flat. Property prices have boomed since mostly due to the crossrail.

House is now worth £750k there is no way I could afford this house now. Mortgage is £800 a month I earn £30k. Husband now lives with me in it but i brought on my own.

basically I was very lucky but I could see opportunities (that probably aren’t there now) and took a gamble moving to the area I did in London everyone thought I was mad

Live in the south east. Bought first house at 22 in 2004 with then DP (now DH). Bought a 3 bed semi in not a fantastic area for £128K (had saved £13K for deposit). Sold 3 years later for 150K. Bought next current house for £190K in a much nicer area and have extended it several times so now have a 4 bed semi in a very good area.

Mainly luck as we first bought when house prices were low compared to now. Interest rates were over 5% in 2004, but 5% of £115K is a lot less than 5% of £270K which is roughly what my first house would go for now.

Worked really hard in a decent paying job, prioritised savings over many other things (although didn't live completely frugally, still travelled and went out with friends, just didn't buy much stuff & stayed in a flat share rather than renting on my own), put c90% of every bonus into savings. Ended up with a £120k deposit aged 34 and bought a small relatively modern 2 bed next to a park in SW Zone 2. All done on my own with no help from parents.

I hope that at some point in the next 5 years or so I'll be in a position to get something with a garden.

When I graduated in 2007 I got a graduate job in Dubai in a bank, knowing that I would have a tax free income. I scrimped and saved, did not spend the per-dime travel expenses allowance, flat-shared, no drinking, dining, no personal travel/holidays, frivolous shopping etc, basically I didn't make the most of my 20s. When I returned to the UK after nearly 12 years (2019), I had a significant deposit for a house in SW London. No help from family. I landed the job in Dubai by chance as the bank employers in London didn't give me a look in as I didn't attend a red-brick uni. Only issue is that I only recently started contributing towards a private pension.

DD and her DH were able to save as lived in a family property with low rent and with a legacy had enough for a deposit and to buy a small house in an unfashionable part of London. They used some of their savings for the essential/ desirable works to be done and the rest is liveable with.

Well yes, perhaps the expectation of a young couple being able to live in a detached house with garden esp in a city is somewhat unrealistic, actually, the 'want' part is surely not so much a new and unreasonable idea, I imagine having a big house and land has always been aspirational throughout history and having a garden/land particularly if you can use to grow your own food was probably even more desirable pre-war than it is today. It's definitely not something only spoilt millenials want!

But the concept of a property ladder, starting with a small flat then trading upwards through renovation and capital growth, that is really quite new actually as an idea, it probably started with my boomer/post war generation who on the whole have done very well from the housing boom, possibly at the expense of today's younger people. It was very different in recent history, e.g. My lower-middle class war generation parents bought a terraced house with (small) garden as their first home post-marriage in their 20s for some absurdly tiny sum, 5 shillings and sixpence or something, and that wasn't unusual for the time. It wasn't a huge house or anything but they didn't need to 'trade up' at all, they stayed happily there for 50 years+. My early 20th century working class maternal grandparents rented rather than bought but again their first (very modest!) home was one they stayed in pretty much for life, my paternal grandparents were a little richer but again didn't do a lot of moving around, I think they bought an initial house when they were first married and then maybe did move to somewhere bigger a few years later when their income increased due to grandfather's business dong well but definitely not multiple moves over the course of a lifetime. Going back even further to Edwardian/Late Victorian great grandparents they were a mixture of in service/living in tied accommodation, working class or blue-collar workers who rented and wouldn't ever have owned property at all and farmers/agricultural workers who lived rurally so very different housing situations to what's normal today and the idea of any of them climbing a property ladder is absurd.

I'm not saying that today's generation aren't at all unrealistic or unreasonable, sometimes they can be and in many ways they have it much better than their ancestors did, no-one today would expect to live in the squalor of my grandparents' tenement flat where they brought up 4 kids with no hot water, no electricity etc, I just think it's also a bit silly to criticize millenials for not doing what 'our' generation did as though it's a self-evident historic truth that that's what sensible people have always done to end up living in lovely comfortable big houses by their middle age and make loads of dosh to boot. When in fact our generation is the one that's the blip in terms of having been able to do that relatively easily...

You are either born rich or you die poor.