Parents giving me the cold shoulder over house buying

[DAISYBELLAxx]

Hello. Looking for some advice if possible please...

Myself and my partner (28 and 30) are looking to buy a property. I have equity in savings from a previous property I sold, and once he sells his flat (currently on the market) he should get a good amount of equity too.

We have seen a house we both really like in Surrey (where our families both live) and are wanting to do a second viewing. The house is offers around £500,000. We plan to put down a £100,000 deposit, which will also leave us both with £20,000-£30,000 in savings each. The house needs some modernisation and renovations, so this should give us some funds to do this (although we would need to pay people as we are not good at DIY!)

We have spoken to a mortgage advisor, who says that the monthly mortgage would be around £2,000 per month. I am a teacher who takes home £2,444 per month, and my partner takes home around £2,800 per month.

We have no children currently, but plan to within the next three years. I am also not very happy in my job and plan to go self employed (dog groomer) within the next few years.

My parents are giving me a bit of a hard time every time I bring up the house. They want us to buy closer to them, as they are saying that if we have children, it will make things easier for us (especially when I plan to go self employed) which I do understand. But they have told me that if we move over 20 minutes away, we are on our own with childcare and dog care (they currently look after my dog whilst I am working). However, they do not seem to understand that when we look closer to them, the house prices are so expensive (hence the £500,000 for this house). They showed us around a family friends house at the end of their road (which is for sale for £460,000) It was quite pokey and needed so much work - it wasn't right for us.

Our requirements are that we are looking for a forever home, with plenty of space for a family to grow and a decent sized garden for our dogs and also the groom room.

My parents view is that there is cheaper housing around. There is - but it just doesn't fit what we are after. And when it is cheaper, it is further away from my parents. They have said that if we go along with this house, things will go wrong and we will not be able to pay the mortgage. They are just being very negative in general (I do understand their points and know that they are only looking out for us, but they do not understand my arguments).

Myself and my partner currently have no credit (other than my car loan which is £222 per month).

I am feeling 50/50, as I always have valued my parent's opinion. And with children coming up and a change of job, I am worried about the bills being paid. My partner reassures me that all will be fine and that this is the perfect house for us, but I am feeling unsure due to my parents views.

Any advice? Is £2,000 per month too much? I used to pay £600 for a three bedroom house, but that was back in 2019. I just don't want us to struggle but I know something has to give. Thank you. :)

As an oldie can I just say that the previous pp’s are excellent.

Just another negative I will throw into the ring for when you have dc, OP. Like just about everyone - including me and DH at the time - you are assuming your future dc will be completely healthy with no issues. (Please God they are.) I was halfway through my pregnancy when we bought what turned out to be our “Forever “Home and, although the mortgage was a big move up from our previous one, it was just about manageable to pay everything on my salary as I was the higher earner back then.

Unfortunately, our DD had a very serious life threatening illness at 7 months old which left her with severe learning difficulties. There is no childcare for this! My DH had to give up his FT employment and just taught special classes on Saturdays. I became the breadwinner for several years and it was very tough all around.

Yes we got through it and thankfully are very comfortable now but that is because we didn’t massively stretch ourselves and we learned to live on a VERY tight budget.

This was 30 years ago and for whatever reason sadly autism cases appear to have increased massively during that time. Ask any mum - or Dad - on here who has an autistic/disabled child how hard life is both mentally and financially and I strongly suspect you will receive the same heartbreaking answers. Your DF is being ridiculous suggesting all will be ok on the figures you have provided.
Your decision making mantra should always be “What if.”

Sorry but I think you're misreading concern for judgement. The way you casually said you need your DH's "help" to cover childcare is a bit concerning.

And yes OP, absolutely you should get married before entering this level of financial commitment with your DP. Again it's not judgement but merely logical advice.

Genuinely? No idea if I’m being really honest.

Food is probably around £1k a month, bills another £1k? £250 on our only car, £300/400 on commuting costs? The rest seems to slip out of my hands (usually on holidays) but teenagers are expensive - we pay about £110 month for 4 phones, Sky is £100 a month etc. all adds up to exactly what we get paid, somehow 🤷🏻‍♀️😂

We have a similar income and similar mortgage, but 3 children. We save £1.5k a month, sometimes £2k.

Yikes 😧 I better get looking at our finances. I knew we haemorrhaged money but ouch. Do you have lots of holidays (praying you say you don’t- we spend about £10k ish a year on them) so maybe that’s why? 🙏🏻

It's not bitter. It's realistic.

We have one big holiday in the summer, 2 weeks usually. A week at Easter and a week at October half term, and a couple of weekends away in between. We don’t live frugally at all.

Gosh. Have you considered moving to another part of the country and spending half that on the house? Sounds like you could probably do with putting some distance between you and your parents too.

Also OP, if you are going to be changing jobs and go self employed that will make getting your next mortgage/re mortgage harder, so i would day you need to be looking at a minimum of a 5 year term to allow you the chance to go self employed and build the business up enough, otherwise when it comes to remortgage after 2 or 3 years the bank may not lend you enough.

What the bank will lend you will also decrease as soon as you have a child

Personally, I think you'd be completely mad to spend that much on a house on your salaries. It's not just the £2k a month (roughly half of your combined take home), but electricity, gas, water, internet, car insurance, etc, etc. Plus you plan to renovate?

You can't afford this house.

Sorry OP but I think the house is way over budget. For info our mortgage is £975 and with council tax, ultilites, food etc our monthly bare bones outgoings are around 2 grand. We can afford this and have a bit left over for saving and days out etc but have you factored in your change of career? Also being self employed and having kids has it’s pros and cons re maternity leave. Is there anything else you’ve seen that you like? 2k is a big commitment in my opinion. Best of luck

I would buy it. But I wouldn't be keeping 30k each in savings. You'll be paying 4.5% interest back over 30 years to cover money you have in the bank. That's madness. 10k each to cover job loss, stick the rest in the deposit and lower the amount borrowed.

Sorry can’t edit my post for some reason. Just to add, I’m your age and we have just bought our forever home. The market has gone crazy in the past few years, and we borrowed as much as we could afford as we were worried of buying something smaller/temporary and never being able to move again due to being out priced. We don’t regret that decision at all, we love our home, but I still think you can’t afford this and are being a bit naive.

We have similar take home pay and mortgage. But when we took out the mortgage our combined income was around £10k. We have unfortunately changed our income for various reasons and I would not choose to be in this position. No holidays, struggling to replace our car. To be fair we do have some debts due to our circumstances but with 3 kids it is tight!

Honestly get something smaller and cheaper

How on earth are you repaying £2000 on a £400k mortgage? I owe £240k and pay £2,200?????

OP

from your second post, you are having a rethink, which is good.

If you didn’t need a room for the dog grooming, could you get somewhere cheaper?

It will obviously depend on length of term and loan to value ratio obviously, we owe £290k and pay £1300

Are you both currently living in your partner’s flat and do your parents come there during the day to walk your dog?

Personally I think you are seriously overstretching if you are thinking of being self employed and having children at some point. 1/3 of your income max is the recommendation and if you drop income you may struggle

How much are you expecting to earn by dog grooming as opposed to teaching?

Goodness, that's too much mortgage to take on relative to your salaries and I'd be very surprised if a bank actually agreed to this despite what the mortgage advisor is saying. Your advisor sounds cr** even to suggest this is a sensible move.

That's too much every single month.

Get married and don't worry about a forever house. Not many but their forever house as a first time buy.

Money in your pocket when you've got kids is the best feeling ever.

The tone of it was pretty nasty considering lots of other posts have managed to convey similar points in a constructive way.

Omg listen to your parents.

This borrowing would be disastrous potentially. It's way too tight.

You'd be crazy to get a £2000 mortgage on your salaries whilst considering giving up work and starting a new business.

Listen to them. They clearly WANT and are OFFERING to help with childcare which is be try generous. They have a point.

We own 60% and have 19 years left 🤷‍♀️ OP will own 20% of her home!