A change in sentiment

carolt

Congratulations, IveSeenTheLight! :beer:

Hopefully, you may then be able to appreciate in practice neverdespairgirl's point that once you have kids, 3.5 times joint earnings is rarely feasible! There IS a reason why the traditional multiple was never 3.5 times joint earnings but 3.5 X single, 3 X single + 1 times second income, or 2.5/2.75X joint earnings.

When I started having children I made the very deliberate decision to stay at home with them as much as I possibly could (even though, initially, I was the higher earner). Obviously, if we'd been looking at mortgages on a multiple of 2 full incomes, of course we would have been able to buy any number of suitable houses years ago, HPI or no HPI.

But have I ever regretted that decision?

Not for one second. Time with my little ones can't be equated to anything in monetary terms. I put my biological cycle over the housing market cycle, and know that for me it was the only possible decision. I'd love to own my own home - I have ABSOLUTELY NO desire to own one BTL let alone more, on the other hand! - but not at the expense of what really matters to me.

You've sometimes (somewhat patronisingly) asked me what on earth I've been up to over the last 10 years of HPI or so and why I didn't buy years ago. You're about to find out!

Hope it all works out for you, IveSeenTheLight!

IveSeenTheLight

carolt wrote: »

Congratulations, IveSeenTheLight! :beer:

Hopefully, you may then be able to appreciate in practice neverdespairgirl's point that once you have kids, 3.5 times joint earnings is rarely feasible! There IS a reason why the traditional multiple was never 3.5 times joint earnings but 3.5 X single, 3 X single + 1 times second income, or 2.5/2.75X joint earnings.

When I started having children I made the very deliberate decision to stay at home with them as much as I possibly could (even though, initially, I was the higher earner). Obviously, if we'd been looking at mortgages on a multiple of 2 full incomes, of course we would have been able to buy any number of suitable houses years ago, HPI or no HPI.

But have I ever regretted that decision?

Not for one second. Time with my little ones can't be equated to anything in monetary terms. I put my biological cycle over the housing market cycle, and know that for me it was the only possible decision. I'd love to own my own home - I have ABSOLUTELY NO desire to own one BTL let alone more, on the other hand! - but not at the expense of what really matters to me.

You've sometimes (somewhat patronisingly) asked me what on earth I've been up to over the last 10 years of HPI or so and why I didn't buy years ago. You're about to find out!

Hope it all works out for you, IveSeenTheLight!

I followed up the point I made regarding a higher joint income multiple by saying, which is what we did

This will allow : -

• couple to pay off mortgages quicker before kids come along (i.e. not into holidays, expensive cars etc),

I currently own three properties, of which I am not paying any of the mortgages (two BTL's in Scotland and a company paid allowance abroad for our home).

If I was to sell up now and return to base I would be left with a mortgage much less than 3.5 times my salary (not joint), possibly even mortgage free

We've planned for our time to have children, made sure we were in a finacial position to do so and I'll only be 35 when the wife gives birth.

I am not going into being a father unknowingly having always spent my life in a large family (brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews etc) quite often having them over for summer holidays etc. Being the oldest in my family, I have seen many of the issues surrounding living in a growing family

I've spent the last 15 years of my life preparing financially for this moment and know I have done the right thing doing so. I'll be able to enjoy them growing up without much of the financial worries that is around.

Back to my 2 BTL's, I am rapidly repaying them (well my tenants are) currently showing them to be fully paid off within 10 years.
Guess they could become good rental returns for providing for university education and even for the children as living accomodation.
Not bad to be 45, with no mortgage and 2 BTL's paid for and children under 10

I guess the difference between us may be that I choose to ensure that we were financially secure before starting a family while you enjoyed being a parent earlier in life.

Good luck to you too:T

adr0ck

Please stop trying to compare the Japanese housing market with the UK's

In the last year the Japanese started building over 1,100,000 new homes

This year the UK will build less than 100,000

Thats 1 million extra homes the Japanese build year on year

Japan has roughly double our population therefore we should be building 550,000 homes a year if you would like to compare markets

but then again you can't really do that, you see the Japanese don't like to live in old houses (20+ being old) (hence - why they build so many) whereas were almost the opposite in the UK (we generally prefer old houses - we don't have earthquakes)

If we did have the same sentiment as the Japanese wonder how everyone would feel if they were in a 20+ year old house and it was suddenly worthless - wonder what that would do to the market :eek:

carolt

To be fair, IveSeenTheLight, when I left the UKto work abroad, suitable properties cost 60-65K (2 bed garden flats in nice area) and 3 bed houses c. 100K. Quite affordable on a multiple of 1 let alone 2 earnings, with a healthy deposit. When I returned 3 months later, happily pregnant, in my absence the same 2 bed flats had risen to 100K plus - around 50% jumps in 3 months. We thought that was outrageous and decided not to buy - and yes, I do know the same flats are now upwards of 250K (but coming down again).

But we didn't choose to have children versus financial security; it just happened that the point when we decided to have children was the point that after years of stasis, prices went mad. Such is life. Frustrating, certainly, but I doubt few would have foreseen quite how insane prices would continue to be....

Still - sure you've done it the right way for you; 35 seems quite old to be starting a family to me, though I dare say 37 seems old to be a FTB to you!

Each to his own!

adr0ck

sorry guys just read that the 1,100,000 homes the Japanese started was actually down 30 to 40% as they introduced a new building permit which slowed eveything right down

so sorry they even build more than i thought

IveSeenTheLight

carolt wrote: »

Still - sure you've done it the right way for you; 35 seems quite old to be starting a family to me, though I dare say 37 seems old to be a FTB to you!

Each to his own!

Both ways are the right way for our own personal needs, which is why we made those decisions.

I'm sure we both will have benefited and lost out in different ways throughout the years

MissMoneypenny

I was able to buy a house and have children before I was 30.

It seems a shame that these days, people are forced to make a choice. Roll on back to the days when people could have both.

neverdespairgirl

dopester wrote: »

That last graph of yours I find a bit confusing to draw any sort of conclusion from (although I am sleepy).

Funny that, at 5am!

neverdespairgirl

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

I fully agree and something that I will know in the near future having recently received good news


This will allow : -

• couple to pay off mortgages quicker before kids come along (i.e. not into holidays, expensive cars etc),
• .

Many congratulations! When is the baby due? I gather from other comments in the thread that this is your first?

The trouble with the "paying off mortgages before children come along" idea is that if you go go uni, pay off student debt, establish yourself in a career, get a mortgage, with Mr. / Mrs Right, and pay some of it off before having children, you could find you are getting on a bit.

I had my son aged 27, which is, increasingly, uncommonly young for a professional, university-educated woman. Almost none of my mates have children yet. But fertility does start to decline after age 35, and women, in particular, do have to bear this in mind.

OH and I are very lucky, financially. We both earn a good living, and have captial for the horrible reason that OH's parents died in their early 50s when I was pregnant, OH was 26, and his brother in his late teens.

But we are definintely shelling out a hell of a lot more than we would do if we were DINK-ies.

neverdespairgirl

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

But I do and can agree that the credit crunch and other factors such as fuel / food inflation will play a factor throughout the UK. In effect, it makes the affordability ratio's worse throughout the UK, in all areas. I've never debated against this

I simply think that those that are worst affected by affordability will affect house prices the worst and the areas of lower rate of affordability will be affected the least.
Still affected, just affected less

I think we are agreeing. So I will stop arguing!