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FTB ... Should we buy now or wait?
Comments
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LittleStar wrote: »I really feel like I am stuck in an awkward place ... my heart says buy a house, but my head says wait! ... My parents think we should wait, and my otherhalf thinks we should buy ... I am so confused, I really don't know what to do for the best
... .x.x.
I believe that you are correct from a timing point of view. Prices are dropping at an annualised rate of 25% at the moment, so putting off any purchase for even just 6 to 12 months should help quite a bit.
More to the point, I don't understand how your partnership works, and maybe you and your OH need to think this through. Some things can be individual decisions or don't really matter that much. (Which football team to support/ colour of the sofa, for example are really not that important.) However, taking on an enormous mortgage needs to be a joint decision, ie one that you are both happy with. Sadly, relationships do end, and around 50% of marriages end in divorce. It's not really fair of your OH to try to rail-road you into such a commitment. My point is that many things in a marriage are a compromise, but this sort of commitment needs to be one that you are both (almost) 100% happy with.
Sorry if I'm sermonising.No reliance should be placed on the above! Absolutely none, do you hear?0 -
Who offered the OP a £170k mortgage with just a 6% deposit, and do they want to buy some magic beans?Bankruptcy isn't the worst that can happen to you. The worst that can happen is your forced to live the rest of your life in abject poverty trying to repay the debts.0
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Hey LittleStar :hello:
Everyone seems to be agreeing with what you think except boyfriend (and estate agent of course!)
Go with you gut feeling
A - you dont think its the right time
B- you are concerned about having more money behind you
C - you havent even seen anything worth buying anyway so he needs to hold his horses
Right now a good move would be to live together for at least six months this will be a really good test run as to how compatible you are together and give you both a good understanding of knowing what you want from the place you buy before you buy it.
Stick to your guns you are right to want to wait abit:j Where there is a will there is a way - there is a way and I will find it :j0 -
Sorry I am painting a bad picture of my otherhalf ... he is not as bad as it must seem ... We are very much in love and we really want to live together in our own home, and I think his feelings of wanting to own our own house is clouding his judgement ... that it is not a sensible thing to do right now!
We have been discussing the option of buying for a few months now, and as I am getting deterred even more, he's thinking its an even better idea ... we do communicate, and he has said that if I am not 100% sure then we won't buy yet ... but he is convinced it is a good time to buy ... so this is why im stuck in a rut ...
We have been together for nearly 6 years ... and I do spend a lot of time at his so I think we know each other quite well by now (although you never can tell
lol)
Thanks for you advice .x.x.0 -
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Don't spend more than £5k on a wedding.
It's just one day and £5k will get you a fantastic day if you shop around and pull in favours from friends and family.
Why be in debt for the next 10 years just to impress a handful of people for a matter of hours? I know so many people who are struggling because of a huge wedding/honeymoon, it's just crazy.
Buying a house? Well if America are ahead by 2 or so years it means within the next 18 or some months we could see up to a 30% reduction-readjustment of house prices here in the UK.
A home owner in our road has dropped his asking price £60k in the last 12 months and still can't sell. The local McCarthy and Stone retirement bloack up the road also just lowered their flats by £55k.
Give it another year or so, save up a bigger deposit and benefit even further from the drastic house price reduction that is an absolute dot on the card. It's a mathematical certainty that a stagnation of FTB will bring the market down as it has several times before.0 -
the things that I remind myself whenever I get totally wrapped up in buying a house is:
1. At the moment we can afford a 2bed flat in our dream area, if prices drop some more, we could afford a small house with a garden, woohoo!
2. Now, we look forward to all the house price measures coming out and seeing how much of a % drop there is. If we bought a house, we would absolutely dread these times.
3. For the past few years, savings could not keep up with the inflation in house prices so you felt like you were falling so far behind (interest on savings about 5-6%, annual HPI +10% etc). Thats why a lot of people bought houses on such tiny or nonexistent deposits - the feeling of "if I don't buy a house now, i never will be able to". Now savings are wildly outstripping house prices. Make the most of this brilliant situation while you can.
As others have said, apart from everything else in your post, now is NOT the time to buy a house with <10% deposit. I know the yearning to have your own place, and I think at some point I'm going to submit to it before every last drop has been wrung out of this housing crash, but starting off with such a small deposit is really asking for trouble. Ask your bf - why buy something now when you can get it for much less in 6 or 12m. I really would recommend he comes to this forum and follows some of the links on some posts to press articles (some of the threads here can be confusing and its important to be too swayed by any one person's opinions; try and stay balanced). Tell him you are doing research to come to your own conclusions and he needs to do the same if you are to take on board his point of view.0 -
LittleStar wrote: »We have been discussing the option of buying for a few months now, and as I am getting deterred even more, he's thinking its an even better idea ... we do communicate, and he has said that if I am not 100% sure then we won't buy yet ... but he is convinced it is a good time to buy ... so this is why im stuck in a rut ...
I think this is the crux of the matter, you are more clued-in than he is! You say your parents aren't really in favour of the idea either, so could you and your OH talk to them about it? -- they may have some personal experience to share that will help him see the situation more clearly. There have been 3 (previous) major house price crashes since the 1970s, and once prices starting falling they didn't stop -- in each case they fell for several years and then stayed level for some time before rising again. So you need to convince your OH that there is no reason to rush and all the reasons in the world NOT to.
From what you've said it sounds like he's getting his advice mostly from the EAs so he may need reminding that they don't have your best interests at heart! They are selling only 1 house per week on average so they're pretty desperate for sellers, they'll do anything they can to convince you that it's a great time to buy. If you had a much larger deposit and were really keen to own a home, then you might be able to justify it, but not with just a 6% deposit. If you buy now are not likely to have any equity in your home for years to come.
On a personal note, we started looking to buy a house earlier in the year and with prices falling were really tempted to leap in. But we had second thoughts and even our mortgage advisor advised us to wait (and he's not getting his commission if we don't buy now!). His point was that that house price crashes don't come around that often (the last one started in 1989) so this is really a once-in-a-lifetime chance to buy a *good* property at *good* price and end up being financially better off for decades to come -- if you can just wait it out a bit.
Good luck with whatever you decide.0
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