Budgeting for 1st buy- any advice?

smeets

Hi everyone,

Im hoping to buy a 1 bedroom flat in London in the next 12 months (dependidng on the current economic situation of course).

I currently live with my aprents but feel that i need my own space now so have started saving for a deposit etc.

However i would like some advice/tips on costs that i should take into account other than the mortgage, e.g. utilities etc. e.g. I would have no idea how much the avergae gas bill for a 1 bed flat in London is, or the cost of buildings/home insurance for that matter. Getting a vague idea of these things would allow me consider how my=uch ithings will actaukly cost me per month nad then allow mwe to get a more realistic view of whether i can actually afford it. Therfore at this stage i am just doing my research.

Would welcome any advice/tips regarding this, many thanks

Debt_Free_Chick

Is it just the bills in the new place you need? Do your savings cover things like solicitor's bill, moving costs, stamp duty etc?

smeets

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

Is it just the bills in the new place you need? Do your savings cover things like solicitor's bill, moving costs, stamp duty etc?

Hi DFC,

Yep, just bills in new place. But if you have any tips regarding anything else then that would be welcomed too,

thank you!

MoneySavingSpender

Go to the Council website of where you want to move too and check the their Council Tax bands.

Gas/Leccy/Water will vary but not by much, £150/month would be a rough guesstimate for a studio/1bedroom flat depending how much you use gas and leccy.

Mobile/Landline/Broadband + insurances on top roughly makes that £250/month approx, maybe more, add mortgage on top of that.

What have the mortgage calculators told you would be your initial payments?

smeets

MoneySavingSpender wrote: »

What have the mortgage calculators told you would be your initial payments?

Thank you for the reply, id probably be looking at something in the region of £750 per month on mortgage.

SGE1

MoneySavingSpender wrote: »

Go to the Council website of where you want to move too and check the their Council Tax bands.

Gas/Leccy/Water will vary but not by much, £150/month would be a rough guesstimate for a studio/1bedroom flat depending how much you use gas and leccy.

Mobile/Landline/Broadband + insurances on top roughly makes that £250/month approx, maybe more, add mortgage on top of that.

What have the mortgage calculators told you would be your initial payments?

I think those figures are a bit steep. I share a 1 bed flat in zone 1 in London, and we pay £40/month for gas and electricity (capped tariff), about £18/month for water (with water meter), £6/month for home content insurance (which I know is a good deal, as it was the best quote we got by far), and about £30/month for landline and broadband, which totals c.£100/month give or take a little.

smeets

thanks everyone, thats quite helpful.

looking to maybe buy in about a year or so. im not great with this kind of stuff so just researching things at the mo. as i said, not an expert but i keep hearing about the possibility that house prices will be coming down even further in the next few months? i suppose thats a whole other thread/debate

so if there is a good time to buy i would love to be ready for it. aiming to save about £8k for a deposit which will be topped up with about £5k from parents. would prefer to get soemthing in purpose built flats so that its a bit more secure. would probably therfore incur some communal costs too? also if its a purpose built flat and you pay communal costs do you need insurance for the building too?

it is a really scary prospect, just keep worrying about finances etc.. particularly as im doing it alone. so apologies if im asking silly questions

Chris2685

Not silly questions at all, this question is one of the major ones that I have been trying to research on myself.
One thing about gas & electricity bills is that it depends quite a lot of whether you have a gas oven or an electric one, and if you have gas heating or not.

In the 3 bed house that I live in at the moment with my girlfriends parents, I think they said they pay roughly £60 a month now for gas (gas is only used for heating). It has just DOUBLED since last year for them! I think they pay roughly the same per month for electricity too.
So it should be cheaper than that for a one bedroom flat I imagine!
Water rates vary from place to place, but SGE's figures seem about right to me.

To answer your other questions, you will have a service charge to pay which is usually a made up figure (or so it seems to me, as it varies massively depending where you live!) and is different depending on where you buy. You don't usually need building insurance, but will need contents insurance.

My tip as a FTB myself would be to work out how much you think it will cost per month and add 50% to be safe. If you can still afford it then you should be fine!

smeets

thanks Chris2685,

you're absolutley right, communal costs can vary so much depending on the area etc.

and as for bills, its so hard to have a general idea when prices of everything are soaring...

i guess its time to be saviing all the way. no more new bags and shoes

i also wondered what sort of prices i should be looking at for solicitors fees etc?

Chris2685

Most solicitors can provide you a quote online. The general rule of thumb is to keep around 5k back for solicitors fees, stamp duty and surveys. That's what my IFA told me anyway If you buy somewhere for less than 175k then that will save you at least £1750 which can be put towards your deposit instead.
While I was saving to buy a house for the past few years I always had it in my mind that I would have around 15k for a deposit, 5k for an emergency savings cushion for myself and 5k for other expenses involved with buying a house... Now that it is actually happening though, I have found that everything just kind of goes in the air and things change dramatically depending what you're looking to buy. Those figures were based on buying a flat for around 150k, but now we have managed to secure ourselves somewhere much better through the aid of a government scheme, allowing us to buy somewhere more expensive (some would say over-valued) which has totally thrown my estimations out of the window.
What I am trying to say is, budget for something, but don't expect it to actually be right when it comes down to it, especially if you're thinking a year ahead!

Mozette

smeets wrote: »

it is a really scary prospect, just keep worrying about finances etc.. particularly as im doing it alone. so apologies if im asking silly questions

Nothing silly about researching; the more research the better - IMO you're being sensible rather than silly.