Not sure if I'm stuck

tech

Hi all,

I currently rent from my council and it's about £260 a month. The private rentals in the area (Gloucestershire) are anything from £400 to over £1000 per month where the lower end of that cost are houses that I cannot accept as they're always flats or 2 bedroom houses.

Despite the desire to one day have a home for my wife and kids I feel at the moment it may be best to leave things until the kids have left home. That could take another 18 years if we have another child or at the soonest another 10 years if we don't.

To buy a house in Gloucestershire or surrounding areas there's absolutely nothing under £100,000 and those that are under that amount are 2 bedroomed or flats again which we cannot have cos of the kids.

Is it worth my while even considering buying when the house costs are so high? I understand, from the time I had my own flat in the mid nineties, that you can borrow up to three and a half times your salary so I'd have to be earning about 50K to get anything near the size and room number of the house I'm currently renting.

How on earth does anyone get a mortgage these days when the house prices are so high but the amount you can borrow remains the same as 10 years ago? Or have I got it wrong and you can borrow more these days?

I guess I'm not in the same position as most other first time buyers who don't have the children already and don't need 3 bedrooms?

silvercar

If you rent from the council aren't you eligible to buy your property from the council at a hefty discount?

tech

Unfortunately not. The house was built with certain materials meaning it now has concrete cancer. Thankfully it's still in a pretty healthy state but it does mean we cannot buy it.

angeleyes

Couldnt you try to get an exchange and then evenually use your right to buy to buy that inc your discount

mummytofour

There are lots of ways ppl are buying homes these days, I know ppl who have been sold homes by their family at 50% discount, I know ppl that have been given huge deposits, ppl that got on the ladder at the right time, ppl that have started in a rabbit hutch and worked their way up.

Us, we were lucky enough 6 years ago to be given 2500 which was the deposit on a 95% morgage of a 50% share of a shared ownership home ( bought our share for 44k) house now worth a lot more and we have enough to use as a deposit for a new home.

BUT you need to remember that most ppl start at the bottom of the ladder, with NO CHILDREN so can buy the studio flat and work up.

Something will turn up, when the time is right!

tech

have looked into exchanges but they either are not worth the upheaval as they're too close or they're smaller than what we have now and we cannot move into something smaller for any reason. i guess we have another problem in that we don't actually hate our current home - it's quite nice, whereas other people wanting to exchange are either wanting to swap from an area that's too far away from our kids schools or it's an area that we don't want to move to. guess we're stick here forever then.

linda.b_4

Have you looked into the shared ownership schemes? Not sure just how they work but you buy a percentage of the property and rent the rest until you can afford to buy the whole lot, or at least something along these lines. If you look on the internet you will prob find more info. good luck

jesster_2

I know several people who've been in a similar position to you and who've found shared ownership is the answer. You buy part of the house and the housing association buys the other part. Several of my friends have now got houses which they would never have been able to afford in our area.

gentlepurr

hi tech, lenders these days seem to be more flexible on the salary multiple, and the length of the mortgage,for eg, over 35 or 40 years, many lenders will extend the mortgage beyond the traditional retirement date provided you cann show how you intend to pay it back. if you click on martgage price comparisons at the top of this forum, it gives you a link where you can insert your salary and mortgage required, so you can play about with some figures. find a fee free mortgage broker, perhaps via a local estate agent, and discuss your options with him. it costs nothing to find out, and you may be pleasantly surprised, i know i was!

xx