whats your current housing situation?

Ed_Zep

Bought this 3 bed semi in 2004 for £158K. outskirts of Nottingham. No idea what it's worth now but love living in this house. Nottingham is nothing like it's been portrayed. It's a bit dull but a lot of British cities are.

Been fortunate enough to go from an 83K mortgage to 50K in 4 1/2 years by overpaying when I can. Also, I'm lucky in that I have a 0.5+BofE tracker mortgage so it's only 1.5%.

I save in a cash ISA. Think it will be a good time to buy shares soon.

Davesnave

Sold a couple of properties, both owned outright; one in 2007 and one last month, in/around Bath. Now living in a private rented 4 bed just up the road from our old place, where we still own a small area of land. This house is basic, but it's big, the rent's cheap and the landlord is 125 miles away. Hanging on here till daughter finishes college in the summer.

Sitting on our money, most of it on fixed rates over 6%, we don't need to make any hard decisions at the moment, but ultimately we'll buy something with acreage in a quiet part of Devon, Cornwall or West Wales. We want to run a holiday let and try to go as off-grid as we can for water & fuel.

At the moment I'm just enjoying playing hard to get with the agents. For years we watched property with land accelerate away from us, but now we see it returning, albeit slowly, to more affordable levels. There are already places out there that we could buy tomorrow, but for that reason, there's no longer any rush.

eden37

Bought a flat in 1992 for £23k with 100% mortgage.Moved in with OH 1993 and rented the flat-sold it in 1999 for 10k!! Luckily had paid the mortgage off by then as sharesave schemes had done really well.OH house mortgage free so sold it and bought house together for £40k with £20k mortgage in 1995 and got married.Sold that house in 2000 for £45k and bought next 1 for £72k.Sold that 1 for £155k in 2003 and bought next 1 for £170k which we are still living in!!Phew!!This house is 4 bed semi with loads of space and we are here till we get rid of the kids! Mortgage is £43k but remortgaging to £51k to clear all debt and take advantage of a staff base rate mortgage of 1%. We were going to clear £8k debt with sharesave but shares have nosedived from £4.50 to 45p!!! Hanging on to them probably till retirement and will sell when they recover!!Mortgage will reduce from £380 to £320 even with extra borrowing but if rates go up so does mortgage!! I am planning on overpaying it as much as I can. It will be paid off max 14 years less if we overpay.

deepintrouble

Heres one to get you all thinking and/or laughing. Any practical advice would be greatfully recieved.

Split up from (ex) wife in late 2006. We have a house that no one lives in that has a £144k mortgage and is valued at £130k at best.

My new partner has a house of her own where we live. This has approx £10k of equity in it.

We're looking to part x mine and sell hers but are about as popular with builders and mortgage people as a dose of the clap! We could in theory part x mine but the house we would have to buy would be at the top end of what we could afford, be in a place we dont really want to live, and also be a new house that neither of us really want. However we cant even do that as we dont have the 15% deposit required. Consequently i'm left paying 1/2 a mortgage on a house i dont want or need thats depreciating in value every day that it sits unsold.

In conclusion, we dont have a big enough deposit, have too many houses and want to get rid of them both and get one between us. We dont want anything extravagant. Just somewhere small where we can be comfortable and look to start a family. Is this too much to ask?

If this sounds like its getting me/us down then thats actually pretty accurate. I have good days when i can see an end to this situation, then when another option becomes a dead end things look very bleak indeed. I've considered every option up to and including handing back the keys, declaring myself bankrupt, even burning the place down, with or without the ex wife in it is an option at present?

Mr_Pickwick

We bought our 4 bed detached house in 2002 for £184k, taking out a mortgage of £104k. House value at the peak was around £325k. Not sure what it's worth now, but am guessing maybe £275k. It's not too important as not planning to sell in the near future. Current outstanding mortgage is £49k.

We are taking advantage of the low tracker rates to overpay mortgage and hope to be mortgage free in June 2011 if circumstances don't change as a result of the Recession.

After that, we will be on the lookout for our dream house, but I am determined not to have another mortgage as I just hate paying the bank interest and being at their mercy should you get into difficulties.

tessie_bear

we bought house for £25000 in 1996...bit of a dump...did it up a bit and sold in 2007 for £200000.....2007 bought our house 6 bed with paddock at back for £750000....no mortgage we got left a bit of money.....dont care what its worth now as never intend to move...cant stand the stress of it

carrottsforlunch

Bought 2 bed house in 2002 for £78000 ,worth today about £115000 - £120000 i think . Mortgage is £43000 with repayments of £250ish a month . Seriously thinking about overpayments but just can`t seem to take that step with construction the way it is :eek: even though work at the moment is fairly positive .

seven-day-weekend

Mortgage-free house in the Midlands, which we have owned since 1976 (paid three grand! for it but borrowed extra for improvements); paid off in the mid-1990s after about eighteen years by making small overpayments whenever possible. Lived in by our son, one lodger and two cats. Probably worth about 120K.

Mortgage-free house in the mountains in Spain, paid for from sale of small inherited property. Then bought tiny adjoining derelict house for cash and now have a bigger house! Paid around 80,000 euros for the two (including renovation). Lived in by me and my husband. Probably worth about 100k euros but if we were to sell at this present time we would take whatever someone would be willing to pay.

HH62

Mortgage free 3 bed detached in a lovely 'sought after' village in Cheshire bought last summer. I reckon it's worth very close to what I paid for it, I was a cash buyer and the seller was desperate, BUT I've done a lot of renovation so I've 'lost' a fair amount of money that way. No plans to sell so really I don't care too much how little/how much it's worth. I lived in rented for a couple of years, hated it, and finally found a house exactly like I wanted in the precise location I wanted. To me it's a home, not a means of investing.

barnaby-bear

SamIAm wrote: »

Ah, this would make sense. I remembered a Top Gear episode where they commented on the number of words for snow in a particular language (in Finnish IIRC). And we all know how well informed the Top Gear presenters are on subjects such as this . More fool me for taking them literally!

Anyway - sorry all; this has gone completely off topic!

And the swedish have 847 different words for laminate :rotfl: