does a sensible mortgage get a sensible priced house ?

GucciMane

^What he and the rest said.

ukcarper

MrsE wrote: »

Its the county as a whole. Its based on averages.

My point is that even in one county there is a lot of variation I live less than 20 miles from Cobham but a similar house in Cobham to mine would cost at least half as much again if not more.

ukcarper

Would 100k be unaffordable for someone on 20k I don’t think so if they put down a 20% deposit

Martinslovechild

whathavewedone wrote: »

Back in 2006 when I was on maternity with my first child and watching a lot of daytime telly I remember every other advert seemed to be aimed at getting people who had low incomes/county court judgments/previous repossessions/bad credit ratings to borrow money/get mortgages from them.

Looking back on it now it was completely and utterly bonkers.

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't it the banks lending to the very people you describe (i.e. sub-primers) which fast-tracked the economy into this sorry mess in the first place?

BTW: A lot of salaries in London tend not to be as high as many people imagine. This is simply because there's a potential pool of about 7,000,000 people to choose from when advertising a new position (meaning that there's a very good chance that there are lots of skilled employees who might apply). Because there are so many applicants, it's therefore not mandatory to offer large salaries to attract them.

It's actually more difficult (read: expensive) to recruit people in places just outside of London (e.g. High Wycombe, Reading, Marlow) because they're more difficult to commute to than somewhere on the main tube lines, especially for people who live on the opposite side of London.

MrsE_2

ukcarper wrote: »

My point is that even in one county there is a lot of variation I live less than 20 miles from Cobham but a similar house in Cobham to mine would cost at least half as much again if not more.

What part of "average" was unclear?

Martinslovechild

MrsE wrote: »

What part of "average" was unclear?

It's worth noting that the average salary of a first-time buyer is higher than the average UK salary overall.

According to National Statistics, the average overall UK salary is £24976 (£479 per week multiplied by 52.143 weeks) (based on April 2008).

There's also an interesting report from Nationwide which discusses affordability in some detail. You can view it here.

Hectors_House

ukcarper wrote: »

Would 100k be unaffordable for someone on 20k I don’t think so if they put down a 20% deposit

And how many people do you know with a 20% deposit in savings?

Folks today are more likely to have £20k in credit card debt.

I'm on a below average wage (just below £20k a year) and just bought a house. The only way I judged it to be affordable was by getting the asking price down enough to ensure I only have a mortgage of £60k (after putting a 10% deposit down) plus enough left in the bank to tide me over for three months should I loose my job.

As you can see, I still thought taking on £100k of debt too big a risk at my salary level.

ukcarper

MrsE wrote: »

What part of "average" was unclear?

My point is that average house price even in the context of one county is not really a very useful measure.

ukcarper

Hectors_House wrote: »

And how many people do you know with a 20% deposit in savings?

Folks today are more likely to have £20k in credit card debt.

but thats thier fault not the housing market

Thrugelmir

sjaypink wrote: »

i cant seem to find figures for 'the south of england' and london in one place... (there was a thread a while back- by mitchaa i think- which had a link to stats of local house prices v local average wages- anyone remeber?).... anyway, i remember being surprised at quite how different the ratios were across the country (eg what the !!!!!! wages here could buy in hull!) ...heres what i could find on a quick search:

average wages south west

average house prices south west

from those (random selection btw), average wage v house price:

Torbay £24,134 - £184,477

Dorset £25,131 - £254,471

Swindon UA £32,173 - £151,449

Bath & NE Somerset UA £26,329 - £266,164

Bournemouth unitary authority £39,114 £205,715

South Gloucestershire UA £30,732 - £187,779



a quick look at that, it doesnt look particularly neat.

swindon and perhaps bournemouth appear affordable... whilst s gloucs and torbay have simlar average house prices, the average wages are very different: torbays ratio is over 7x. dorset and bath 10x.

I would be surprised if the wages figures for Swindon are representative. Unless there are some very high earners that skew the average figures. This makes comparison to house prices rather meaningless.