How do people do it?!

retepetsir

I'm a little depressed at the moment .

How do people afford to buy a house/place to live in London or the SE of England?!

I'm currently living with my fiancee in a rented flat in West Sussex, SE England. She completed her nursing course nearly two years ago now (Sept 07), now working in a hospital in Sussex and I graduated last year, starting a graduate engineering job in London from last September (I commute).

We are being careful with our money as we'd like to buy a house when we can. Our joint income is pretty good compared to many, around £47k combined (I'm 24 and she's 22). Rent (£730)/bills/food/basics cost us about £1200 per month, and we usually save at least £600 per month.

However at this rate, and with 2-bedroom houses round here for £180-£200k we are going to have to rent for an awful long time before we can afford to buy at a decent rate. A 10% deposit would take around 2.5 years to save up, but nowadays apparently they want 20%+, which will take years and years to save. :eek:

Any hints and tips for saving/making the most of our money? London is an even more expensive place to live and my partner doesn't want to move their. She's very happy with her current job and I don't mind commuting, so unfortunately I don't think we will be moving to a cheaper county/area.

We havent been on a holiday yet or spent excessive amounts. When we do go out we don't spend much. It's the most amount of income we've ever had, yet we're hardly spending any of it on ourselves!

Sorry for that rant. If anyone has words of encouragement or hints/tips then I'd really appreciate them. I'm almost tempted to dump it all, move to north of London and buy a nice house for half the price of the ones around here.

ess0two

You've got age on your side for one,keep saving look a little further a field.

Strapped

I'd say you're in a good position - keep saving hard, prices will keep falling for a bit longer and then you'll be well placed to negotiate a good buy.

rosspwilliams

Cant you look at key workers benefit seeing as your girlfriend is a nurse? Although you have to pay it back eventually, you should be able to get a deposit using that.

That is what me and my girlfriend are planning to do.

retepetsir

rosspwilliams wrote: »

Cant you look at key workers benefit seeing as your girlfriend is a nurse? Although you have to pay it back eventually, you should be able to get a deposit using that.

That is what me and my girlfriend are planning to do.

I have looked at the key worker schemes, along with new house homebuy, part-buy/part-rent, etc, but they seem to be a bad deal/ripoff. Interest is charged on repayments, you never own the whole house and have to ask permission to change anything, the price of new builds is overpriced anyway and then when you come to sell you're back in the same position as you then don't have enough equity/capital to buy your new house.

Unless I missed something?

Soot2006

I'm in the south east (Brighton) and I feel your pain!
OH and I have been saving since 2001 - we have lived well, but not treated ourselves to any excesses. And only now, with house prices (two bedroom house) dipping under £200k for the first time in ages, have we finally made the step to buy a house. Although prices may fall further, the mortgage is only 2/3rds of our current rent and the house is bigger, more suitable in terms of family planning & pets, and better located for us!

lemonslap

We live in Kent and at the age of 29 and are now in the postion to buy, as said above you have age on your side (I know mums and dads like to hassle about getting into the property ladder), it has taken us 8 years to save £40k (although getting married didn't help!) 25% depoist on a joint salery of £56k so hang in there put a saving plan in action (how much I need to save per month) and you will get there!

Dinah93

Go on the up your income board and try out some of the ideas there. We have a lower combined salary of under 42k, however we do have lower monthly outgoings. That said, only around £600 of our basic wages go to savings. We make an additional few hundred a month from extra income to enable us to make a deposit. We're on track for 40k over 2 years.

wheresmydoshat

you sound in a very similar scenario to us.

we are in kent, joint earnings around £60k, similar outgoings to you (tho not sure how you manage to save £600 a month ?! well done).

we even have a 10% deposit saved up from years ago.

yet we are still going to struggle to get the sort of mortgage we will need for a 3 bedroom house (we have 1 child, and plan a 2nd sooner rather than later), which would be £200k+.

retepetsir

Thanks everyone

wheresmydoshat

key workers benefit

my partner is a teacher, and so far we have found nothing that would help us at all.