First Time Buyer Costs of getting on the ladder question!

u01jet4

Hi,

I am 23, my boyfriend is 24 and we are soon beginning to save for our first place.

We will be looking to live in Edinburgh and my ideal house would be a 2bed house with own garden and driveway/garage. It seems there are quite a few on the market for around £150000 although I have the figure of £170000 in mind to be able to get a house in a nice area.

We only just graduated so are not on very high salaries. We are planning to each save £400 per month, bringing us to £9600 a year.

I have a few questions:

1) what would be a realistic, sturdy amount of a deposit to save for a house price in the region of £170,000?
2) what would be the total of ALL fees roughly (remember we are in Scotland although I don't know what a difference this will make)?

I just want a target in mind as I am currently living at home and although fine I'm itching to get my own place as this is the first time I've lived at home in 5 years!

Thank you for any help or advice you can give.

tek-monkey

Well thats 2 years solid saving to get 10%, so it depends what mortgages are on offer nearer the time. I'd prefer 20% minimum before I started. As for fees, I'm in England but around 2k seems reasonable to buy a place. I may get away with £1500, but its looking like nearer to 2k.

Bufger

If you can i would try and save a bit more per month otherwise it will take you 2 years as tek-mokey points out. By that time you could well be seeing the rise in property prices again along with a higher rate, it could leave you chasing a figure for a few months extra.

You need at least 10% as a deposit and a further 2-3k. Its a bit more in scotland as you have to have surveys done beforehand and you can end up wasting a couple. You also need to time it right so you're not waiting to get paid but your first mortgage and bills payments are coming out!

So based on 170k house + fees you need 20k. Get saving! Good luck

hostman

When we were first time buyers last year we had £26,000 for everything. Deposit, fee's, furniture and decoration.

£18,700 of that was our deposit, which equated to a 15% deposit.

Of course the bigger your deposit the less your mortgage payments will be (presuming the purchase price isn't an upward moving target).

u01jet4

oh wow ok so Ive quite a way to go! 3 years was my ideal timeline so maybe that is still most realistic as in that time we should hopefully climb the employment ladder a bit!

Bufger

It takes a while. I graduated last year and started saving immediately, i was lucky to get a good job and my partner also earns a reasonably good salary, it was easy enough to save as we were used to living off nothing (as we were students!) so we saved roughly £1700 per month. So its basically been a year now and we're there but it was hard work.

The harder you save the quicker the end will come

doire_2

u01jet4 wrote: »

Hi,

I am 23, my boyfriend is 24 and we are soon beginning to save for our first place.

We will be looking to live in Edinburgh and my ideal house would be a 2bed house with own garden and driveway/garage. It seems there are quite a few on the market for around £150000 although I have the figure of £170000 in mind to be able to get a house in a nice area.

We only just graduated so are not on very high salaries. We are planning to each save £400 per month, bringing us to £9600 a year.

I have a few questions:

1) what would be a realistic, sturdy amount of a deposit to save for a house price in the region of £170,000?
2) what would be the total of ALL fees roughly (remember we are in Scotland although I don't know what a difference this will make)?

I just want a target in mind as I am currently living at home and although fine I'm itching to get my own place as this is the first time I've lived at home in 5 years!

Thank you for any help or advice you can give.

You see houses for 150k but want a nicer one at 170k
You have no desposit at all
You state your salaries aren't very high

20% min deposit. 20% is £34000


Rent and save for a bigger deposit.
Why strangle yourself with huge repayments each month just because you want a nice house? Would you even enjoy living in it if that were the case.

Hopefully house prices start falling and the £170,000 house becomes a lot cheaper:beer:

hostman

doire wrote: »

Hopefully house prices start falling and the £170,000 house becomes a lot cheaper:beer:

They fell and they climbed back up.