New Expenses for New Home Owners?

KNiM

We've been renting for 10 years and my husband is VERY to keen to buy a house but I don't think we can afford it.
I'm trying to work out what new expenses we'd have, other than the mortgage - Water Rates, Buildings Insurance and Life Assurance - have I missed anything?
Would £100 a month cover these, or is that too optimistic?
(We'd be a looking at a 3-bed semi in the Bishop's Stortford area.)
Any advice greatly appreciated!
:santa2:

Emmzi

council tax, contents insurance, annual boiler servicing, repairs fund, as well as all your tv and utilities you have at the mo.

£100 is way too optimistic. You'll be amazed what goes wrong with a house! I'd whack £100 a month extra into a savings account for broken washing machine, window needs replaced, guttering needs cleaned, lawnmower broke, painting, etc etc etc.

delmar39

There was a recent thread on here about a similar thing, so you should look at that as there are some useful posts.

There is a good budget planner on this website that sets out everything you need to be aware of in terms of monthly costs.

The key things are:

TV Licence (pay by direct debit)
Gas / Elec
Council Tax (What band are you in?)
Phone / Broadband
Mortgage
Water (Water Meter?)

You also need to look at things under other headings including:

Savings / Investments
Insurance (House, Contents, Life, Car)
Leisure and Hobbies
Credit Cards
Annual costs - car service, MOT, breakdown cover, car repairs etc

Hope this helps.

Person_one

My partner and I completed on our first home at the end of October, I'll try to remember everything we've had to shell out since then. (This is after all the solicitor's/mortgage fees!)

Service charge (its a flat) - £100 p/m
Ground Rent - £125 p/y
Mostly new furniture and some basic decorating - £2500
TV Licence
BT line one off installation - £120
BT line rental - £12.50 p/m
Electricity - £30 p/m
Water - £30 p/m
Council Tax - £1500 p/y

Excess on buildings insurance claim already! - £100

After Christmas we will also be getting contents insurance, an extra buildings insurance policy after finding out the one included in the service charge is not really adequate, boiler cover and will be putting £100 p/m into a joint savings account in case of unforeseen circumstances.

Its been worth it though, even with the stress of having to have half our ceiling ripped out within a month of moving in!

vicstick86

Ive recently brought a 3 bedroom house with my boyfriend. We pay..
Mortgage
Council Tax: £100
House Insurance: £25 per month
Virgin: phoneline, broadband, TV: about £25 a month, up to about £50 if we use the phone/watch pay per movies etc.
Tv license: which is £30 a month for 6 months.. then goes down to about £11 a month after that.
Water rates: £350 per year.. thats fixed rate not a water meter.
Electric and Gas: not 100% sure but around £150-200 for a 1/4, to be on the safe side espes in winter. So call it £50 a month.
We dont have life insurance but i think it was around £11 quid a month, the broker said it was slightly more for me because I smoke.
You can also have illness insurance... I think that was about £30
Which all might seem doable.. but you also have to take into account any problems with the house.. since we moved in, in july the list of problems weve had with the house is endless, and you cant go crying to landlord to fix it anymore....:eek:

ET1976

I think perhaps people are being a bit pessimistic here - the point is, what NEW expenses will be incurred by owning rather than renting. You will (should) already have contents insurance, TV license, phone costs etc, and only you can really work out how much more your council tax, electricity, gas etc will cost depending on how different in size your rented/owned properties will be. It's difficult to tell exactly what extra you'd have to budget for without knowing what's included in your rented place.

Apart from the initial setup costs, the main things I noticed as extras were repair costs. I don't think you can really generalise on these, but as someone else said, £100 a month into a fund is a good idea. In one year recently I had to replace fridge, freezer, washing machine, a double glazed window and the shower, I think that set me back about £1k. Now I have to replace my roof at a cost of about £3.5k...

I don't know about Life Insurance, I have it through work. Our buildings and contents insurance is done together, we have just renewed and paid about £350 for the year, this is for a 4-bed semi with a shed-load of valuable contents and a buildings claim in the past 3 years.

We pay about £15/month on a water meter for the 2 of us (and OH does not hold back on baths or watering the garden!).