MSE News: First-time buyers at 20-year low

Dan_1976

Add to this that debt is at a record high, house prices appear to be on the up and lenders are slowly coming around! How the hell are first time buyers going to cope?

We will see more unemployment after the election or sooner, we will also see debt continue. WAges are going down not up and inflation is on the increase!

I am not being a doom monger, but we have to make big changes or 2007/08 will happen again, this time not 20 years later!

ligre

I'm a first time buyer at 30 and my bf and i have been saving for what seems like a very long 2 years. house prices put us off at first but then though well there really is no right time to buy so jump ship now. Even though we saw some 95% morgages online when we went into the branch (as it was a branch only morgage) they hadn't a clue what we were on about, therefore went with an independant broker who was so much more helpful and gave lots of sound advice. We are now in the process of buying which we never thought would ever happen and we only have a 10% deposit, so first time buyers dont give up we know other young couples who have done it too.

sk240

Myself and my girlfriend are 26 years old, i am about as carefull as they come with money.
In 2004 i baught a mobile home for £56000 on didcot oxfordshire, its now worth about the same as i paid for it.
Even with this deposit behind me, and a wage of nearly 35K per year, the money i can borrow will not even buy me a 2 bed semi locally (200k for a small 2 bed semi).
I would have no more room but it would have cost 4x where i currently live.
I am not going to bother until prices come down a long way.

by the way, my car is worth about 1K and do not go abroad on holidays! (i cannot save and have holidays )

Cannon_Fodder

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-25666726.html looks Ok for the money. 3.6x salary-ish.

Don't know the area, though. One to avoid?

vaporate

well duh. Ignorant house sellers.

Houses are too expensive. Simple.

Terraced house in my area goes for 100k now, that was 45k 10 years ago.

Greed basically. I refuse to pay out thousands for some small doss hole.

Simple answer.

uzubairu

danielanthony wrote: »

I'm 31 and recently bought my first house, luckily it was a 3 bed semi in a leafy village so somewhere to start a family. I could not even think of buying somewhere until I had got enough pay rises and a £20k deposit together, I was also spending £700+ per month on rent through all this.

I'm not bitter about the fact I was 30 when I bought my 1st house, my parents lost their house in the 90's due to the 15% interest rate hike and didn't buy another family home until they were much older than I am now. I think a lot of FTB'ers have a want it all now attitude which makes me feel little sympathy.

Me and OH bought our first house in 1997 after saving up a deposit (10% + fees, basic furniture) and 4 years of renting together. We were 27 and 26 at the time of the purchase.
We didn't live like hermits, but we were sensible with our money whilst we were saving up for the deposit, and we chose to live in the North West.
Even though the house was a lot cheaper than now, the mortgage payments were cheaper than the rent we had been paying.
The mortgage was 2.5x joint income.

It took us 1.5 years to save for the deposit and extras.
We'd probably have to save for a lot longer if we were looking now, because 10% nowadays wouldn't give us many options.

2 years later in 1999 (time to re-mortgage) we were in negative equity.
2006 we sold it with £65K equity :eek:, which allowed us to buy (at an inflated price) the house we currently live in.
Thankfully, the equity and overpayments have kept the wolves from the door.

I think we were lucky. I wouldn't like to be a FTB now.
It's a waiting game (probably years IMHO).
You either wait until you have a large enough deposit or wait until house prices fall enough for you to be able to afford them.

barrybarryr

I'm a first time buyer (with my girlfriend). We completed yesterday on a house for £140k and put 15% deposit down. We are aged 28 and 25.

We have saved for 4 years and had no help from our parents.

In my opinion houses are affordable, you just have to have realistic expectations of what you can afford and where you want to live. We rented in an expensive area but could never afford to buy there so we have moved to a 'worse' area.

We don't live like hermits and have been paying rent during this time. We drive cars that are 12 and 8 years old and we don't waste money. We have one holiday a year and neither of us earn loads of money.

We simply live within our means. The mortgage is the only debt that either of us have except for my student loan.

If we want something we save up for it and then buy it. If we can't afford it we won't buy it.

If you don't have a deposit you can't buy a house. Why should you expect to be able to get a 100% or 95% mortgage just because you want a house? People are used to just buying things because they want them no matter what it is. Lots of my friends have brand new cars, HD TV's, expensive computers and all the toys. They do this by getting credit cards etc and just buying it.

In my opinion the bigger problem is that people want something for nothing rather than simply "houses are too expensive" (although I would agree they are expensive).

You can get on the property market as a FTB, you just have to make sacrifices which some seem unwilling to do.

milliebear00001

I'm not sure this is just a first time buyer problem, although obviously they are essential for a healthy housing market. Part of the problem with saying 'greedy homeowners must simply drop their prices' is that many can't afford to unless they go into negative equity themselves. If I owe £150000 on a house and can only sell it for £120000, then if it's humanly possible, I'm just going to sit tight and wait. I simply can't afford to drop the price, and so the cycle continues, with FTB unable to find houses at three times their salaries.

FATBALLZ

I'll hopefully be a FTB next year, however I resent working my fingers to the bone and living like a scrubber for 5 years to save up £30k to hand over to somebody who picked up a house cheap and made a huge profit without as much as having to think about it. I believe prices will fall long term however life does not sit round waiting 10,20 years until house prices are fair, some people have been waiting 5 or 6 years already.