How to buy your first home?

bridiej

I had to move out of home when I was 17, I rented a dodgy bedsit for a year, then bought a house with my then boyfriend. The relationship broke up after a couple of years so I moved down to Kent, rented a flat for a year (cost me over £300 pcm and that's nearly 10 years ago!) and when I finally bought a house (which I admit I was lucky with, as said previously it was a reposession so much cheaper than anything else on offer at the time) I had to sacrifice a hell of a lot just to pay the mortgage and bills and keep a roof over my head.

The point I'm trying to make is that if you really, REALLY want to buy a house then you have to start having nights in, stop spending £45 a go on having your hair done and spend, spend, spend on new clothes and booze.

Yes, I know there is less affordable housing these days but if you really want to buy then why not contact a housing association, they're always ready to help!

PhoneGuru

Hmm, all good responses.

University put me just under 10,000 in debt. I had to move 200 miles from home to find work in the specialist field I work in and have rented a single room for the last 4 years (luckily I get my state of the art mobiles for free btw). It's taken 4 years for my salary to reach a level I can think about buying somewhere.

Saving to an extent is false economy if you have debts (one of Martin's money saving points, pay of the most expensive debt first). I had to repay student loans, bank loans, parents loans, everything before I could even think about buying somewhere.

These days renting a 1 bed flat, costs almost as much as buying one on a monthly cost basis so renting can easily be as expensive.

What I find very difficult to deal with is I earn very good money for my age, I dont go out getting wasted every weekend, in fact I'm out of the country most of the time travelling with work so I dont spend much at all. But buying somewhere is still difficult.

bridiej

It's a shame the banks work on the 3 x salary (or whatever it is!) rather than working out what you can afford on a monthly basis.

After all, if your spending say £350 pcm on rent and a morgage would only work out at £275 pcm then you could easily afford it.

Not sure if there might be any financial institutions that work it like this, may be worth investigating?

PhoneGuru

Where I live there is actually very little difference in the cost of renting is roughly equivelent to the cost of purchasing. What tends to happen is there are alot of shared houses (like what I am in).

Debt_Free_Chick

It's a shame the banks work on the 3 x salary (or whatever it is!) rather than working out what you can afford on a monthly basis.

Some do - Intelligent Finance I believe.

PhoneGuru said

But buying somewhere is still difficult.

What particular difficulties are you having? Are you still repaying debt? In which case, you can only be patient. If not, you may want to post more details and see what others suggest.

HTH

webmister22

I bought my first house back in August last year. I saved up for 6 years from the age of 19 for the deposit. All you need is patience and self control. Instead of going to the pub 4 nights a weeks and clubbing at the weekend like my friends did I went out once a week for a few beers and still enjoyed my self but now I've got a house I can call my own.

As for the monthly payments you can now take out longer term mortgages which make the monthly payments less. It means you will pay more interest over all but that the trade off.

Buying your first house is certainly not easy but it isn't impossible. Stick with it mate and you’ll get there in the end.

Webmister22 :-)

Lighteater

Last tiome I looked, Northern Rock were offering 120% mortgages. That sort of debt may scare you, but it may also be a way in.

Think about properties being sold off cheap, too. I found a link to this site on ThePropertyMan and they seem to specialise in properties for sale at below market value.

Also, there's a guide to buying repossessed homes kicking around somewhere, but I've lost the link :rolleyes:

Good Luck!

Lighteater

Shawz

I would love to be able to buy our first house but ervything semms so expensive.
There seems to be different stories every day in the newspapers that the housing marlket is going to go into boom or bust times.
What do people think, is it best to get a 100% mortgage and get somewhere now before prices go any higher or is it better to wait and see if the prices go down a bit

frugal_dougal_3

KrazyFool,

I do sympathize with you.

I think the point that bridiej was trying to make is that when most of us were buying our first homes we had to live like paupers. I clearly remember not being able to afford to pay the mortgage and switch on the heating at the same time.

I also remember having to live off bread and potatoes for a while, and no chance of going out for a drink.

Ok this was my choice but it has subsequently paid off. You don't have to go to such extremes maybe, but I guess that if you sat down and thought about it you would find ways of saving some money by going without things.

rchddap1

I was exremely lucky and had a nice deposit saved up that was given to me (inheritance type thing). But I would say that buying a house without any savings would be very difficult.... stamp duty, legal fees, ....furniture.

I ended up buying 40% in a shared ownership scheme and I am so glad that I did. We could never have got a mortgage for what we needed, but this allowed us to get at least one foot on the ladder. All my savings were spent on the house in some fashion, eg, legal fees, furniture, deposit, but today on paper we have 2.5 times that amount saved in the house. Much better than bank interest rates....and we have a home.

I know that we could lose that amount if house prices fall, but at the end of the day we'll still get more out of it than if we were still throwing money at our landlady.

For us shared ownership housing association scheme was a god send. However, one of the first things they did was sit us down and work out if we could afford it....and ask if we had any savings, which appeared to be very important to them.

Just wanted to mention these things, as shared ownership has been mentioned in this thread.