First time buyers - will you or won't you?

Bargain_Rzl

I was a Group 2 until recently. Living in London on an about-average London salary, lodging very cheaply in a friend's house, saving my @rse off. Meant to see what things were doing around January next year and then (hopefully) buy a 1-bed flat in a cheap but pleasant part of Zone 3 - unless it looked like a really bad idea by that point, in which case I would still be moving but probably into a rented flat while sitting tight on my savings. The monthly outgoings on suitable property would be almost equivalent whether buying or renting.

That's until three months ago when I got offered shared ownership on a 1-bed flat in Zone 2, at the lower-priced end of the market, in fact only about £20k more than I would have been prepared to pay to buy somewhere outright, and in an area I had been considering anyway. The total cost in mortgage and rent is about £200 a month less than what I was anticipating having to pay, the buy/rent split protects me fairly equally against rent rises AND interest rate rises, and the fact that I am not overstretching myself means that I can make overpayments from a very early stage and protect myself against interest rate rises in the longer term. As I need my own place anyway (my current lodgings were supposed to be temporary and I've been there for 4 years ) I don't see how I can really lose.

By the way - any future decision about whether to increase my share in the property will be informed by the state of the housing market at the time. I won't be buying extra shares unless the numbers stack up.