Could you afford to buy your own house today?

wymondham

I could but I would'nt. Not worth anything like it's 'market' value.

sammyjammy

I bought in 1999 at roughly 2x salary, my salary has doubled and with a 25% deposit I would need 3.6xsalary now which I wouldn't do if you held a gun to my head even though I probalby could struggle to.

Running_Horse

I assume we're talking about buying our first property. Have moved up and obviously couldn't buy my current house.

As it was 1988, am I allowed to have saved up in the meantime? Anyone hoping to buy a house should assume they will be saving for a few years first. In which case I could probably buy my first house for cash.

musicmaker29

Pete111 wrote: »

Yes with ease.

(but I did buy with perfect timing in 2007!!!)

same here and yes, I could buy it now!

although I'd call 'perfect timing' 1999!

musicmaker29

Orpheo wrote: »

Says who? Our first house was a family home. I have known numerous colleagues who have bought family homes as their first buy, some with 4 or 5 beds. If you are suggesting that every FTB earns 20K and has a 10K deposit to buy a dingy studio flat then you are simply making things up.

The facts are that first time buyers come with different incomes, different deposits and different requirements. The ladder metaphor is a convenient illusion, but to continue with the illusion, the studio flats and 1 bed slave-box flats are merely the first rung of the ladder that's rotted and fallen off.

Oh. And we don't have apartments in the UK we have flats. Apartments do sound bigger though don't they?

If changing the term FTB to just "buyer" helps you to understand my poll better then why don't you do that in your mind.

yeah, everyone's different - on my budget when I bought I couldve got either a) a new flat, b)a small house, c)a slightly bigger house but that needed work. I went for C, but I bet there are plenty who would go for one of the other two - hard to judge such a wide number of people as one whole thing.

Orpheo

Running_Horse wrote: »

I assume we're talking about buying our first property. Have moved up and obviously couldn't buy my current house.

As it was 1988, am I allowed to have saved up in the meantime? Anyone hoping to buy a house should assume they will be saving for a few years first. In which case I could probably buy my first house for cash.

No. Current property. Current income. 25% to put down.

ash28

Our current house, lived in it 17 years, we could still buy it on one income I'm surprised to say.

I looked on the Nationwide website and we could put £90k down and get a mortgage for £270k which is less than 4 x OH's pay. But comfortably doable.

This is our 4th house - our first house was also a family house, though smaller and bought on 3.5 x 1 income.

One interesting thing is our current house would actually cost us a smaller proportion of OH's net income to service the mortgage than our first house - 33% vs 40% - a mortgage on this house would be £1330 on a Nationwide tracker - on our first house the payments were £250 on a take home of about £600.

Of course in the early 1980s when we bought our first house OH was near the bottom the greasy pole, he was 28, - move on to today and he is in a senior position.

I wouldn't have put this house in FTB territory tbh, but as the OP says FTBs come in all shapes and sizes.

purch

I have just had a look at my own 1st property which I bought in 1982 for about £ 36,000

It appears that it would nowadays cost around £ 220,000.

In 1982 I had a 15% deposit, and a mortgage of £ 31,000

So with the same % deposit I would need to have more than the original mortgage saved, and the income to generate a mortgage of £187,000.

So if I was 21 again, I would very much doubt it.

P.S. As for my current property,................... err no I couldn't afford it.

movilogo

The poll result will be inconclusive as it does not state when the house was purchased originally!

Orpheo

Yeah. I know that it is unscientific and merely anecdotal.