Will anyone buy semi's these days?

Rachman_2

CS, from your post - you put £30K down. You spent £6K on a round the world trip, so we have to work out where £36K came from.

You got a grant - £9.5K - great - if I could, I'd have snapped their hand off too. - so £26.5K to find.

Your hubby earned £14.K, of which you saved 7.5K (3K to wedding and £4K to live on (for a couple for 18 months - that I find very difficult to believe, you'd have to be fasting, not going anywhere - it's £111 a month each on living.... (or £25 a week)) - so that's £7.5K off the £26.5K - gives us £19K of savings you 'had'.

To find that £19K, you 'saved' £8K from a £13K loan - so down to £11K, plus your BF (now husband) also 'saved' £4K from his loan - so that leaves a missing £7K that you apparently had but you don't say above where it came from.

HOWEVER, you have debt obligations (ignoring repayments) of £13K loan, plus the £4K plus (on his loan) on which you are incurring interest - I should suggest you actually had nearer on your figures, £29K of cash, made up of £9.5K grant and £7.5K of savings (£17K in total) and net BORROWED MONEY of at least £12K (being the balances on the loans) PLUS the £5K you spent from your loan plus any of the loan your husband spent - in effect at least £17K of debt (loans) and assuming he spent the same as you - £20K of loans (for which you only offset £12K of retained drawn down principal - giving you a net £8K loan which in fact eats up all of your saved earnings - AND THIS IS BEFORE interest acrrued and payable.

In other words, if you take your total debt, it's not your mortgage, it's your mortgage PLUS £20K (less any actual net payments made)......

cupid_s

Rachman wrote:

To find that £19K, you 'saved' £8K from a £13K loan - so down to £11K, plus your BF (now husband) also 'saved' £4K from his loan - so that leaves a missing £7K that you apparently had but you don't say above where it came from.......

Hi. I did say where this 7k had come from. I said in the explanation that I had 7k before going to Uni. I had saved this from my part time job which I had from 16, together with bits of birthday and christmas money, and a small amount I got when my BS merged. Therefore we had the 9.5k grant, 7k i had saved from before I was 18, and then 7.5k from hubby's earnings.

Rachman wrote:

In other words, if you take your total debt, it's not your mortgage, it's your mortgage PLUS £20K (less any actual net payments made).......

I do understand this and I am not about to write off the 19k we still owe between us no matter how small the repayments. But if we had decided to use the 36k and pay off all our student debt before buying a house we still would have had 17k in savings for a deposit.

Also I did say when hubby was working and I was doing my masters we lived at home with my parents so it wasn't hard not to spend a lot.

Rachman_2

cupid_stunt wrote:

Hi. I did say where this 7k had come from. I said in the explanation that I had 7k before going to Uni. I had saved this from my part time job which I had from 16, together with bits of birthday and christmas money, and a small amount I got when my BS merged. Therefore we had the 9.5k grant, 7k i had saved from before I was 18, and then 7.5k from hubby's earnings.

Ah, missed that bit - still the same though - it was not £30K you had saved - BTW, I'd love a £70K mortgage - I pay that on mine a year.....

moneysavinmonkey

think we have all got there in the end... back to the original point

say that for arguments sake you were a financially astute post-graduate who's finally finished 'sponging' off their parents.. you have 30k saved + can get a 70k mortgage..... could you afford your house if you were buying today??

or would you rent?? (you already answered this question)

so does this explain whey the OP's house is not selling???

pollyanna24

I have a largish (well adequate anyways) 3 bed terraced house with enough driveway for 2 cars and 2 motorbikes, so it's not just semis with drives.

Plus I'm 25, on my second house, bought our first when we were 21, so we didn't pi55 it all up the wall! We do not have big salaries by anyones stretch of the imagination and even though we had £30K equity, if we hadn't bought the first house and stayed with the parents, then we could have saved this much anyways. I know this isn't an option for lots of people, but there are plenty of twenty somethings still living at home with this option.

Our mortgage is 3.4 times our joint salary and shock horror, we managed to buy even though we live within spitting distance of London, so you can imagine our house is already above the national average of your bog standard terrace.

Rachman_2

moneysavinmonkey wrote:

think we have all got there in the end... back to the original point
or would you rent?? (you already answered this question)

so does this explain whey the OP's house is not selling???

I know the NW better than Yorkshire, but I should suggest it's because the market's dead - prices peaked (as I can tell) in summer 2004 in a lot of the old industrial heartlands - sod all has sold since. I should think Wakefield's about typical - who can afford to buy at the bottom to feed the market - are average wages really high enough to do that or is it all buy to let people swarming in.... ? If it won't sell, 99 times in a 100, it's too expensive - the odd thing that needs doing is neither here nor there - you're more likely to alienate buyers if you've got a dog or cat in when people view - I presume you have https://www.houseprice.co.uk 'd your address to see what previous selling prices were - it could simply be you missed the selling boat....

cupid_s

moneysavinmonkey wrote:

think we have all got there in the end... back to the original point

say that for arguments sake you were a financially astute post-graduate who's finally finished 'sponging' off their parents.. you have 30k saved + can get a 70k mortgage..... could you afford your house if you were buying today??

or would you rent?? (you already answered this question)

so does this explain whey the OP's house is not selling???

We could afford my house with a bit more mortgage which we could have got but as you pointed out I've already said I wouldn't. To me it would explain perfectly why their house isn't selling, and I kinda agree with you. But other houses are selling, so maybe theirs is just slightly overpriced or there is something possibly minor putting people off. Because while some people argue that people now must be stupid to buy, so many people are still intent on getting their foot on the ladder! I have friends looking to pay 140-150k for a house which they could rent for 500pcm (makes me wonder why people are still buy to letting as well ), and their mortgage will be about 800 a month, even with them having a deposit to put down. But they still want to do it and so do loads of other people obviously as the houses where they are looking to buy sell within two weeks for more than the asking price!

I could understand if the market slowed, but from what we keep being told it hasn't (I know we shouldn't believe everything we read/hear and I don't) and I see houses selling quickly here

Pauper_Princess

Um. Haven't been here for a few days so feel a bit guilty now

Anyhoo. I'm taking all my stuff into the solicitors tomorrow for certification in the first step towards the visa!!

I rang the EA but cancelled his visit in the end - we won't be putting it up until next year so there's not much point him coming round yet. We're thinking of putting it up in spring, after the post-Christmas slump hopefully!

And we've decided to sell it needing work done and reduce the price. Obviously until the EA gets involved we won't know what to market at, but a two-bed mid townhouse round the corner has just sold after being up for about 4 months. It came up at £137,500 but obviously don't know how much it went for.

Thanks to everyone for advice and opinions... helped to make my mind up!!

:T