Is There any Chance for Someone Like me to get on the Property Ladder?

FleetFanatic

Tustastic wrote:

3 thoughts;
2) If you bought a more affordable property further out of London - in Kent say - you would still be able to commute to your job in S London and to socialise in the evening with local friends, visit your parents.

Trust me, it isn't any better price-wise in Kent.....

lynzpower

FleetFanatic wrote:

Trust me, it isn't any better price-wise in Kent.....

I dont agree! Theres some good value property in the medway towns from what Ive seen. Personally, they wouldnt be right at the top of where I want to live list ,but then I dont want to "own" property that badly that Id live somewhere I wasnt overkeen on for the sake of it.

I have got a shared ownership. I personally think they are a pretty good deal as long as the property itself is reasonably priced.

I bought mine 2 and a bit years ago and it was priced competitively for the area. Ive seen some SO that seem to be madly overpriced for the area. So do look around, and familiarise yourself. My SO worked out relitavely good VFM on an interest only, but not great on a decent repayment.

[Deleted User]

Forget it for a couple of years, start saving as hard as you can now - you're going to have a lot of associated costs other than the mortgage and deposit.

BTman

lynzpower wrote:

I dont agree!

I do, I live in Medway and unless you want to move to the undesirable area's (ie luton) then property prices are a complete joke. It's Medway afterall, not London!!

tomstickland

Lots of references to this mythical "ladder", but on the plus side noone's "brought" anything.

Bargain_Rzl

Hi,

I now have a shared ownership flat in Camberwell but was previously looking to buy outright in the areas you mention - Crystal Palace/Sydenham.

I'm just wondering where your figure of £180k for a 1-bed flat came from - when I was researching the area there seemed to be a reasonable selection of 1-bed flats round about the £125k mark (not so much in Crystal Palace but several in Sydenham) and this was only a couple of months ago.

Anyway, Lynzpower is right about shared ownership. It's a good deal if you don't get seduced by places that are very expensive to begin with. Mine is at the cheap end of the scale, a flat valued at £145k total, and my monthly outgoings on a 40% share are roughly £300 mortgage + £220 rent + £75 service charge. I did put up a £7k deposit though so my mortgage is only £51k. I wouldn't have wanted to buy without a deposit, and wouldn't have got such a decent mortgage rate without one.

I was doing a bit of research on behalf of another MSE member last week and found various decent-looking studio flats for rent in Forest Hill/Brockley for around the £500-a-month mark. If you believe the market will crash, might it be worth looking at something like this and saving hard until you have a bit of a deposit for a 1-bed? Also, it's not good that you're currently living in your overdraft. Clear that and start saving, mortgage companies (and shared ownership schemes) need proof of financial security. They also need you to have a few £k in savings to cover your costs, besides any deposit you might put down.

HTH

miss_pink

What my friend done was buy a property in Spain....a new build. And sold it as soon as she received the keys for an extra £14,000. She made a £12,000 profit after costs. As an estate agent i know its really hard to get on the property ladder and it breaks my heart to see first time buyers being blown out of the waters buy property developers or buy to lets. You are in a good position as you are still living with your parents. If i were you id look at flats up here to buy off plans and sell on completion. If you can, then rent it out for a few years untill you want to move out of your parents house, that way you'll make a higher profit. I have dealt with a couple of young first time buyers like yourself from down south and the seem to be amazed at how cheap the flats are in scotland. I hope this is usefull to you.

Bargain_Rzl

Oh, one more thing - I missed the part about you being happy to live with your parents for 3 years. OK, so you can't live there rent free but presumably you could live there far cheaper than you could live anywhere else?

£20k in three years, on your salary, is very ambitious but not impossible. Have a look at the Debt Free Wannabe forum and you'll see people who are managing to clear enormous debts amazingly quickly. Have you thought of maybe getting a second job, or selling things on ebay for example? You can tell yourself it's not forever, just while you're saving - it's a means to an end. However, as I said before, even at today's prices I don't think you need to be looking at £180k places (and I don't think you should be, either, on £24k).

Guy_Montag

Thought about emmigrating? If you speak French or German you could turn your back on overpriced Blighty & move somewhere where you can buy an average house on an average salary (Paris excepted).

movieman

There is no 'property ladder' in this country: a 'property ladder' requires that your wages increase faster than house prices so you can afford to pay more for your next 'rung'. When house prices are increasing much faster than wages, the 'rungs' just get further apart every day.

If you buy a 150,000 pound flat instead of a 200,000 pound two-bed terrace, and five years in the future prices have doubled, then your flat is worth 300,000 pounds but the two-bed terrace now costs 400,000 pounds. You 'made' 150,000 pounds for doing nothing, but you now have to find 250,000 pounds to buy the next 'rung' on the ladder. If your wages have been static in that time you're _WORSE_ off than if you'd borrowed 200,000 pounds five years earlier.

The whole concept of a 'property ladder' is just being used to drag more 'greater fools' into the property market to try to stave off a collapse. Nor do I believe that it ever really existed: most of my friends and relatives just bought the house or flat they plan to retire in while they were in their 20s or 30s; today's kids seem to have no idea of just how easy their parents and grand-parents had it in comparison, probably because they listen to their parents whining about how they had to 'scrimp and save' for a couple of years before wage inflation wiped out their debts.

Personally I agree with the previous poster on emigration: if you're young and have skills that are generally useful, give Britain the finger and get the hell out.