How depressing - House hunting

ukbondraider

You need to juggle your numbers a bit more and see if other options work for you.

At £85 joint salary and assuming £40K and £45K you will be bringing home net salaries of £2300 and £2600 ish.

At £85K joint you can take out a mortgage of 5 x 85K = £425K mortgage providing you have a 5% deposit (Its with Accord Mortgages if you take out a 10 yr fix rate at 5.39%).

So assuming you have £22K deposit and approx another £15 for stamp duty etc then your mortgage per month will be £2500 ish (based on a 25 yr term). This leaves you the second £2300 as disposable income to live on which is more than enough and in fact enough so that you should be overpaying alot every month as well. If you can overpay £1000 per month your mortgage will be paid off by approx 15 yrs. The 10 yr fix rate means that you will be protected from rate rises and whether a crash happens or not you will likely be able to weather it out.

You can then expect some salary increases over the yrs meaning that you can potentially overpay more which in turn means you can possibly have your house paid off in the 10 yr fixed term.

In summary at £85K joint there should be lots of options open to you.

There is a calculator somewhere on the web which approximately places you on the UK rich list. A salary of £40K in this calculator places you at about the top 4% of the country. You however shouldnt expect to be able to afford a top 4% house. This is where people expectations are totally wrong. I am in the 0.1% of the country according to the calcultor (I think the calculator is bullsh1t by the way) but I would deem my properties to only be mediocre.

rizla01

moneywise22 wrote: »

Another person who's idea of what they want is ridiculous! When i said we have the right to live in the house we want, i meant a decent size in a nice area, not a mansion!!! get real.

I have always said that you get the house that you DESERVE. Think about it.

Hi Amitoocautious, Good on you for that decision.

Don't hang about forever though. You will p1ss estate agents off after a while and they will be of no help to you.

I take it you have considered auctions?

Perhaps the best thing for you would be a small Semi that has the potential to be extended at a later date, along with your needs/desires.

Most undeveloped properties can be extended by a mimnimum 60 Sq Mtrs.

One way or the other you are going to have to learn that other magical word in property hunting - it's called compromise.

Dont mean to sound condescending but a lot of those 'sitting pretty' will have done that, even 20-30 years ago.

My brother, finding himself in an impossible situation, rented one of his rooms out to a lodger till he & his OH could afford to do without that income. Now he is sitting pretty. We both live in Essex BTW.

moneywise22

Yeah, the people who dont moan about others who are making their own lives better deserve to have the house they want.

Melissa177

Who on here has moaned about others making their own lives better?

I just took issue with the assertion that everyone has the right to the home they want. They don't.

moneywise22

Melissa177 wrote: »

Who on here has moaned about others making their own lives better?

I just took issue with the assertion that everyone has the right to the home they want. They don't.

OF COURSE THEY DO. Everyone has a choice to pick the house they want. Not settle for second best! No-one is forcing you to do anything. If you cant afford the house you want then wait until you can!

When i said "making their own lives better" i meant by buying the house you want and not settling for any less.

rizla01

Actually Melissa and Moneywise - you are BOTH right.

If money is no object then this would be the case.

Unfortunately, for many, money IS the issue which prevents most of us from having the home that they WANT.

Melissa177

I think you're right. I suspect we're quibbling over semantics.

I get where Moneywise is coming from.

I'm just a bit fed up with some of my friends moaning about not being able to get onto the housing ladder, who earn more than me, because their expectations are unrealistic. The attitude of some of my peers is "life isn't fair, someone should help me".

Incidentally, I couldn't help but check out what you could buy in Basingstoke for £200K - some of these 3 beds look rather nice!

http://www.findaproperty.com/searchresults.aspx?loc=Basingstoke&minprice=180000&maxprice=250000&bedrooms=3&res=0&salerent=0&edid=0&f.x=0&f.y=0

Anything here for you, AmItoocautious?

moneywise22

rizla01 wrote: »

Actually Melissa and Moneywise - you are BOTH right.

If money is no object then this would be the case.

Unfortunately, for many, money IS the issue which prevents most of us from having the home that they WANT.

Yes but the difference is you shouldnt feel you have to buy a house in an area you dont want to live in etc. If all we could afford was a bedsit then we wouldnt buy one, we would wait until we could afford the house we want to buy and continue renting the perfect house for us until we could afford to buy something similar.

You either wait until money ISNT an issue, or do something about it so it ISNT. Buying a house is a big commitment - you dont want to be stuck in a tiny flat because thats all you can afford.

moneywise22

QUOTE "I'm just a bit fed up with some of my friends moaning about not being able to get onto the housing ladder, who earn more than me, because their expectations are unrealistic. The attitude of some of my peers is "life isn't fair, someone should help me".

I totally agree with you.

you may say I have higher expectations than others, but that is because we have rented 4-bedroomed detached houses for the last 6 years and all our stuff wouldnt fit into a 2 bed flat etc, plus we have 3 cars and 2 cats so we need our space, see.

But this is not unrealistic for us, we earn good money and have never asked for any help from anyone, nor would we.

All i am saying is if you cant afford what you want at the moment, why buy a house right now?? Whats the rush? House prices arent going to go up dramatically over the next few years, who knows, they may even come down.

doitmyself

Melissa177 wrote: »

I think you're right. I suspect we're quibbling over semantics.

I get where Moneywise is coming from.

I'm just a bit fed up with some of my friends moaning about not being able to get onto the housing ladder, who earn more than me, because their expectations are unrealistic. The attitude of some of my peers is "life isn't fair, someone should help me".

Incidentally, I couldn't help but check out what you could buy in Basingstoke for £200K - some of these 3 beds look rather nice!

http://www.findaproperty.com/searchresults.aspx?loc=Basingstoke&minprice=180000&maxprice=250000&bedrooms=3&res=0&salerent=0&edid=0&f.x=0&f.y=0

Anything here for you, AmItoocautious?

...and if you change the threshold to c.£400k (as suggested may be available to borrow in bondraider's excellent reply) the properties, natch, are considerably nicer still!
Hard to see the OP having too much of a problem securing a property they like/want/need/deserve on those salaries.
As to moneywise' assertion that if you can't have what you want/deserve then, er, wait until you can, - way too simplistic. Depends on a whole number of factors, not least of which may be the increasing value of the bedsit relative to the increasing value of the money under the mattress. Not necessarily but maybe, and who can say for sure...