How depressing - House hunting

kissingthepink

Sorry, amitoocautious, but you have a joint income of £85k....what's the problem?
Of course you can afford a decent home. Was there nothing on the rightmove link that someone posted that was good enough?

fivemice

Isn't the problem that whilst the OP has a combined income of £85K, she only wants to use £42.5K of that to get a mortgage with. In which case the £85K is a bit of a red herring.

amitoocautious - you should move north - we have a combined income of £43K and have just bought a 4 bed semi in a semi-rural village for £195K!

Feanor

fivemice wrote: »

Isn't the problem that whilst the OP has a combined income of £85K, she only wants to use £42.5K of that to get a mortgage with. In which case the £85K is a bit of a red herring.

amitoocautious - you should move north - we have a combined income of £43K and have just bought a 4 bed semi in a semi-rural village for £195K!

Thats excatly why we have decided to move north! Although probably wont be able to go that rural for work, but still alot cheaper.

Whereabouts are you in the north? *sorry to hijack*

fivemice

Nottingham, so not very north, but north enough to pay somewhat reasonable prices for a house!

Melissa177

That's not the north

Come to Hull

Feanor

lol im originally from Grimsby, so not too far from Hull !

Im thinking of moving somewhere in between the Leeds/Wakefield area hopefully.

Melissa177

I'm originally from near Hull myself (the surrounding villages), and you can buy an awful lot more there for your money than in the South.

The problem is that the good jobs are not necessarily available.

I think at some point, it is going to become viable for large companies in the SE to move to the North because staff are cheaper to employ. That still might be a while off yet...

keeperbear

Swindlebiscuit wrote: »

There's the problem, Keeperbear.

You took the plunge and bought a house and that's obviously been a good choice for you (and many others). But, by your own admission, you couldn't afford to buy the house you're living in now - even though it's ten years on! (and I assume you're earning lots more now that you did then)

So on that basis, why do you think it's unreasonable for anybody to be bearish on property? Don't you see that for those entering the property market now, even a "grotty one-bed" might be unatainable. But, by waiting a few years and getting closer to possibly having kids, a grotty one-bed becomes ever more unsuitable. It's this kind of smugness that annoys me about people who - through no real skill on their part - now sit on substantial equity and pour scorn on those who don't want to stretch themselves to the absolute limit to buy a shoebox in Peckham.

Being bearish on property is unreasonable when you earn 85k a year. There was nothing smug about my comments nor was I pouring scorn on anyone. Instead of waiting and waiting to buy a nice house, I bought a crappy place with a friend of mine. It took substantial financial belt tightening to even afford a jointly owned property. I couldn't even afford it on my own back then, but I took the plunge. Don't you see that nothing has changed? Property is higher priced now, but interest rates aren't up to 15%! You have to start somewhere, but some people do expect the moon on a stick. For those of us who took the plunge on a crappy property, we deserve all the equity that we have accumulated. I call this skill, as we identified that land is in short supply in the UK, and knew that, long-term, property would be a great investment opportunity regardless of condition.

If I earned 85k, I wouldn't be bearish on property. I would take the plunge on a nice property, have a family and not even care about property prices until the kids are 14-15. The rest will take care of itself. If the OP waits for a housing crash, they could be waiting their life away.

Amitoocautious

Keeperbear - being bearish on property is not reserved for below average incomes you know! And as for the ladder as many experts have said there is the possiblty of stagnation and certainly not the large gains there have been so moving up the ladder bearing in mind i will be having kids at some point so will lose much of our income i dont think that it will be possible to climb the ladder for some time. Therefore, its all about buying a house that we can stay in and as some poster stated it is very expensive to move.

Kissingthepink, we have looked at most of those homes that were posted on Rightmove and they are in pretty rough areas and as we want to stay there for 10 years plus then we have to consider the area especially as i am 30 soon so we want to start having kids in the next year

All we are aspiring to is a 3 bed terrace/semi in an ok area, don't see what is not average about that! As for prices increasing in Basingstoke, it has been way below the big 10 % rises you have seen elsewhere in fact many houses and espeically flats in Basingstoke have actually dropped in value.

Its interesting how all the "homeowners" appear to think that we are being snobbish

Doozergirl

keeperbear wrote: »

If I earned 85k, I wouldn't be bearish on property. I would take the plunge on a nice property, have a family and not even care about property prices until the kids are 14-15. The rest will take care of itself. If the OP waits for a housing crash, they could be waiting their life away.

There's a good point here. You either treat property as an investment, or you treat it as a home. I do't think the two mix very wel at all. When incesting, you try to buy at the bottom, sell at the top, but this generally means moving house in order to see any of the profit.

If the OP is looking for a long term home in which to bring up their children, then property prices now aren't going to make so difference in the long term, especially when not being particularly pushed financially when buying in the first place. It wouldn't be too hard to build up a financial reserve in time for baby before/after buying a house at £250,000.

Children are expensive (moreso as they get older), but I certainly found that many of the expenses I used to incur just fell away after children, especially when I stopped work. Jimmy Choos just aren't that important now I don't get to wear them that often!

I don't feel the OP will have that many compromises to make. If Mr & Mrs Average were able to buy themselves an Average 3 bed semi back at the long term Average of house prices, would they have done it at 2.4x joint salary (not even including a deposit)?