What expenses should I consider when buying my first house?

Tazni

So it's still a year or 2 off me buying my first home as I'm still a student, but I was hoping someone could let me know the expected expenses in buying and owning your first house?

Of course there are the expected expenses such as the actual house deposit and mortgage, and bills.. but could anyone let me know on average how much I'm looking at needing for a year to buy and run a house? The max cost of a home would be £100,000....


Thanks for any help you can offer

ed110220

At a bare minimum you'll need to pay the conveyancing fees, mortgage product fees (if applicable, you may be able to add these to the mortgage) and the fees for the valuation and any structural surveys etc.

I must say I didn't bother with the latter as my dad is a builder and had a look at it together with a steel engineer friend (steel-framed house), saying the surveyor would only tell you the problems there might be that he couldn't actually identify ;-)

That all cost about 1750 last December.

It doesn't of course include removals (did it ourselves as it was only a few km) and all the new things you might need in your new house. Fortunately we had furniture and as the previous owner of the house had died, we got the fridge, washing machine, dishwasher etc with the house.

motherofstudents

There is contents and buildings insurance (shop around\). You might want central heating cover which is about £17 a month, phone bill, council tax. I would suggest putting some money aside each month for the inevitable repairs/maintenance.

Things like paint, fence paint if you have a garden, plants etc etc all these little things soon add up to quite a bit more than you expect. I'm sure there's loads more but can't think at the moment. In general, just expect it to cost more in real life than it does on paper. That is my experience anyway.

Denene

Once you have a house in mind, you can use the links on these pages to work out your council tax.

I'm looking at buying my first home as well, and I found this Statement of Affairs calculator useful for making a list of things I will need to pay for.