A little advice please? First time buyer

Chrisrules334

First post, so, Hi!


My girlfriend and I are planning for the future, and have been discussing purchasing our first home. We are both quite young (22), and have been together for 4.5 years. We are not planning on moving until January 2016, but would like some early advice just to make set a goal for ourselves.


I have had a run through our finances today and taking into account future expected earnings/expenditure we should have a minimum of £80k saved.


The questions which I have:


1. We are unsure whether to go for, say, a £150k house and have very low (comparably) repayments. Or go for a 3x salary mortgage and get a c.£220k property. Early advice suggests we should get as high as we can reasonably afford to make the climb up the property ladder easier (I expect my earnings to increase significantly due to the industry which I am in, and my other halfs to increase with inflation)


2. Is there a resource which I can use to work out our monthly expected outgoings? I have no idea how much gas, electricity, TV bills etc are - so it's difficult for me to work out how much I can afford on a mortgage.


3. How much should we budget for fees (Obviously dependant upon property price & stamp duty)?


4. How much would you say it costs to kit out a house (pretty much from scratch)? As a money-saving-expert, I'd expect someone has freecycled an entire property! But is £3.5k a good estimate?


5. Any other tips, advice etc? It's obviously a huge step in life and I'm basically married once we sign onto the mortgage haha.


Thanks guys, if you need anything clarifying - just ask :j

Chrisrules334

And I've just scrolled down the forum and have seen the House buying section...


Feel free to move mods!

3d3

My wife and I are a couple of years older than you and in the process of buying our first house, here are my opinions on your questions:

1. Ideally you want to have as few moves as possible to get to your final dream house, so work out the steps, will you end up buying the 220k house in 3 years time after the 150k? However you need to think about what else you want in life, such as children. If so perhaps you need to work out affordability and whether you can pay the mortgage and other bills, if changes occur. Personally we are going for a 3 bed house, as this means we have room for kids and won't have to move for quite a while or never, although we hope we will.

2. Gas, electric, water, many of the providers offer tools to calculate this. For us, we estimate: Gas and electricity are £110 and water is £105 per quarter. We have grouped our outgoings on moneydashboard.com to see how much we are currently spending a month.

3. Own survey: £500 Conveyancing (minus stamp duty): £1000 Mortgage fees and valuation: £500+ Insurance for new house: £500 etc.

4. Depends what comes with the house and what you need, you don't have to fill all the rooms straight away. 1xBed and various white goods are the main things.

5. Go to an independent mortgage broker (never an EA's), who will go through all of this and your questions. Write wills etc if you are not married by the time you buy. Make sure all debts are cleared, although if you do not currently both have credit cards maybe get them and pay off every month to build your credit rating.

Always expect more costs, don't leave yourself with nothing.