MoneySaving Poll: How old were you when you bought your first home or have you never?

mdud

Brought my 1st house in 1990 (25 yrs ago), it was £33,500, interest rates where @ 15%, i only earnt £12,300, so was a very heavy monthly payment of £350 pcm. I still own the house worth about £85,000 now
I think the problem today is that the young have both an easier life, but a more complicated one. Today expectation is much higher, but i want to eat out (i couldn't), i have a mobile phone (i didn't), internet (none), in short, they want everything and spend as such, don't save, but expect to buy a house without a deposit.......it's about what you spend on and how you spend it i'm afraid.

thelawnet

flea72 wrote: »

the majority of teens have already purchased a property

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

InA

flea72 wrote: »

So far the poll is dispelling the myth that the young are unable to get on the housing market, seeing as the majority of teens have already purchased a property

At the time of writing, the poll indicates that 68% of teens have already purchased a property; which is an unlikely scenario given that we have the highest youth unemployment rate for twenty years alongside hyper-inflated property prices. It's obvious that some pollsters did not take this poll seriously. I'm curious about the real age of the 68% of teenage respondents.

What also strikes me is the question of why so many people like to put a price on the home that they live in (even when they have not had it valued and / or do not intend to sell in the foreseeable future)? At the end of the day, people need somewhere to live until they die and a house is only worth what a buyer will pay for it at the time of sale; this value can go down as well as up (as one previous poster's example shows). Land registry figures also exclude details of all property sales which were sold for well below market value (e.g. as a result of bankruptcy, repossessions etc) so the "average" figures paint a more buoyant image of the housing market than is the case.

The phrase "Ponzi Scheme" has been used more than once to describe the state of the housing market.

flea72

InA wrote: »

At the time of writing, the poll indicates that 68% of teens have already purchased a property; which is an unlikely scenario given that we have the highest youth unemployment rate for twenty years alongside hyper-inflated property prices. It's obvious that some pollsters did not take this poll seriously. I'm curious about the real age of the 68% of teenage respondents.

I think alot of people got confused. The first Option is
'Ive bought a home' with option 2 'i havent bought a home'

In tiny writing above this it states 'i am in my teens'

I think most people missed the age brackets and just clicked to say they had 'bought a home' irrespective of their age

Murphybear

Bought an ex Council flat in 1980s. It was £21,000. Being in London it was the only thing I could afford.

kingfisherblue

Bought two bed terraced house in 1988 for £16500. Sold it in 1994 for £35000 and bought three bed semi with extended kitchen, in much better area, for £48000 (repossession - prices at the time were around £68000 for similar houses in area). I still live there and it's currently worth around £150,000.


Daughter bought a repossession last year, in a decent area. Three bed semi, similar to mine but slightly smaller. It was £87000. They've spent about £15000 (cash, they saved like mad) to replace bathroom and kitchen, plastering, flooring, radiators and boiler, etc. Houses on the same estate are for sale for £130000-£140000. They did save every penny, did car boot sales to make a bit extra, and her boyfriend worked two jobs for over a year (main job Monday-Friday, plus second job at weekends) and my daughter did as much overtime as possible (shiftwork, so second job not viable). They put down 20% deposit as well as paying cash for all the jobs they have had to do. They have now slowed down a bit and her partner only has main job. My daughter is on maternity leave with their first child. She's returning to work later this year.

Gemini.IDF

Looking at the results for this poll, the people in their 70s and 80s who said they bought their own homes in their teens must have either bought them outright for cash, or they inherited property. People in these age groups would not have been able to get a mortgage under the age of 21!
I am in my early 70s and was married in my teens, but I could not have my name on the deeds of the house we were buying on mortage because of this '21' rule. (A wife's earnings were not taken into account for the mortage either, whatever age she was! Not that a woman earned much in those days to make much difference anyway!)
It was 23 years later when we moved and bought another property that my name was put on our house deeds!
In the 1960s, I couldn't even buy a small radio on hire purchase unless my husband stood guarantor for me! How times have changed!

Gemini.IDF

mdud wrote: »

Brought my 1st house in 1990 (25 yrs ago), it was £33,500, interest rates where @ 15%, i only earnt £12,300, so was a very heavy monthly payment of £350 pcm. I still own the house worth about £85,000 now
I think the problem today is that the young have both an easier life, but a more complicated one. Today expectation is much higher, but i want to eat out (i couldn't), i have a mobile phone (i didn't), internet (none), in short, they want everything and spend as such, don't save, but expect to buy a house without a deposit.......it's about what you spend on and how you spend it i'm afraid.

I couldn't agree more. (Especially about the 15% interest rates on mortages!)
It really is all about priorities. What is important to you. When I was first married in 1960, the most important thing was the roof over your head, then your food and only then the clothes on your back. Designer? No such thing back then. My grandson is hard up; has a job paying his rent, etc., yet he has a top-of-the-range Smart phone with a monthly contract, hi tech sound equipment, laptop, etc. Runs a car. All essentials he says. Fine, but don't moan on about being hard up all the time!
We hardly ever went away on holiday and when we did we stayed in a B&B probably at a farm house somewhere in the UK. We've never been abroad. But that's us. We've never been in debt, except for the mortage. If we couldn't afford something, we went without it until we'd saved for it. You get a lot more pleasure from the things you buy then and never take them for granted. You sure as hell look after them better. It's 'Easy come, easy go' these days it seems to me.
We have never earned very much and I looked after my own children at home myself until my eldest went to secondary school. Even then I only went back to work part-time. We have never raised a loan on our mortage and we have saved for our old age. The result is we own our home and have a little nest egg, the interest on which we thought would supplement our State Pensions. It did, until the interest rates dwindled and then stayed for years at the ludicrously low rates they are now! And the media says that Pensioners have not suffered during the 'Austerity Measures'! Huh!

TBagpuss

I was 2 when I bought my first property - it was in a depressed area and my initial mortgage payments were the same amount I had previously been paying to rent a single room in a shared house. After paying the deposit I had no money left over for furniture and apart for a bed, everything I had was second hand, mostly from the local Salvation Army charity shop!

I sold when I changed jobs and moved to a different area of the country 4 years later - the house sold for exactly what I paid for it, and as I recall, I ended up with about £1,500 once the estate agents etc were paid.

Having saved for a deposit I then bought another property which was almost identical but cost over 3 times as much, due to the move South!

I sold that property last year and hope that my current home will be a long term one. The move did involve doubling my mortgage, which was a bit scary, although part of that was that I had been overpaying (still am,but the overpayments are a smaller proportion of the mortgage, and with the bigger mortgage, and higher interest rate on part of it, it is less impressive!)

My sister (now 36) bought her first property when she was 30, my brother, who is now 34, is hoping to buy this year.

I know my parents bought their first house in 1970, for £6,000. They could barely afford it. My dad installed central heating himself as they could not afford to get anyone in to do it, and my mum still has the account books she used to keep, detailing their income and outgoings down to the last penny, with weekly menus and budgets, as they could only *just* afford it.

lulu_92

TBagpuss wrote: »

I was 2 when I bought my first property

Started young, eh?

OH and I are looking to buy this year, I'm 23 in July. OH bought the house we live in now in 2007 when he was 22 for £114,000. It's worth a bit less now (according to Zoopla..) but we're saving like mad.