After deposit and ancillary house buying costs

bobobski

This question has probably been asked a million times on this board but I've not yet found it.

When buying a house, your big costs will be deposit, SDLT, survey, legals, mortgage fees etc. But you wouldn't save up exactly the total of all of those costs - you'll have some money left in your bank account. My question is: how much? I'm curious how people determine their "absolute maximum" offer sum.

To use my plan as an example, I'm hoping to raise £60,000 over the next 5 years for a deposit and around £10,000 for everything else. My total goal is....? Certainly not £70,000. £80,000? £90,000?

stator

It depends how much money you need to live on and what provisions you have in place for illness and unemployment etc.

If you're a single income household you would ideally have enough money left over to live for 6-12 months if you were sick or unemployed.

However most of us sail a little closer to the wind than that.

bobobski

That makes sense, so "just" the usual emergency fund people are supposed to keep?

I read lots of horror stories on this board about buying a house and immediately finding that the boiler is broken or there's a hole in the roof. That's the sort of thing I was wondering about, but it makes sense to roll up that kind of risk into the emergency fund.

I forgot to mention that I was ignoring furniture, planned works to the property etc.

I'm off to do some maths

MFWannabe

As well as all the legal costs I would budget for furniture if you don't have any currently (although everything doesn't have to be new when you buy your first house)


A fund for any work the house may require (or you may want to do) when you first move in


Build up an emergency fund of at least 3 months wages in case anything happens job wise you could still pay all bills while finding employment