Help! - How much should I spend on my 1st house

HarryCuk

Hi Everyone,

Me and my girlfriend have been looking for our first house since the start of the year. We had a budget of around 230K for a 2 - 3 bed house in Bristol. We haven't had any success in finding a house we remotely like and we've seen 15-20 by now.
So now is my question, should I look at houses that are a bit more expensive? We have a 35K deposit and could probably push to 40 if we needed. Our combined income is 65K per year. As the house prices in Bristol are bad, even 250K won't get you much. I've seen a few nice new builds for sale at around the 280 mark but is this pushing it too far? Some people say that that's not too bad and others have gasped when I mentioned it so I'm really confused. Any help or guidance would be much appreciated!

Kind regards,
Harry

robatwork

A rule of thumb is 35% of your income can go on mortgage, which is about 1900 per month GROSS so around 1100 NET but you will need to do your own sums.

From that, extrapolate back to how big a mortgage you can get.

If Bristol is still up and coming then you should stretch yourself but not overly so. If the market isn't rising then don't stretch. Are these new builds in areas becoming gentrified?

Also consider your job security, and if one of you will be giving up work as and when you have children.

Cakeguts

HarryCuk wrote: »

Hi Everyone,

Me and my girlfriend have been looking for our first house since the start of the year. We had a budget of around 230K for a 2 - 3 bed house in Bristol. We haven't had any success in finding a house we remotely like and we've seen 15-20 by now.
So now is my question, should I look at houses that are a bit more expensive? We have a 35K deposit and could probably push to 40 if we needed. Our combined income is 65K per year. As the house prices in Bristol are bad, even 250K won't get you much. I've seen a few nice new builds for sale at around the 280 mark but is this pushing it too far? Some people say that that's not too bad and others have gasped when I mentioned it so I'm really confused. Any help or guidance would be much appreciated!

Kind regards,
Harry

What don't you like about the houses you have seen? You are not going to get the perfect house whatever you buy will be a compromise.

DCFC79

How far close to Bristol do you want to be ?

Did you want to be in the centre ?

Maybe you need to be realistic (in terms of what you like) with what your wanting to pay.

What is it you have seen that you didn't like ?

I don't know what areas you have been looking at but I'm looking now and there's some that are ok.

tacpot12

You will save money by buying the house you need once. Can you buy a house that will meet your all your foreseeable needs, e.g. space for children? If you can, then I would stretch yourself slightly to achieve this. New builds will tend to save you money on heating and, in the short-term, maintenance. But they also tend to be smaller for the same money.

PasturesNew

The trouble is, you start by wanting a house - and after every viewing you add something more to your "must have" list, so you end up despising everything you view because it doesn't have everything on your ever-increasing list.

You will never find a house to buy because your list just got impossibly and ridiculously detailed and long....

When I bought my current house it was simply "A house I could afford, that was under 10 years old and in an area where the name makes people think it's an OK place to live". Buy the best house you can afford in the best area you can afford. Don't nit pick.

If I'd nit picked I'd have never bought this one..... there's plenty one can always nit pick about in any house.

Even on the telly when people are spending £600-900k on a house they're nit picking and dismissing houses because their list got too big.

If you increase your budget you'll just find you're still nit picking ... because you're spending more you're then expecting more, when the reason to spend more was to get what you thought your last money would buy.

HarryCuk

Hi guys,

Thanks for the quick responses! So to answer some of the questions.

Most of the houses we have seen just didn't have that feeling of being a home for us. We're not tied to an area within Bristol but my girlfriend won't live anywhere further afield. We've been mainly looking in the Hanham/Warmley/Keynsham area as the house prices a bit more attractive, aIso I don't want to live in inner city Bristol (Like I have my whole life!) Plus we couldn't afford it anyway.

I guess what I'm really trying to get at is, how much is too much? I'd love a new build that I can just move into and redecorate knowing I won't need to do any big jobs any time soon. But as I said, these come with a premium. We've had a AIP for 270K with a rate of around 1.8% but that feels like a big mortgage to have at 25. Has any one got a mortgage similar?

Harry

DCFC79

HarryCuk wrote: »

Hi guys,

Thanks for the quick responses! So to answer some of the questions.

Most of the houses we have seen just didn't have that feeling of being a home for us. We're not tied to an area within Bristol but my girlfriend won't live anywhere further afield. We've been mainly looking in the Hanham/Warmley/Keynsham area as the house prices a bit more attractive, aIso I don't want to live in inner city Bristol (Like I have my whole life!) Plus we couldn't afford it anyway.

I guess what I'm really trying to get at is, how much is too much? I'd love a new build that I can just move into and redecorate knowing I won't need to do any big jobs any time soon. But as I said, these come with a premium. We've had a AIP for 270K with a rate of around 1.8% but that feels like a big mortgage to have at 25. Has any one got a mortgage similar?

Harry

Buy the house that you can comfortably afford, 1 that you would be happy with whether its £250k or £270.

dlmcr

When me and my girlfriend were looking to buy, we were able to get an AIP for 273k which where we live would have gotten something pretty good. Regardless of the AIP amount our budget was 150 - 180k and we said we would go up to maybe 210k for something amazing. In the end we paid 190k for our place which ticked most of our boxes in what is a very sparse market. I would be very uncomfortable buying anywhere near the high end of the AIP. It is sad that somewhere like Bristol where there is poor value for money, buyers are forced to the upper end of their AIP with little say in the matter. In a simple world I would suggest moving to a cheaper area but unfortunately things are not always that straightforward.

Cakeguts

You have to allow for how you will be able to pay the mortgage if interest rates go up a lot. In the past mortgage interest rates got as high as 17% so allow for that in how much you can afford in monthly payments.

JoJo1978

There are likely to be more listings coming on the market throughout Feb and Mar into Spring, so don't be too hasty yet. I'd personally not pay the premium for a new build, mainly due to the larger square footage that older properties have.

Other questions to ask yourself: how long will you stay in that first house? Is the house more important than the area or vice versa? How likely are you to be staying working in the location you both are now?