Panicking about negative equity without even owning the house yet..

oatcakes

Me and my partner are in the final stages of purchasing our first home.

We are currently just waiting for the formal mortgage offer from our lender so that then we can exchange contracts.

The house is a new-build 3 bed end-terrace, which we are going to buy for £163k.

We have put 10% down, so our mortgage will be £146,700 over 30 years.

I have been slightly concerned about getting into negative equity, specially because this is a house that me and my partner do not intend to live in for the rest of our lives..

To give some context, we are both immigrants and intend to eventually return to our home country let’s say in 6 to 10 years time.

To us, it makes sense to buy a house now, rather than throwing money away in rent for 6 to 10 years.

Our goal is to save as much as we can during that period, and then sell the house and add all of the equity into our savings too. This would allow us to buy a fairly generous house in our home country.

I know that new-builds tend to depreciate in value in the first couple of years hence why I’m panicking a little bit.

In addition to this, I am fully aware that the city where we are buying this property isn’t the best or wealthiest (Stoke-On-Trent), but the plus side is that it’s literally a 10 minute walk to work and the new estate is also quite nice.

The remaining new builds are also selling for around the same value from £155k to £180k.

Am I just being paranoid? Is there anything that I should consider before exchanging contracts?

Thank you in advance.

Thrugelmir

Use some of your savings to overpay the mortgage every month thereby reducing the amount you owe and paying less interest in the process. 
When you eventually come to sell the property you can release all the equity that you've built up.