How has this house gone up so much?

RelievedSheff

YoungBlueEyes said:

oligopoly said:

[Deleted User] said:

Hopefully Labour's announcement of 1.5 million new homes well push prices down further, especially in areas likely to see development.

Most of the new builds will be rubbish, too small, badly built, 20th century designs, but due to the state of most UK housing stock it should still do the job.

Whilst 1.5m new homes seems fanciful it's possible that this could actually increase house prices in some regards. As smaller, poorly build town houses with box gardens and allocated parking becomes more and more commonplace, houses with space will become more valuable.

It's not the bigger older houses with proper room sizes and decent gardens that come with incentives and 'cash back' and free flooring etc... 

Not everyone feels the need to have a bigger older house with bigger larger maintenance bills,  a huge garden that they hardly ever use and have large rooms that result in massive heating bills.

Mark_Glasses

@BlueVeranda are you able to identify the house then?

@PartyOfFive I've given details of the house to a couple of people via pm, believe me this is genuine.

@Herzlos it did occur to me that it was an error but then I saw the listing at £950k. OK the buyer may not have done the research I have but at the very least I would have thought they'd be aware of the house next door being for sale for far less.

@RelievedSheff I live in possibly the cheapest flat in London, have no car, don't own anything worth nicking, no TV subscriptions etc. Just money in the bank but not enough money it seems.

@Elliott.T123 he is out the country a lot for short notice trips as it happens

@EssexHebridean that sounds like what we need to do. How do you shorten your mortgage? We have over 18 years left but I'm sure we could pay it off much sooner than that but don't want to pay a penalty. 

@arthurdick I always trusted that by putting myself through my boring degree and build my boring career that one day I'd get the financial rewards for it to have all been worth it.

@[Deleted User] there's loads of new properties being built round where I live but I don't think any of them are houses, they're luxury apartments.

@oligopoly the apartments are expensive here some are bigger than proper houses. I get your point though, I want a house not an apartment.

BlueVeranda

@Mark_Glasses That's what I'm saying yes. At least, I've found one that matches every detail you've mentioned here. (If you hadn't mentioned sending the link to other people this would be the point I expected to hear it's a wind-up and you thought you were sending us on a wild goose chase.)

The house immediately next door being a completely different style might account for the buyer not being interested in that one, or maybe as it sold 4 months earlier they didn't see it in time to offer. 

Herzlos

Mark_Glasses said:

@RelievedSheff I live in possibly the cheapest flat in London, have no car, don't own anything worth nicking, no TV subscriptions etc. Just money in the bank but not enough money it seems.

@EssexHebridean that sounds like what we need to do. How do you shorten your mortgage? We have over 18 years left but I'm sure we could pay it off much sooner than that but don't want to pay a penalty. 

@arthurdick I always trusted that by putting myself through my boring degree and build my boring career that one day I'd get the financial rewards for it to have all been worth it.

What's the point of life (and money) if all you're doing is being miserable to accumulate it? Will you suddenly start having fun if you had more of it? I get the idea of living frugally for a while to save hard for something, but there's usually a fixed goal in mind.

How much more do you need to buy your dream house?

You can usually overpay mortgages by about 10% a year without penalty, but if you're on a fixed rate from more than 12 months ago it's probably better to keep money in savings and pay it down in a lump sum once the deal ends, because your mortgage rate is probably going to fly up.

RelievedSheff

You can usually overpay 10% (although some companies allow up to 20%) of your mortgage balance each year without attracting any early repayment charge. You would need to check with your lender if this applies to your mortgage product.

We overpay our mortgage. Our contracted finish term of our mortgage is 12 years and 2 months but our overpayment of £206 per month has brought that term down to 10 years. We will be looking to increase the overpayment further before the end of our current fixed rate in 2026.

[Deleted User]

oligopoly said:

[Deleted User] said:

Hopefully Labour's announcement of 1.5 million new homes well push prices down further, especially in areas likely to see development.

Most of the new builds will be rubbish, too small, badly built, 20th century designs, but due to the state of most UK housing stock it should still do the job.

Whilst 1.5m new homes seems fanciful it's possible that this could actually increase house prices in some regards. As smaller, poorly build town houses with box gardens and allocated parking becomes more and more commonplace, houses with space will become more valuable.

Allocated parking should be banned, or at the very least required to be wired up to the home electricity meter. How else are people supposed to charge at decent rates?

RelievedSheff

[Deleted User] said:

oligopoly said:

[Deleted User] said:

Hopefully Labour's announcement of 1.5 million new homes well push prices down further, especially in areas likely to see development.

Most of the new builds will be rubbish, too small, badly built, 20th century designs, but due to the state of most UK housing stock it should still do the job.

Whilst 1.5m new homes seems fanciful it's possible that this could actually increase house prices in some regards. As smaller, poorly build town houses with box gardens and allocated parking becomes more and more commonplace, houses with space will become more valuable.

Allocated parking should be banned, or at the very least required to be wired up to the home electricity meter. How else are people supposed to charge at decent rates?

Have you seen a recent new build development?

In pretty much all local authorities it is now a planning requirement that EV charging points are provided for each plot. That includes in areas of allocated parking.

Mgman1965

My grandparents sold their Victorian, 4 bed detached village house in North Northamptonshire in need of refurbishment in 1976 for £35,000, is now on the market again for £850,000 😲. 

Mark_Glasses

@BlueVeranda it sounds like you've found the right house. I didn't think it would be easy to pinpoint especially when it's in such a small town most people have never heard of.

@Herzlos I do question that, I would love to drive a Porsche and go skiing but if I did that I'd be ruining our chances of buying a house. I would need millions for my dream house. For a house in my area it would be at least £225k more than our flat. That's more than we have in our savings. We are on a fixed rate from more than 12 months ago. Wouldn't there be no more mortgage to pay once it ends?

@RelievedSheff we are allowed 10%. Our monthly payments are just over £800 so we'd be allowed £80 a month which won't go very far so I've never done it.

@[Deleted User] I don't have a car

@Mgman1965 that's not too surprising because £35k was expensive in 1976

Herzlos

Mark_Glasses said:

@Herzlos I do question that, I would love to drive a Porsche and go skiing but if I did that I'd be ruining our chances of buying a house. I would need millions for my dream house. For a house in my area it would be at least £225k more than our flat. That's more than we have in our savings. We are on a fixed rate from more than 12 months ago. Wouldn't there be no more mortgage to pay once it ends?

Ok, maybe you need to scale back your expectations a bit, what about your acceptable house? I'm assuming you're actually looking at houses with a view to buying?

Assuming you've got equity and savings, a jump of £225k isn't outrageous. For London. My whole house barely cost that, but it's very much not in London.

When the fixed rate ends, you'll normally drop onto the variable rate which usually doesn't have any early redemption fee, so if you have more than 10% to pay in and/or you're on a good fixed rate* then you can wait until you're in the variable rate, pay a chunk and then negotiate a new fixed rate ideally with a better LTV.


I have to admit that I find it slightly odd that someone who has spent their life obsessed with money doesn't seem to have spent any time trying to figure out how mortgages work and how to do them in the most cash efficient way. Do you have any financial/investment plan, or have you just been cheap and stuck all spare money into a savings account hoping you'll suddenly become rich enough?


*For example; I'm still on a 1.89% fixed rate and was getting 3-5% on savings, so there's no point in me overpaying the mortgage just now, but when the fixed rate expires and I'm looking at around 6% for the mortgage that'd be the time to dump the savings into it.