Possible house purchase in 2024

[Deleted User]

I think where you’re going wrong is you’re trying too hard to allocate every penny you spend as an investment. Whilst that’s fair enough, your choice, but the risk is you end up draining any joy from your existence. 

If you don’t want to rent, buy something. But then you’re listing loads of negatives, this might happen, that might happen, UK houses are rubbish, you might lose 1.7% when selling, might, might, may, could… any of which could happen to anybody, anywhere in the world…. You’re tormenting yourself and putting up your own barriers. 

In your shoes, I would look to buy somewhere that suits my current needs. Not a forever home, and likely foregoing several ‘nice to have, but not critical’ requirements. I would also (being serious) consider getting some therapy to ease my overthinking mind.

Flugelhorn

[Deleted User] said:

I think where you’re going wrong is you’re trying too hard to allocate every penny you spend as an investment. Whilst that’s fair enough, your choice, but the risk is you end up draining any joy from your existence. 

If you don’t want to rent, buy something. But then you’re listing loads of negatives, this might happen, that might happen, UK houses are rubbish, you might lose 1.7% when selling, might, might, may, could… any of which could happen to anybody, anywhere in the world…. You’re tormenting yourself and putting up your own barriers. 

In your shoes, I would look to buy somewhere that suits my current needs. Not a forever home, and likely foregoing several ‘nice to have, but not critical’ requirements. I would also (being serious) consider getting some therapy to ease my overthinking mind.

I agree with this - first few houses I bought, were just bought because they were OK, handy for work  and what we could afford. We were far too busy with work to fret about investing a lot or agonising over properties.  

jimbog

You are over thinking all of this. When I was purchasing a property there were a number of things to look out for, 'fundamental geopolitical issues, like China' didn't figure

Luke451

Bigphil1474 said:

OP, I get the impression you aren't from these here parts? Not a criticism, but the UK has some great areas to live in and some very bad areas to live in. London isn't a good example of living in the UK as it has it's own issues that you don't find elsewhere. I've had family live in Norfolk, which isn't somewhere I'd choose, but they loved it. Same with Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, South Wales and so on. The city I live in has some nice areas and some horrible areas just a few miles apart. 

When I do sell my house, I am buying a new house, but we are putting the house money and some savings together to buy a house mortgage free. So no mortgage and no rent. That is what makes buying a house worthwhile for me. If I rented, I'd always have that chunk of money coming out of my income every month. 

I think that someone else mentioned London as a place where they've got a nice increase of equity, instead, I mentioned it due to the salary that I could get.

I I had to pay a mortgage up north without a London salary, it would be very difficult to stay afloat, let's say around 50k, so my fear is that after buying and change of job, I may not get another one on that salary band just because I live up north (it's not so uncommon that HR allocates the budget based on where you live) or because I get a job from a company in that area, notoriously it pays less than London.

So, it's highly possible that I won't see that salary again after I change job, the minor concern is that the current manager could argue with my movement, same as HR would do during the recruitment process... I'm very good in this team and I consider this less of a risk, but it could happen...

Regarding London, I wouldn't live there neither if I got 5M from lottery, it's a long explanation so I spare it .

I'd live in other areas like Wales or Manchester/Liverpool/Birmingham/Edinburgh as a sane principle.

It's not so wrong to save your equity through buying (apart interest rates), but the problem is that everything has to go well, no natural disasters, no major damages, good neighbors etc... So far I prioritized my investments due to these things... There are many things that the house insurance doesn't cover, my investments are instead kind of safe and spread out across the world, but yeah, I'm tired of living in an apartment (rented or purchased doesn't matter), it makes me sick. So, either I pay 1500 for rent or ~1100 for the mortgage, interestingly, the house for rent are always lower quality (or also less comfy) than the ones on sale around Manchester.

Certainly, I could bring the rent down to 1400 or so, but it's still more than the mortgage and the risk to see that property on sale very soon is quite high.

These are the main reasons why I considered buying this time...

Luke451

Grizebeck said:

Why are you spending so much time on this

Is this a productive answer?

MultiFuelBurner said:

RHemmings said:

I feel that I'm guilty of over-thinking my upcoming house purchase. But, I feel that you, @Luke451, have taken it to a higher level than me. I don't mean that as a criticism, just an observation. Certainly thinking through the financials is a good thing. Perhaps on a forum a shorter summary is more likely to be digestible for readers. Is there a TL;DR version?

It looks to me as if you have a good salary and can save a lot of money. You have a good deposit, and clearly have the numerical ability to think through things including future possibilities such as car ownership costs. I'm also of the mind that not all areas in the UK are suddenly going to go downhill. 
, 

When they post 15 new posts on the subject they might give you a run for your money. I don't mean that as a criticism just observation.

That said they do appear to be a few numbers short of a full list. It starts at 11 then 12 then jumps to 21 etc etc.

The numbering starts with the chapter number, but I didn't make that super clear, sorry.

MultiFuelBurner

Glad you returned many first time posters are never seen again.

A simple 5 year plan is what has served us well over the years. You can try and achieve too much too quickly and effectively achieve very little.

Where do you picture yourself in 5 years time with regards to vocation and personally. Try to narrow it down to a few big things like. Property purchase, promotion at work, hobby you want to continue or progress etc etc.

MultiFuelBurner

As an example our 5 year plan includes being ready financially when our favourite local expert developer releases their next batc of four individual houses not 5 miles from us but it's at planning right now. I would like just a 1-2 run promotion and my partner would like to add 10 properties to her management portfolio including 2 that are additions to the ltd company (8 other people's to manage)

We have a big trip to New York in there as well as a return to Italy to do a multi location trip spanning 6 weeks.