to buy or stay at home?

pavlovs_dog

my partner and i are starting to think about the idea of getting a house. it is something i have wanted for a long time, and as such am finding it hard at times to supress my excitement and keep things in perspective so please bear with me if i start waxing lyrical about the perfect shade of paint for my bathroom....

we are currently living with his parents, who we get on great with. between the 2 of us, we are approaching the 10k in savings mark - money, we forsee being used as a deposit. i am a student (have 3 years of my course still to complete), but am also working full part time (if that makes sense), so between my loan and my wages i bring home between 10-12k a year, whilst my OH is in full time employment. not the best paid job in the world, but he enjoys it, and brings home around 12k a year.

we run a little car between the 2 of us, and try to keep the costs down as much as possible (FAL is ex mechanic, which saves us a small fortune), and apart from this we have no major outgoings, other than food etc. his parents wont take much off of us in the way of board, so we are trying to save as much as we can.

i know that if we were to get a place together, it wouldnt be for at least a year. however, as his parents are on about retiring to a small town 90 odd miles away, it is something we are having to think more about.

being based in cardiff, property can be quite expensive, but in order to get a house rather than a flat we are quite prepared to move slightly further away where our money will stretch a little further. at the cheapest, we are talking 80k for a pokey little matchbox sized house, perhaps a bit more if we go into the more undesirable areas.


and so to the crux of my post:

how do you think we would come off if we were to look towards buying a house in a years time? would we have difficulty getting a mortgage because i am a student? we have no debt to speak of, and are both fairly to very good with money.

i understand that the bigger the deposit we can put down, the more we may be able to borrow, yet at the same time, we want to keep some money back, primarily because we need to buy all the household basics (bed, fridgewashing machine etc), secondly in case we needed to pay for any repair work/improvements to the house, but also rainy day money, money for the car etc etc.

another thing we have to bare in mind is that i am currently considering doing a PCGE (teaching training) after my degree, or perhaps a masters/phd, but am not too sure how i would come off for funding (although given my field there may well be some scope for securing sponsorship)

on the other hand, do you think we would be better to stave off our nesting urges, stay at home, and try saving as much money as we can? we are both pretty determined that when we do go, it will be to buy a house as we both see letting as a waste of money. we're just not sure whether to aim to do it sooner or later.

thank you for taking the time to read this, and i would apprecaite your thoughts and comments on this matter.