Buying a house within 9 months - baby on the way!

summerday

Hi,Congratulations on your pregnancy. The best thing to do first is probably to see what 95% mortgages you can get, as other posters have mentioned it's not as easy as it was a couple of years ago and you don't want to get your hopes up for nothing. Hopefully you will be able to get an agreement in principle so be able to start looking at houses in earnest.I also agree with another poster who said you should ask about the chain of houses, if there is no chain or just a short, simple one you are much more likely to be in there before little one arrives, whereas if there is a long, complex chain things can drag forever and things are more likely to go wrong.People mean well when they warn you of the housing market conditions/ risks but I am sure that you have already considered this and it is your decision. I wish you well.Sarah

MonkeySaving?

happytails wrote: »

Right, i have posted on here before about saving a deposit. Circumstances have changed and we're expecting a baby :jtrouble is we want the house before the baby arrives (28/2/09) This means sacrifising the 10% deposit we wanted to put down and putting a 5% on down. I know alot of you will think that is bad and i know where you are coming from, but our family and our needs are more important than saving a few grand - to be frank.

Anyway, if we want a house by Feb 2009 when do we need to be looking/putting offers in etc and actually getting a mortgage?

Also, we wanted a 3 bed but as we are pressed for time and money so were thinking of getting a 2 bed with a decent garden and look to get an extension in a few years time? what are your opinions on this - bearing in mind we need a house by Feb?

We can realistically save £500 a month or more plus OH may be able to get upto 4k on a private project ( this will really help us obv! )

Help and advice will be appreciated

Thanks

Can't give you any advice other than what others have said, but you're a repossession waiting to happen.

money_saving_diva

Hi and congrats. My advice from personally experience would be that if you want to find somewhere before your baby comes along please start looking now. I found out I was preggers in March 2007 (so due end of oct 2007), we put our house on the market in May 2007 - offer accepted in June 2007, we found a house we liked in June 07 - offer accepted, chain started. The people in the house we were buying dragged it out saying they couldn't move until end of Oct (my due date?!) We said ok as it was our 'dream house' and we would have to live with the hassle when the time came. Anyway, they pulled out in September 2007!!?? When I was 8 months preggers!!?? EA rang me at work, not DH! I had to go home, very upset!!!?? Anyway, we brought selling our house forward so we were out before baby due, and sorted out renting somewhere. We were due to move 3 weeks before my due date .......... and ........... guess what .......... my waters broke at 4am the morning we were due to move and I had the baby at 4pm that day!!!! Our family had to move all our stuff!! Left my home in labour - took baby to new house next day. really confused the midwifes with my paperwork??!!
...but by the way we then found an even better house and we are now in there - so it happened for a reason - but moving while heavily pregnant or in labour isn't fun!!!??

MonkeySaving?

saraht wrote: »

The best thing to do first is probably to see what 95% mortgages you can get

The answer to that is none, unless you want sky high interest rates.

littlesos

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Very good point. Our son (3 this week) is amazingly imaginative about trying to find new ways of killing himself. You can't safely leave a toddler alone for very long at the best of times, and on a building site, it would be hard.

I don't agree with this. I have a toddler, almost 2 and we are living in a house which is a building site (the upstairs no longer has any floors/walls/ceilings!). We have taken less precautions with her than we did with her older sister when we lived in a new build. DD2 is a devil-child sometimes and has in her short life already had a black eye from falling over her own feet and landing on her toys! With a baby a refurb is easy, they sleep lots so there is quite a bit of day-time you can do stuff and they don't move on their own so you can pop them down and you know they'll be there if you have to nip to the loo. With a toddler it's a bit more thinking, but not that hard, and to be honest my DD loves getting her hammer and "helping".

Sterile surroundings HA! they aren't healthy, wrapping children in cotton wool so that they can't judge risks, now that is unhealthy.

neverdespairgirl

littlesos wrote: »

Sterile surroundings HA! they aren't healthy, wrapping children in cotton wool so that they can't judge risks, now that is unhealthy.

I agree with you. But you do still have to be careful. DS decided, last week, to try to climb the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in our living room. Then he tried to see if he could reach the window to open it.

johnny_storm

Dont babies just ruin your life?

Theres no reason why you cant rent, and wait for house prices to fall in the meantime. Thankfully for the rest of us, a lot of places wont accept children, but Im sure you'll find something.

if you insist on buying now "for the baby" then you'll probably doom it to a life of having parents in serious debt. Seriously, whatever you do , DO NOT BUY.

kodokan

littlesos wrote: »

We have taken less precautions with her than we did with her older sister when we lived in a new build.

Littlesos - you know this. I know this, also being the parent of 2 kids. But remember, the OP is having their 'precious first born child', so won't realise this until their second turns up! I remember being uncomfortable with other toddlers leaning over my darling baby and breathing - germs, oh the germs! Fortunately, my usual slatternish personality has reasserted itself with my second, which results in a much calmer if messier house.

kodokan

GracieP

Hi OP, congratulations on the pregnancy.

I just want to give my perspective on this. My husband and I sound a little similar to you. He is currently the sole earner, we have dogs and while we aren't pregnant we are planning on starting a family in the near future. On the other hand, we are selling our house (contracts just exchanged:D ) and moving into rented in a couple of weeks. It's a bit terrifying to give up being homeowners but we knew we would not be happy in our house long-term. And were worried about being trapped here once the crash becomes more evident.

We were astoundingly lucky that the first rental property we went to see was nice and ok with dogs. I know that if a year from now we have to move we're sure to have a harder search ahead of us, especially if we have a baby by then. But house prices are falling, and the speed at which they are falling has taken me by surprise. I took a look online last night at houses for sale in the area we're moving from and I'm seeing prices similar to those I saw in 2005. And this is London, where prices were still going up a year ago.

If you buy now you risk paying twice as much as your house is worth in real terms. You risk being stuck where you buy for the next 10-20 years. Or worse as interest rates are likely to rise you risk being repossessed if your repayments rise beyond your ability to pay. And then you are in a far worse position than you are now, with debt on your negative equity and a poor credit rating.

Why not consider staying where you are now and continue saving. If the worst happens and the landlord decides to sell or gets repossessed you could make an offer on the house if you like it. All the while keep an eye on the repossession auctions as the best prices are there and sales at auction have to complete within a month.

It's only natural to want to own your own home at this point in your life, but you might be sacrificing a better future.

dfitps

I would go on to the Talk section of Mumsnet and ask for opinions on moving, housing with small babies, debt and so on - you'll get a big mixture of replies I expect, but it's a really useful place for asking a lot of parents something at once. If your view of what you want to do is rock-solid, you've still got nothing to lose by asking them, and if there is anything you haven't thought of that the views of lots of other parents could help you with, that might be useful.

I've moved both when pregnant and with a newborn and it's OK - a hassle, but OK. I wouldn't personally want the stress of possible negative equity with a looming recession just for the feeling of owning a home before the baby was born, though I'm sure at the time before my first was born I might have wanted that - it would have been my personal preference too - but not now, not with the economy the way it is. An easy life, spare money, and keeping my options open are what I'd want right now if I found myself pregnant.

I think finding out about it all on paper, just investigating mortgages, keeping an eye out for houses and making silly offers - good plan. If you do find a house that's perfect for you, go for it if you're sure. But please don't compromise on your ideal house (including on price) just for the sake of having got the housebuying out of the way before the baby's born - only go ahead if it really is exactly the right house for you. If you do compromise too much, you're quite likely to lift your head up from the chaos of early parenthood, in summer 2009, and start noticing things about your house you don't like, and wishing you'd left it and kept saving (by then the houses you could be buying would be even cheaper, too).

Also, don't shoot the messenger here, but don't count on having a baby just because you're pregnant. Whatever decisions you make about offering on houses, think through whether you'd be as happy with them if you suddenly found yourself no longer pregnant, and make sure they work for you as a couple that way too. It's a horrid thought, but it does happen, and early miscarriages in particular are really, really common (1 in 4 pregnancies, I think, something like that) - it doesn't even count officially as a problem that gets medical investigation until you've had three in a row, that's how ordinary it is. Hopefully you'd be past the riskiest first stage by the time you offered on a house anyway, but even then things can go wrong, so making sure that whatever you've chosen is a good choice even if you end up not actually having a baby for another three years does make sense.

Anyway congratulations and I do hope you find somewhere to live that you're happy with eventually, however you do it .