My first home &I want to OWN it!

Katzen · 24 June 2013 at 9:32PM

Evening all!
I've been lurking around MSE for a very long time but I finally have an excuse for my own thread as we have bought our first (together) house :j and now I'm planning how I can rid myself of this debt ASAP!

Here's the headline figures:
£153,995 mortgage on new house
£30,000 bank of Mum &Dad loan to extend &refurb new house (pending)
£107,000 owed on DH's house, that we will rent out when we move.

Considering my only debt before this house was my student loan, this has caused many a sleepless night but I've done my maths and I'm sure we can make it- with a little help from :money:

Now, I know you would all like a little background. I am 29 and married my delightful (mostly) DH last August after 5 years together. The house we currently live in belongs to him and is on a mortgage deal that was astronomical before the crash but has dropped with interest rates to a point where we've been able to save for another deposit. DH is very keen to keep it as an investment. I can see the benefit but will be pushing to sell if rates change and life gets tough.

Our new house was almost not bought as we were meant to be saving for another year. We had just started to skim through the property paper to get an idea of prices in the area when we came across this rather shabby looking little ex-council house a couple of miles up the road. A bit of research, a few visits and a chat to builder mates took a week and we put in an offer :eek:. It is just what we were looking for and we had the money for a deposit so we went for it and won. To put this into perspective- no house on this street has sold for over 10 years according to Zoopla so we had to move fast and the average property price for the postcode is well over £100,000 more than ours is worth (talk about buying the cheapest house in the most expensive area!) It's solid, well located and has loads of potential, if we can afford to unleash it.

Which leaves us with the plan... We are currently applying for permission to extend to the back and also two bedrooms over the garage. It will be beautiful if we manage it and the perfect place to bring up little Katz. Unfortunately, we know we won't do all the work on the money my parents can lend us so it will be a work in progress for a long time. This diary is going to help me stay on our MSE track in order to get it done sooner rather than later. So far we have done the following:

MSE achievement #1- invite DH's friend who owns some big power tools round to dismantle some pretty dodgy fake brick fire surrounds and built in wardrobes. The boys had a great day yesterday :rotfl:

MSE achievement #2- avoid the cost of a skip for rubbish created by donating broken bricks to a friend who wants free hardcore to put under the new drive he's building.

That's all for now. I shall update my signature and then save some electricity by going to bed!

KolaKube · 24 June 2013 at 9:34PM

Hello and good luck! We're starting this month too. Exciting times I shall be reading with interest

xx

Katzen · 25 June 2013 at 5:44PM

Here's a little summary of some MSE things I've done so far. Some were designed to save for a deposit and so have been going on since the new year. Others refer to this new house. I'm going to log them here to keep me motivated by reminding me how far we've come already.

1. Cut down supermarket shop from £80-100 pw to more like £30-40 by switching to Ald! and meal planning
2. Started a £1/2 coin jar which will be cracked at Christmas (no CC this year!)
3. Switched energy supplier and internet provider (and bagged £50 credit on that)
4. Got rid of tv as we were paying for cable
5. Started monthly savings towards annual expenses like cars and gifts
6. Swagbucks- but that's died a death as life is too short to be that bored for so little return!
7. Gone on a yarn diet, so no new knitting
8. Cut back a lot on booze. I was aiming to make the 2discount crates I bought at Christmas last the year. Might not achieve that but still spent less than £30 on extra booze so far this year, down from at least £20 a month.
9. Bought no new clothes or shoes
10. Set up energy supplier for new house that has no standing charge so not paying if we aren't using some days/weeks whilst renovations progress.

That's all I can think of now. Will update more later

Knit_Witch · 25 June 2013 at 8:48PM

You seem to be doing well! Go you :beer::beer::beer:

Katzen · 25 June 2013 at 9:10PM

Hi KolaKube,
thanks for popping by, good luck with your journey too.
Hi Knit Witch,
lovely to see you over here! Pull up a chair, bring your needles and make yourself at home.

Knit_Witch · 25 June 2013 at 9:37PM

Katzen wrote: »

Hi Knit Witch,
lovely to see you over here! Pull up a chair, bring your needles and make yourself at home.

Knit Witch brings a tray with a full teapot, milk and a plate of biscuits, puts it down on the table between two comfy chairs and settles in :rotfl:

Katzen · 27 June 2013 at 8:44PM

Thanks for the tea and biccies Knit Witch! Especially appreciated by my hangover- a bottle of red with crisps for tea was not a good idea on a school night! Worth it for the good chat with mates though.

Nearly time for our first mortgage payment and I'm getting excited. Won't be an OP this month as its a bumper payment anyway to cover interest from the last part-month.

Don't suppose anyone has a good spread sheet do they? Would love to see the numbers coming down each month!

Knit_Witch · 27 June 2013 at 8:47PM

Ouch to the hangover, but :j:j:beer::j:j to the mortgage starting (hmm I use Libre Office for spreadsheets)

KolaKube · 28 June 2013 at 11:21AM

I see you're going on a yarn diet! Me too

I have a bag at the moment with some gorgeous bright colours which I'm making mini-Kube a few soft furnishings for his new room out of (excuses excuses!) and once that is gone I'm going to have to be strict with myself... I do have a bit box of fabric so I might move back over to sewing and make a few cushion covers etc but definitely need something to scratch the crafty itch!

Also - we menu planned and are doing the next two weeks (nice dinners too!) for £40 for me, OH and mini-Kube is weaning so gets a little veg puree etc too (will need to buy milk / bread at some point too) so it's doable for definite

xx

MallyGirl · 28 June 2013 at 11:38AM

It depends on what sort of thing you want to knit but when DD was looking for wool to do a craft project I appealed on Freecycle and got loads. Obviously no good if you want to knit a plain jumper but for toys, multi-coloured design etc it is worth a try.
Good luck with the project - it's definitely the way to go. When we bought our previous house our friends called it a hard hat zone and thought we were mad. We didn't extend but we did a lot of work over about 6 years. Bought for £165k and sold for £415k with us briefly MF towards the end.

Katzen · 28 June 2013 at 6:26PM

Just got hold of the bank details for my mortgage so I know where to send my OPs :j and registered for online services to be able to see the balance online too :j Not that either will be used for a while yet but one day...

MallyGirl, thanks for popping by. Freecycle is a good tip, I got a bag of yarn off there once. Never got round to using it but would keep my needles moving if things got desperate, although I have to admit that my stash should keep me going until at least Christmas already :rotfl:

Plan is to crack on with creating a nifty spreadsheet this evening so I can track the mortgage myself. I do love a good spreadsheet!

My first home &I want to OWN it!

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