How do people afford houses in this day and age?

[db]

seriously? our next door neighbours' house has just gone up for sale, and it is absolutely gorgeous.. we'd love to buy it, and we could easily afford the mortgage on it, but how do young people these days come up with the £40k+ you need for deposit/legal fees/etc? even if me & the missus scrimped and saved every last penny - really stripped back and lived the most basic existence we could - we would still be lucky to save that kind of money in 10 years.. but, obviously, that's not really feasible because that would be a pretty miserable way to spend life!

this isn't a "grrr the state of the economy/housing market/" thread - it's a genuine question.. i don't ever see how i will ever afford a house in my lifetime, so i just don't get how people do it.. were you all lucky enough to have the foresight to setup a trust fund when you were little or something? ms. dirtybobby did that, but even her savings comes to a grand total of about £6k which would barely make a dent, and she's been saving all her life!

so how the hell does one do it? i've never seriously looked into it, so apologies if this is a daft question and there are some simple answers that i'm just not privy to lol..

 

[cookie_monster]

help from kindly relatives.

without that, i would still be renting and would not even be able to consider buying.

i still live a fairly hand to mouth existence and the only reason i end up with some spare cash is becuase of the lodger.

in fairness though, this homeowning malarky really isnt all its cracked up to be. in the sapce of a month ive been told my insurance are twats, my shower has broken and do has the landing light.



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[db]

help from kindly relatives.

without that, i would still be renting and would not even be able to consider buying.

i still live a fairly hand to mouth existence and the only reason i end up with some spare cash is becuase of the lodger.

in fairness though, this homeowning malarky really isnt all its cracked up to be. in the sapce of a month ive been told my insurance are twats, my shower has broken and do has the landing light.

yeah, i guess renting isn't all bad.. my boiler broke the other week - phoned the letting agent, it was fixed by the time i got home from work.. no charge to me (obviously).. same thing when the shower broke shortly after we moved in.. etc..

i guess it's just the fact that there are things i'd like to change about my current house, and i can't cos it ain't mine!

 

[Andreas Rex]

I was lucky enough to get some inheritance money when my grandpa died. Much as i'd have liked to piss it up the wall, I decided, in an uncharacteristically sensible manner, to invest in a house.

Since then i've been burgled, had a car crash into the front of my house, and my next door neighbour's house is about to be semi-demolished! Woo!

 

[My Name is URL]

Funnily enough I was just looking on rightmove this morning and noticed that house DB..... to be fair I do think it is well overpriced although obviously just my opinion....

As to the "how do you afford" well everyone slates the banks and their crazy lending... but I am one of the success stories (touch wood) of the "crazy lending era".

I got a 100% graduate mortgage from HSBC to buy my house. Without that 100% mortgage it would have taken me 32 months (nearly 3 years) to save the deposit.... I have now been in my house 3 1/2 years so glad I did get the mortgage and not have to live in a 1 bedroom flat forever. Saying that though, we rarely go out but then do have treats, we just have good salaries for the area and are lucky in that respect.

 

[tek-monkey]

I blagged it off the government! When I say blagged I mean sold my soul, and when I say government, I mean those people that live in the house with the big clock on the river darn sahf. Effectively I'm only buying 60% of my house, when its time to repay the other 40% I suspect it will be double what the whole property cost to begin with.

 

[Gramaisc]

I 'bought' mine in 1980 and had managed to scrape about £3,000 together. This was just before interest rates went to 15% and I was then giving almost my entire income to the Abbey National. I used to take a vacuum flask to work and bring it home full of hot water in order to save just a little bit more. At one stage I had 17p in my bank account over a two week period. When the hire-purchase period ended and the house was actually mine it meant that, with the exception of the Council Tax, all my expenditures are now under my control - at last.

There was considerable inflation during this period, which did me no harm at all. My apparent income went up whilst the value of the debt was shrinking. Seemed OK to me.

 

[Gramaisc]

I blagged it off the government! When I say blagged I mean sold my soul, and when I say government, I mean those people that live in the house with the big clock on the river darn sahf. Effectively I'm only buying 60% of my house, when its time to repay the other 40% I suspect it will be double what the whole property cost to begin with.

Is it still on, then? This has gone on longer than Coronation Street.

 

[db]

I blagged it off the government! When I say blagged I mean sold my soul, and when I say government, I mean those people that live in the house with the big clock on the river darn sahf. Effectively I'm only buying 60% of my house, when its time to repay the other 40% I suspect it will be double what the whole property cost to begin with.

i don't even begin to understand this.. since my original question is basically "where the hell did you lot get ~£40k from for a deposit/fees?", mind if i ask how much capital you had to front in order to do whatever crazy scheme it is you've done?

 

[Trumpet]

I reckon this one comes around every generation. I certainly wouldn't like to be starting out on the housing ladder today, but likewise my parents said exactly the same thing when I bought my first house, at the time (1978 ish) the interest rate was about 15%.

 

[cookie_monster]

Since then i've been burgled, had a car crash into the front of my house, and my next door neighbour's house is about to be semi-demolished! Woo!

the day i moved in a radiator burst and flooded the only room which had any stuff in (the spare room) cue trying to get an emergency plumber on a friday evening to stop the water before i had to get to work, water pissing through the light fitting downstairs and my panicking i was going to get electrocuted.

i couldnt claim the cost of the new radiator or the plumber on my insurance because although my insurance policy kicked in that day- becuase it took 30 days for me to be able to claim for that sort of thing. i did however get a new floor and the dining room decorated on the insurance.

2 weeks after that, a car ran into my front wall also- luckily, their insurance.

then theres the cellar malarky- which also entailed no hot water for 2 months because no one could get into the cellar to give me a quote for the new boiler.

and the most recent developments and ive just had a text off my lodger to tell me the outside kitchen drain is blocked and the washing machine run off is flooding into next doors yard.

i had to borrow the money from my folks for the boiler and i think any dreams i had of using the last lodgers rent towards a new carpet have now been dashed and will probably end up being spent on electricians, drains people and surveyors.


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[Gramaisc]

I reckon this one comes around every generation. I certainly wouldn't like to be starting out on the housing ladder today, but likewise my parents said exactly the same thing when I bought my first house, at the time (1978 ish) the interest rate was about 15%.

This is true. My parents bought a detched house in Lincoln in 1972 for £4,000, which seemed like enough to make a serious attempt at a moon landing. In a few years time people will be saying 'You could have got a massive house in Stafford for only £200,000 in 2009', and everybody will laugh....

 

[db]

thanks guys/gals, you've basically made me stop worrying about it cos now i see that owning your own house is a fecking nightmare lol.. i'll happily rent for the rest of my life if it means i don't have to worry about crap like that!

guess i'll just have to hope a house a nice house comes up for rent in the same area i'm in now, with a nice modern fitted kitchen, etc.

 

[Trumpet]

I reckon this one comes around every generation. I certainly wouldn't like to be starting out on the housing ladder today, but likewise my parents said exactly the same thing when I bought my first house, at the time (1978 ish) the interest rate was about 15%.

This is true. My parents bought a detched house in Lincoln in 1972 for £4,000, which seemed like enough to make a serious attempt at a moon landing. In a few years time people will be saying 'You could have got a massive house in Stafford for only £200,000 in 2009', and everybody will laugh....

Likewise my first place was a 4 bed semi in Etching Hill £13k thought that 10% deposit was the world.

 

[cookie_monster]

thanks guys/gals, you've basically made me stop worrying about it cos now i see that owning your own house is a fecking nightmare lol.. i'll happily rent for the rest of my life if it means i don't have to worry about crap like that!

lol, our pleasure....i think!

although there are good bits, sometimes even i struggle to see them.


x

 

[My Name is URL]

I blagged it off the government! When I say blagged I mean sold my soul, and when I say government, I mean those people that live in the house with the big clock on the river darn sahf. Effectively I'm only buying 60% of my house, when its time to repay the other 40% I suspect it will be double what the whole property cost to begin with.

i don't even begin to understand this.. since my original question is basically "where the hell did you lot get ~£40k from for a deposit/fees?", mind if i ask how much capital you had to front in order to do whatever crazy scheme it is you've done?

Its a government run scheme where basically you get 100% of the value, a percentage as a mortgage and a percentage as a no interest loan?!?!? possibly.....

Its all here: http://www.ownhome.co.uk/servlet/Satellite?cid=1213946567253&pagename=CFScombi/Page/CFSCtplBlank

 

[Gramaisc]

My house cost £400 when it was new - in 1935 - I gave the solicitor nearly that much just to fill in the forms to buy it in 1980.

 

[db]

Its all here: http://www.ownhome.co.uk/servlet/Satellite?cid=1213946567253&pagename=CFScombi/Page/CFSCtplBlank

excellent, ta

tbh i think i'm barking up the wrong tree anyway.. the only reason i want in that house is because of the gorgeous, modern fitted kitchen, and the nice living room, etc.. the house i'm in at the moment looks like it was built by drunken one-eyed morons, but as i say i can't go about fixing anything because i don't own the place.. i guess, rather than plunging my heart and soul into saving for a house which i will inevitably have to throw money at in order to get it up to scratch anyway, i would be much better just looking to rent a better house that's got everything i need "out of the box"!

 

[tek-monkey]

As said, I got the 40% load off the gov to use as the deposit. Actual capital? All negative! Owe about 10k if we include student loans before even starting and am overdrawn. However, buying 60% of this place is actually cheaper than where I rent, and its mine. How the hell are you supposed to save for a deposit, when your money is going on rent? I can save about the same amount regardless of where I am, so may as well be gaining equity while I save.

Oh, and no its not def on. Still waiting on stuff and things.....

 

[Gramaisc]

Just stuff and things? The end is in sight!