Money related - Home Deposit - Bank of Mum and Dad/ self-earned/ inheritance

[btw]

I’m saving now to buy house in 5 years time. I plan to save at least £10,000 myself and I’m very lucky as my grandad is planning to leave me £15,000 inheritance which I will put towards a deposit. So all together I’m hoping for a deposit of £25,000.
This still won’t get me a lot as I will probably be a single applicant on £28,000. I’ll be looking for houses worth about £130,000 - £155,000 which isn’t great given that houses in my area on average are £220,000
It’s so hard to secure a mortgage as a single applicant and I’m very lucky in that a large chunk of my deposit will be from family

 

[Lildeaks]

I was exceptionally lucky my parents used some of my dads pension money to pay £25k towards my £118k two bed in Lincs.
Bought at 33, many years behind friends who’d all had massive deposits from parents (in the range of 60% house cost), or been bought a house/been left a large inheritance. All earning considerably more and doing it with a partner.
I bought mine effectively ‘alone’ but was slightly under the allowance so my dad is my guarantor. Because of this I had to have a short 13 year mortgage, which means my mortgage payments are pretty high. I then got made redundant last year so had to borrow against the house to pay some debts so I could survive with no incoming except UC for 4 months. Which increased my mortgage payments again.
But assuming i stay here by 46 I’ll have paid off my mortgage. I’ve told my parents I’d like to then remortgage or loan the Original £25000 they gave me So I could pay them back as my dad hits retirement- I’m kind of hoping they’ll refuse!
I have spent the past ten months working 3 jobs to make sure I don’t have to borrow from my parents to pay the bills (much), and have once again just been made redundant on one of my jobs so it’s a terrifying feeling of being back at square one.
I do however now have a nice man in my life who will hopefully move in- which takes the strain off my a little. And if I ever get a full time job again, maybe we can think about moving upwards.
It IS scary going it alone, even when you’ve guarantor support like me, but I’ve faced the most financially challenging 18 months of my life, and knowing I have to keep working and keep fighting to keep my little house is actually what keeps me going!

 

[Itsallaboutmememe]

I’m very lucky as my in laws sat us down and told us they had news for us
I burst into tears thinking they where going to say that they where ill or something
Nope,they wanted to buy us a house-and we’d be paying a daft amount in rent (this is mainly because my fella is still married and they don’t want his ex to have any claim on it-so it’s in their names and we are the tenants)
It cost them &16,500 and is now worth just shy of £150,000-we pay £350 a month-over the road to us pay just over double for a smaller house
When they die it’s ours (and he’ll be divorced by then)

 

[Lynseyp]

Thank you. I’d heard you didn’t need much of a deposit.
I’d get maximum discount as been a tenant for more years than I care to remember!
I would be able to afford the rent but don’t think I would get a mortgage on my salary?

Thats exactly the same with me, my rent is low for a 3 bedroom terraced but I wouldn't be able to get a mortgage on my salary. It'll happen but not just yet

 

[Freebies_come2me]

Yes is hard to save for a flat in London , you are paying essentially 1.2k in rent and that doesn’t include council tax, bills etc. People always say why don’t you rent outside of London, and tbh commuting is pain. 1-1.5h traveling to London and facing with constant delay plus extortionate fare. Also not all roles can be found outside of London, hence why staying in London becomes quite essential to some. I sounded very millennial I know, but glad that we have overcome the first step.

 

[xoshanie]

I'm not from London but I've been living here for the last few years (working and renting) and I absolutely could never see myself buying here. I've had a look to see what's out there and it's incredibly depressing. A colleague of mine was showing us some flats he was looking at buying (he's from London so wants to stay here) and it only confirmed for me that I will never ever buy here. Everywhere he showed was a flat which was really just one floor of your average terraced house or even just the converted attic space, in pretty crappy and very-far-from-central areas, all around 250k! That is mental. I get the pain of not being able to afford to live in your hometowen as well though as I'm from Dublin and it's the same situation there, maybe not quite as bad. But it's extremely difficult to buy there too. I've looked at buying in cities like Edinburgh, Leeds and Manchester and holy moley, you really see how ripped off you are in Dublin and London.

The prices are ridiculous aren’t they!! I saw something on twitter about the average deposit for a house in London was £40k. On my salary that will take a lifetime to save! Especially with renting looking at a minimum of £1200 a month when I move out. Funnily enough where I live is being gentrified massively so you’ve got all of the new build flats ( studios, 1 beds and 2 beds if you’re lucky) being sold starting at £400k on one side of the town and on the other, the house prices are going up but the town is in awful condition and has a terrible reputation. I honestly can’t justify paying that much at all. Knowing what you can get elsewhere if you live an hour or two out I really can’t bare to think of it.

London is good socially and for work but you can easily travel back and forth when needed

Some boroughs seem to have their own shared ownership schemes. My friend bought a place recently in west London and she bought part of the property with a mortgage and rents the other part from the council, but the council pays/heavily subsidises the rent for her. I don’t know if relevant for you and there might be more to it but could be worth looking in to!

Oh thank you! I did look briefly into shared ownership but I’ve heard so many people have had a lot of issues with it in terms of quality and repairs etc so it put me off a bit. There’s quite a few around here too so I’ll have a more in depth look!

 

[Bexlouell]

I received 20k when my grandma died last year so am putting that towards a deposit. We are putting down a 10% deposit and had an offer accepted last week on a 167k property however we have spoken to 2 mortgage advisors this week and they both told us not to bother both said the market is so bad with 10% deposits and we should continue to save and buy next year. Now we don't know what to do.

 

[kev1974]

I bought my London flat in 2000. No help from my parents towards it. Saved like a bastard for years beforehand barely going out, then to actually buy it had to max out several credit cards and then probably 5 years of living frugally until I got back on top of them. These days they ask you about credit card debt so you can't do that so easily (luckily). I remember that I paid an extra £1000 on the flat (which the owner kindly let me pay 3 months later) for all the crappy furniture in it that he'd been renting it out with. Wasn't until about 2016 that I finally got a new bed frame and new sofa.

Apart from being able to borrow a little extra on credit cards back then, it was just as hard a battle for us to buy something in 2000 as it is for people today. You just have to stop buying £3.50 artisan coffees several times a day and do without the fancy but pricey gins in the pub every weekend!

 

[hnoz]

You buy a flat rather than straight into a family house first of all, and hope it increases in value so you build equity to buy a house. Also you buy something that needs work, rather than the top end.
In London I would say 9/10 couples who buy under the age of 30 or even 35 have family help. I have friends who were gifted 50, 70, even 200k to buy. Some people live in another world and have crazy money.
My husband and I saved 35k over about 2 and a bit years while renting. His parents gave us 20k which went on making it liveable as it was a wreck and we bought just as stamp duty relief for FTB started so we had saved that money and were able to put it towards a new kitchen instead. We also both had a HTB ISA which built up a nice bonus after 2.5 years. We were only earning about 60k combined when we were saving and when we completed so I think we did an amazing job to save that much.
It wasn't easy, we were incredibly lucky to be given 20 grand but we still had to slog it out for nearly 3 years spending nothing on clothes, going out etc. It was a sacrifice for us to save that amount and we were the only couple we knew saving.

 

[Drea1984]

Has anyone bought their council house? How does a right to buy mortgage work please?

 

[LS932]

Just started saving by myself, aiming for 20k by the time I'm 30. I am turning 27 in a couple months and almost have 2k but only been working full-time 8 months,

 

[Meh]

I live and work in London since I moved here 20 years ago. You would be surprised how many people are well paid in City of London to be able to afford properties. I dont doubt for a second that many had help from families and many properties in London are owned by old money but for what i know, 90% of the colleagues have more than one property in London and mostly through their own salary/saving. The average salary before bonus in City of London is now 70K meaning a couple should be able to buy a 500K flat after a few years saving. And this is not high flying industries like bankers or lawyers who could buy faster.

I received 20k when my grandma died last year so am putting that towards a deposit. We are putting down a 10% deposit and had an offer accepted last week on a 167k property however we have spoken to 2 mortgage advisors this week and they both told us not to bother both said the market is so bad with 10% deposits and we should continue to save and buy next year. Now we don't know what to do.

Sorry to hear that. It definitely would be frustrating but keep saving and you’ll get there.
I’m not looking to move but I did do a nosy and noticed that RBS/Natwest all appear to be looking for 20% deposits When we bought it was 5% deposit but not the mad “government owns a slice of your property” ones. Very fortunate timing as 20% deposit would have killed us.

 

[Hello Kitty]

My partner and I saved for our deposit in London, we have a 2 bed new build flat. We also had a help to buy ISA which we used for 3 years and we got about 4k from the bonus from that too which was helpful.

I am probably in the wrong part of London can I send you my CV

LOL me too - I defintely do not earn 70k

 

[navybluewolf]

Admittedly, I am damn nosy. I live in London, I am curious to know how couples saved up for house deposit when the price of a 3 bedroom Victorian terrace can start from 550k at least (zone 4./fixed upper).

Not too sure if this topic feeds into Tattle Life haha

We bought a 1 bed flat in London with Help 2 Buy, we paid for the deposit with our own money, 2 years of saving and managed to do it quickly because I received a good bonus from my shit job at the end of 2nd year.
Deposit: 18k

We live in London and pay £1100 a month in rent. Short answer, we can't. We previously lived in a studio flat with cheap rent and we managed to save 4k in the three years we lived there. Then the landlady decided not to renew her contract for no particular reason (she was a nasty bitch anyway). We had literally three weeks to find a new place and it was over the Christmas period. The 4k got eaten up by deposits and agent fees and contract fees and all kinds of BS and we were back to square one. In the three years we've lived in this place, we've managed to save 3k. We don't live extravagantly, we just have high rent and bills to pay. We've still never been on a honeymoon and it's been six years. I would like to start trying for a baby now, I'm 33 but we don't have space here and how could we afford it? We both came from poor backgrounds and have no financial help from either side. So I guess we're fucked lol.

 

[Greys1324]

Me and my partner bought our house in Essex for £312000 with a 5% deposit. My parents gave us £5000 and we saved the rest between us in about a year. My partner got a bonus of £4000 which helped us decorate and buy the bits we needed. We earn 60k between us.

 

[Renegadedancer]

I bought my first one bedroom house aged 21 with help from a generous aunt. Had a mortgage that I had to pay myself so was very sensible with nights out etc in order to afford it. Moved from there after 5 years and sized up considerably when I got married. Had a fairly large mortgage but made small overpayments as and when we could , even if it was only a few pounds a month. It all adds up. Mortgage free in early 40’s and can’t see us moving until children have finished school and left home.

 

[fireflies]

Age 40 here and husband 47
We live South west city so quite expensive
4kids.
Brought house nearly 2 years ago.
Had income single of 48k a year but between paying rent and the kids and paying off old debts from last recession we could never save.
Mil died 5 years ago we kept a massive chunk aside in savings.
Brought a new 2nd hand car as last one was on it last legs.
Took 1st family holiday abroad
Issue we had mortgages was most we could borrow was 190k in principle.
You can't buy a flat for that here.
We put down 22% deposit 54k and brought a doer upper which wiped out our savings.
We so glad we brought it's 40 quid more than previous rent but a lot less than new details In same postcode 3 bed rentals here 1000pcm plus.

We estimate by end 2020 we would have spent 10k on renovations/ decorating, landscaping non-existent garden, new ceiling and wall. New guttering? Fascia as and fencing it's been more costly than we thought.
Thankfully we been able do most of worm ourselves and cash flow from salary.
We quite frugal we hardly ever go out.
Takeaways a treat
We only run 1 car
We shop at aldis/ lilds , meal plan batch cook and shop from scratch.
We shoo around best deals and 90% clothing 2nd hand.
Despite all that we would not have been able save up decent deposit and our age was going against us .
We felt very lucky and wonder how people do it.
We cant afford to move so hope yo remortage and extend.
Need to start proper savings account for the kids.

 

[Freebies_come2me]

Not to be patronising at all, but on 90k combined you really should be able to save 55k in 2-3 years. You need to sit down and look at your outgoings, move when your lease is up and live in a small shitty one bed with a longer commute. Give yourselves a strict budget for "fun". If you both saved £750 a month you would have 55k in 3 years and I think on your income there is actually room to save more.

Okay, that makes sense, I think I should have mentioned earlier, we were on 90k combine literally from Feb 20 onwards.
I agree that we would need to sit down; When I look at 55k, it just looks WOW how the fuck... I think we will manage somehow but as I say, it just wow!
My husband needs to support his parents, his mum lives in a run-down soviet style home in Eastern Europe, some money would need to go to there to fix up the flat and monthly support(whether I agree or not is another story )

 

[Eltonjohnsflorist]

We bought our first London flat in 2003 when deposits were much lower and mortgages very easy to get. We put down £40k ish which my husband saved (he was very well paid)

My friends generally bought with other friends (where highly paid) got 100-110% mortgages, or both. i think all of them did very well out of it, even though 100% mortgages are very looked down upon now

 

[Keiffers pipe]

5% deposit. Saved it up ourselves. But also bought a renovation project and only spent half the f what the bank was offering us to borrow.