First time buyers

Jimmy1983

Jimmy1983

Jimmy1983

Soldato
Joined
1 Mar 2007
Posts
4,795
Location
Portsmouth
Currently renting at the mo, and iam looking into getting a place of my own. Would love a house but with my wage, I very much doubt that is going to happen. So will have to settle for a flat hopefully a two bed one.

Spoken to a number of people about it and a friend mentioned working tax creditmight be an option which I need to look into. Another point being check if the property is lease hold or not.

Any of you guys on here recently got your own place, if so any pointers on what I need to ask/find out about?

Thanks all
 
think you need kids to get working tax credits

mortgages are easing at moment, witha 10% deposit you should be able to borrow 4x earnings

20% deposit will get you a much better deal though
 
Rotty said:
think you need kids to get working tax credits
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Correct.

Most flats are lease hold

I bought a house recently. Speak to the bank first and find out how much you can borrow. You then have an idea of price range. When you've found a property you like, get a mortgage agreement in principle and make an offer. Then the fun really starts.
 
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Is there any options for you to get a co-ownership scheme? I bought my apartment nearly 2 years ago and thats what i did, basically they buy a percentage of your house and rent it back to you, and you buy the rest of the house with a smaller mortgage. You can then buy it back off them in small chunks over time. There was no way at my age and salary i would have got a mortgage for the full amount of my apartment.

Instead of having a £160,000 mortgage i have a £100,000 mortgage, £10k deposit so the remaining £50k is owned by the co ownership association, and the rent each month for that is only £140.

My best tip however would be to save up for as big a deposit as you can!
 
The main things to check are:

Structural damage (If you can get an architect to look at the house with you)
Legalities (Like planning permission and fire regulations, if any extensions are illegal)
Connections and expenses (Not only the mortgage/rent to pay but water, gas and electric to pay as well, unless they're included, then there's food on top of it all)
Local area (Is it on a drug infested council estate? Is there a way of getting into town if your car breaks down? Is it next to an airport so you hear planes go past every 10 minutes through the night?)
 
With a salary of 18K and a deposit of say £30K - what price could one buy a house for?

'Depends on the mortage.' So what mortage could you get for that?
 
whitecrook said:
With a salary of 18K and a deposit of say £30K - what price could one buy a house for?

'Depends on the mortage.' So what mortage could you get for that?
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Put it this way, my gf and I just managed to borrow £250k with about four times that income and about double the deposit. It was slightly complicated by the fact we own other property, but only slightly. That was 3 months ago.

I think you'd be looking at borrowing £70k max, maybe a bit more if you're lucky.
 
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how much of a difference does deposit make? Say it's a 100K house and you borrow what ever you don't put down as deposit

so a 50K deposit would be quite good, borrow 50K

what if you put down 25K and borrowed 75K would you just pay more each month, or would it go for longer == more interest, on a larger amount?

So is it possible to say something like 'for every 10K extra depoit you put down, you'll save 20K in the long term?
 
Lol, so glad I bought my flat when prices were affordable 20 years ago. Girlfriend
at the time had a friend who worked for legal and general. He got me an endowment mortgage based on a salary I wasn't actually earning. I managed though. I recently surrendered the endowment since it was never gonna pay off the mortgage let alone pay me bonuses, paid off a large chunk of the mortgage, gone back to repayment mortgage, and pay less per month than most people rent for. :cool: Got about 4 years left of it. I could never buy my property as a first time buyer today.
 
whitecrook said:
how much of a difference does deposit make? Say it's a 100K house and you borrow what ever you don't put down as deposit

so a 50K deposit would be quite good, borrow 50K

what if you put down 25K and borrowed 75K would you just pay more each month, or would it go for longer == more interest, on a larger amount?

So is it possible to say something like 'for every 10K extra depoit you put down, you'll save 20K in the long term?
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If you borrow less, you pay less over the period of the loan. It's just interest. You normally how long you want the mortgage to run, typically 20-30 years. The longer it runs the more you pay over all, but the monthly payments will be less for the same amount borrowed.
 
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I've put down a 20K deposit on an 80K 2 bedroom mid terraced house, which will give £350 a month mortgage. Didn't have any trouble getting the mortgage either, despite earning £15.6K a year.

I certainly couldn't rent anywhere as nice for that money!
 
Bennie-Mac said:
Is there any options for you to get a co-ownership scheme? I bought my apartment nearly 2 years ago and thats what i did, basically they buy a percentage of your house and rent it back to you, and you buy the rest of the house with a smaller mortgage. You can then buy it back off them in small chunks over time. There was no way at my age and salary i would have got a mortgage for the full amount of my apartment.

Instead of having a £160,000 mortgage i have a £100,000 mortgage, £10k deposit so the remaining £50k is owned by the co ownership association, and the rent each month for that is only £140.

My best tip however would be to save up for as big a deposit as you can!
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Ill second this but with the scheme im on I don't pay any rent on the 30% share not owned to me I simply give back 30% of the profit when i sell or buy out the 30% at a later date in 1 lump sum.
 
bigsharn said:
The main things to check are:

Structural damage (If you can get an architect to look at the house with you)
Legalities (Like planning permission and fire regulations, if any extensions are illegal)
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Maybe it differs in England, but in Scotland the first point would be addressed by a Surveyor and the second point by your Solicitor.
 
We got a mortgage of just over 3x our joint salary with 15% deposit.
Spoke to banks and two mortgage advisors to work out how much we could get, and to ensure we got the best deal available - didn't start looking at properties until we knew how much we could afford.
Get a mortgage agreement on principle / mortgage offer asap as it is a huge tool in securing your offer on a property - you're much more likely to be successful if estate agents know you're serious and do have the funds available!
Get a surveyor to check out the property after you've made an offer, get electrics/gas/heating checked out, maybe a builder to cost for any works you want doing.
Just as a rough idea, on top of the cost of the house - you have to pay mortgage arrangement fees / solicitors fees / surveyors / stamp duty - that took about £4k off what could have been our deposit!!

Edit: got the keys on Friday and it's been worth all the stress & expense to be in our own, gorgeous home!!
 
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whitecrook said:
With a salary of 18K and a deposit of say £30K - what price could one buy a house for?

'Depends on the mortage.' So what mortage could you get for that?
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Straight to the point;

You could probably borrow up to around 75k depending on the lender, with your deposit that would give you a buying power of around £100k after fees. With that 70% LTV you should be able to achieve a ~2.5% over base tracker assuming you have a decent credit file.
 
Watch out with all these quoted mortgage rates because both HSBC and Halifax don't actually give you what they advertise and they also have a lot of charges hidden in there. Halifax were charging up to £2000 to arrange the mortgage. Add it all up and see how much it's going to cost over the period, then you can compare it to other mortgages.

Good luck, you don't get much for your money, especially if you live in the south.
 
Jonny69 said:
Watch out with all these quoted mortgage rates because both HSBC and Halifax don't actually give you what they advertise
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What on earth do you mean? Mortgage products are regulated to the hilt, they make everything as clear as day in a large print FSA Key Facts leaflet.
 
Jez said:
What on earth do you mean? Mortgage products are regulated to the hilt, they make everything as clear as day in a large print FSA Key Facts leaflet.
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I think he means that HSBC post some great adverts with great rates.. then you read the small print... and you need to have 60% LTV (40% deposit) which about 1% of the population can actually afford.
 
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