Your chances of owning your own home?

daz said:
Only if you're financially illiterate, or enjoy making blanket statements about a topic that requires a variety of data to determine the best course.
Click to expand...

Didn't you know? Taking a holiday, paying for Sky TV and mobile phone contracts are 'dead money'. Infact using his logic *any* service you pay for is 'dead money' as you get nothing tangiable for it after the service is consumed.

It is perfectly sensible to argue that renting is a poor long-term alternative to buying but it isn't 'dead money' at all, you pay money and receive a service - a service thats of considerable benefit, infact. Just like buying food isn't dead money, either, despite the fact that OMG, after 10 years of buying food you've nothing to show for it. Other than the fact you are not dead, obviously, and with renting, other than the fact you don't live in a cardboard box under a flyover.
 
NickXX said:
Why do you think interest rates will definitely go up? They haven't in Japan since the early 90s.
Click to expand...

At this time in my life and very selfishly, if interest rates stay at 0.5% for the next 10 years I'll be happy. But that's not looking at the wider picture and possible downsides to the wider economy.
 
Got to agree with Fox here - calling renting dead money is stupid. It's just that people have been conditioned to believe that a house must be an investment, rather than it just being quite handy to have a house shaped box to keep yourself and your stuff warm and dry in.
 
As above really....We rent because we have to at the moment.

I have just helped someone move to an area they normally go on holiday to...Guess what? They are renting there for the first six months to see if they like it enough to buy.

Not everyone actually wants to buy, same goes for renting
 
I'm trying to save as much as possible 1K a month savings for me trying to get 30% down but by the time I have done that I bet the house prices will become a problem for a lot of people. Not sure what to do just yet.

I think it depends in your situation to rent or to buy. A lot of people are really unstable and can't find jobs e.t.c. A job these days means you could be in work one day and not the next.
 
I resisted renting and stayed with my parents to buy in London. Definately worth it if you can do it.

Had to put down 25% (just under £80k) which was painful, in addition to stamp duty of just below £10k.

Was saving on average around £2k a month, saving bonuses, and saved heavily during uni (saved all of my student loan, had couple of jobs etc). During my MSc, I had 2 jobs paid well for a student well (Uni admin and call centre with bonuses), a scholarship which covered all tution and most living costs, which helped a hell of a lot. Just managed to finish paying off the Student Loan. It meant a few years of being prudent, whilst I witnessed my friends splashing the cash heavily, but it's mean that I am on the ladder and proud of my place, whilst a lot of my friends still splash the cash :P
 
I was very lucky and will be eternally grateful to my dad for gifting me £12k from his retirement lump sum that allowed us to buy our first house.

We bought on one of the better shared equity schemes whereby we were able to defer 25% of the purchase price, interest free, for 10 years. This allows us to have smaller mortgage payments until I finish university and then we can remortgage for the full amount.
 
I suppose all the people in places Europe (i think norway, Holland etc) where renting is the norm are retards as well?

Perhaps the retards are the ones who cannot think outside the box and can't do proper cost/benefit analysis to compare the cost of owning a home in this current climate over a limited timeline, against other investments which would yield higher returns over the same timeline.

Times have changed and most people so adamant that owning a home is the be all and end all of financial security are either reflecting their parents point of view or have benefitted over past 10 yrs of housing boom.

Also some people should take into account a little thing known as living a life. Living with parents until you're 30+ because you want to own a home is in my opinion a waste of youth. Of course maybe people like living at home and taking a date back to their parents on the first night...
 
I live and work in St Albans on just over 16k PA. I can just about cover my rent, and after bills I have roughly £200 for food and saving. Unless I move to another part of the country I have pretty much zero chance of ever saving enough to get a mortage.

Not too worried about it atm though, what will be will be!
 
I do feel for younger generations wishing to buy property and even those that do are stuck with super high mortgages that would keep me awake all night.

I worry for my own kids who are now older teenagers and wonder not only about their prospects in the job market but the fact the may never be able to buy a property. What kind of society will this lead to? I'm already in the planning process of extending our house because to be quite frank, I don't know how long they will be at home for.

In time, if no one is buying and the banks aren't lending then prices will have to fall in line but we could be years if not decades from this. It's a great shame.
 
Windle said:
Actually, house prices have increased due to short supply and the fact that the cost of building new houses has increased massively in the past 30years.

Ps llol, you're only 31. The last crash was 1989, you were 9. You must remember it real good ;)
Click to expand...

There is not a shortage of housing; there is a shortage of desireable housing, leading to an artificial shortage of affordable housing because people don't want to live in certain areas.
 
I've a very good chance of owning my home in due course. We're on a fairly long mortgage, but we're making overpayments, and will increase the size of those as our earnings go up. If push comes to shove, my dad has made it fairly clear that when he and my mum die we'll be more than covered, which is a comforting if somewhat morbid fallback position.
 
i'm 25, husband is 26, we bought 2yrs ago. (after renting for 2.5yrs)
we have a big 3 bed edwardian semi in a city on the south coast.
we're pretty lucky!
(no inheritance / windfall btw)
edit: not owned outright, we do have a mortgage!
 
Last edited:
platypus said:
There is not a shortage of housing; there is a shortage of desireable housing, leading to an artificial shortage of affordable housing because people don't want to live in certain areas.
Click to expand...

No, there's a shortage in housing purely from the point of there aren't enough new houses being built to keep up with demand.

There are not enough houses being built to keep up with demand, if you'll read my post a page or two back I've put the figures in there but it's close to 100,000 shortfall each year for houses which should be being built.
 
Windle said:
No, there's a shortage in housing purely from the point of there aren't enough new houses being built to keep up with demand.

There are not enough houses being built to keep up with demand, if you'll read my post a page or two back I've put the figures in there but it's close to 100,000 shortfall each year for houses which should be being built.
Click to expand...
While less houses are being built than are newly required each year there is a vast amount of unused housing in areas that people simply don't want to live in, or that it doesn't make economic sense to live in
 
I have done both.

Initially we had a mortgage on a house, some things went wrong and we ended up losing the house.

We have ended up renting, it suits us down to the ground, allows us to live in a size of house that we probably wouldnt be able to afford to buy and we have never been happier.

whilst having a mortgage it felt like we were working towards ownership of a property, that property would have potentially allowed us to move further up the housing market ladder.

Our final step on the housing market would have hopefully provided a nice nest egg for us to see out our years, but after all that we would have still needed somewhere to live which would mean either buying a property or renting.

as things stand now we live in a nice big old house, we try to save a bit, we redecorate the house and make improvements to it, it is our home and should we decide to move somewhere else we can do so with the minimum amount of fuss and financial outlay.

If anything goes wrong in this house it is taken care of by professionals in a very punctual efficient manner with obviously no financial outlay by us.

We are looking at our renting situation very long term, it suits us but i can imagine that not everyone would be happy.
 
Arf. Just bought a new house, 5% deposit, no agent fees or stamp duty. 30% equity scheme.

Half the price of renting. What do win?
 
I don't feel as if renting is secure, say you're happy with your rented house, done all the improvements you want then the landlord decides to stick it on the market, all that for nothing?
 
PiKe said:
I don't feel as if renting is secure, say you're happy with your rented house, done all the improvements you want then the landlord decides to stick it on the market, all that for nothing?
Click to expand...

It's a risk, no different than a shared mortgage scheme or what have you, you never actually 'own' the house.

So what would you do? My GF for instance has a job that requires her to have around 30 animals living at home, she did not have the room in her parents house, so we have had to get our own place and rent it due to us not being able to afford a house.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom