Mortgage: How many properties did you look before..

[scaryjim]

Then you can't afford to own your own house.

That I'm not disputing. But what you said was that I don't "deserve to own <my> house" - which is a very different thing.

Still. I bet you can save more. I'm wondering what your (or your families) Latte factor is. I guarantee you and your wife each have one and I bet they add up to a lot more than you think.

Yes, I have one. It's about £50/month. The £50 a month I choose not to save because I'd rather live some life and have no savings then save and do nothing. When I said after paying rent, bills and food I have £50 left, I meant that literally. £50 is my disposable income after I've paid all my necessary bills. I don't watch TV, don't have sky, have a moderate broadband package and mobile contract, don't run a car. I have matched my earnings to my lifestyle which also means I don't have stress, ulcers, or 60 hour working weeks to deal with. I'm relatively happy with that choice

Yes, one upshot of that choice is that I can't afford to save £10k for a deposit on a house. But please don't infer anything about what I do and don't deserve based on that...

[b0redom]

Well I can't really add much to the political debate as I was one of the lucky ones who managed to get near enough 100% mortgage with Northern Rock, although it was actually structured as a 90% mortgage and 7% (or something like that) loan at eye watering interest rates.

What I can add which is likely to be of value to buyers is:

http://www.nethouseprices.com/

Which presents a nice interface to the land registry records so you can see what the house last changed hands for, or other properties in the same area/street.

http://www.property-bee.com/

Is a Firefox plugin which records modifications to RightMove, so you can see how long properties have been on the market for, changes in prices and descriptions. If it's somewhere you're considering buying, it's often quite interesting to call up an agent (armed with the fact that you know the property has been for sale for 2 years) and ask them how long it's been up for. Not that I want to brand all Estate Agents as utter scum, but they usually say, "Oh, only a few days...."

[b0redom]

I have matched my earnings to my lifestyle which also means I don't have stress, ulcers, or 60 hour working weeks to deal with. I'm relatively happy with that choice

Completely off topic, but (stomach) ulcers aren't caused by stress, they're caused by bacterial infection.

Dr. b0redom.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Well I can't really add much to the political debate as I was one of the lucky ones who managed to get near enough 100% mortgage with Northern Rock, although it was actually structured as a 90% mortgage and 7% (or something like that) loan at eye watering interest rates.

What I can add which is likely to be of value to buyers is:

http://www.nethouseprices.com/

Which presents a nice interface to the land registry records so you can see what the house last changed hands for, or other properties in the same area/street.

http://www.property-bee.com/

Is a Firefox plugin which records modifications to RightMove, so you can see how long properties have been on the market for, changes in prices and descriptions. If it's somewhere you're considering buying, it's often quite interesting to call up an agent (armed with the fact that you know the property has been for sale for 2 years) and ask them how long it's been up for. Not that I want to brand all Estate Agents as utter scum, but they usually say, "Oh, only a few days...."

any similar plugins for chrome?

[badass]

That I'm not disputing. But what you said was that I don't "deserve to own <my> house" - which is a very different thing.

Yes, I have one. It's about £50/month. The £50 a month I choose not to save because I'd rather live some life and have no savings then save and do nothing. When I said after paying rent, bills and food I have £50 left, I meant that literally. £50 is my disposable income after I've paid all my necessary bills. I don't watch TV, don't have sky, have a moderate broadband package and mobile contract, don't run a car. I have matched my earnings to my lifestyle which also means I don't have stress, ulcers, or 60 hour working weeks to deal with. I'm relatively happy with that choice

Yes, one upshot of that choice is that I can't afford to save £10k for a deposit on a house. But please don't infer anything about what I do and don't deserve based on that...

1. to merit, be qualified for, or have a claim to (reward, assistance, punishment, etc.) because of actions, qualities, or situation: to deserve exile; to deserve charity; a theory that deserves consideration.

2. to be worthy of, qualified for, or have a claim to reward, punishment, recompense, etc.: to reward him as he deserves; an idea deserving of study.

I suspect what I'm about to say may anger you a bit, but before responding, please read what I say, wait for the longer of either 1/2 hour or when you have calmed down, then read it again. I'm not posting this to annoy you - just to make you think about what you deserve and want. Most people in this country do not seem to understand the difference and based purely on these 2 posts you have made and knowing nothing else about you whatsoever, it appears that you have the same problem.

What exactly have you done to deserve to own a house?
By your own admission, you aren't saving anything, aren't working 60+ hour weeks or suffering a stressful job.
Have you done some great service to your country?

It looks to me like you have made some life choices - ones that look like good ones to me TBH - and not being able to afford a house is the result of that.

Therefore, IMO, you definitely do not deserve to own your own house.
Just like I don't deserve to own a Mclaren F1 and some people I know certainly don't deserve those holidays they can't afford, but take anyway.

[mikerr]

Anyone that doesn't have the self discipline to save £10,000 for the largest purchase they will ever make, doesn't deserve to own their house. Or they should set their sights a little lower.
It seems that a very large number of wannabe homeowners seem to think that they should be able to have the perfect house handed to them on a plate without any personal sacrifices - or at least no personal sacrifices for more than a few months.

While I agree that it got out of hand with 100% mortgages being given to everyone in the past,
unless you can live somewhere rent-free (aka parents) it may be impossible for many to save a 20% deposit with current high house prices.
Many don't have that easy option of living rent free somewhere.

Rent is higher than mortgage payments (in some cases by a huge amount), but that deposit and relatively high house prices freezes many people out.

That said, I should add I'm currently renting a bigger house than I could hope to buy, so I'm happy with that for now.

[b0redom]

any similar plugins for chrome?

That's what Google's for.

Is it really so onerous to install Firefox if you're considering spending 00s of 000s of pounds on a massive investment.

[Saracen]

....

Rent is higher than mortgage payments (in some cases by a huge amount), but that deposit and relatively high house prices freezes many people out.

That said, I should add I'm currently renting a bigger house than I could hope to buy, so I'm happy with that for now.

And renting has it's advantages. Buying is not necessarily the right solution, certainly not for everyone.

It's often seen these days as an essential. Owning a house is just the thing to do, the thing that (almost) everyone aspires to do. But I'd question that. Why is it so widely regarded as the thing to do? My bet is that a large part of it comes from the performance of the property market in the last few decades. Property values have, with some notable exceptions, out-performed most other forms of "investment" bar the highly speculative ones, and certainly, out-paced income rises. So, unless you got on the ladder quickly, something you could afford today might be unaffordable next month or next year, and almost certainly would be unaffordable in five years time.

But that relies on the assumption that future trends will be the same as past trends. My bet is that such an assumption is idiocy. It might turn out to be the case, but there's plenty of reason for assuming it to be necessarily the case is daft. Houses are, in many ways, over-priced. If you look at house prices compared to income levels, the ratio has been climbing, over the medium term. lf or ages. But the point comes, or arguably has already come, when it cannot continue to do that.

So will house prices rise over the next 25 years as they have over the last 25? Doubtful, IMHO.

And it wouldn't necessarily take much to trigger a price collapse. It may simply need a dramatic economic shock, for instance. After all, they stuttered quite significantly in the aftermath of the credit crunch and the credit crunch didn't really affect most people that badly, if at all, unless you were one of the poor bleeps that lost your job. A lot of people carried on as before, and some (tracker mortgages, especially those with no floor) did rather well, thanks very much. I'm not one of those, by the way.

Anyway, back to the point. Buying isn't necessarily a good idea. For a start, as above, prices may go down. Secondly, if you have to move location for a new job, you can't pick up a house and move it to the other end of the country, or to another country. And both buying and selling houses is an expensive thing to do. It's far easier to just up sticks and move if you rent. Cheaper, too.

Thirdly, owning a house can have very considerable costs attached, and/or work attached. For a start, keeping paintwork up to scratch take a lot of time, and of you pay someone to do it, it's tricky avoiding the cowboys. Been there, done that. And you can get hit with large unexpected bills, such as needing a new roof (because of age, not damage, which may or may not be covered by insurance). Or the cost of unblocking the drains, replacing broken fence panels, keeping large trees under control or cutting down ones that have gone rotten (been there, done that too, on both counts), or replacing the boiler, updating aged windows, and so on. And that's without the wife's new kitchen, bathroom, bedroom wardrobes, the new conservatory, or even just replacing carpets every few years. And light fittings. Oh, light fittings.

As for rents being more than mortgages, well, sometimes that's due to the nature of renting. Some tenants are great, but some are nightmares and can cost a landlord a fortune, especially those that want to be evicted because it changes their status on council lists and/or their benefit position. Even those that aren't nightmares, well, every few years you'll end up replacing kitchens, etc, just to keep the place fresh and appealing to new tenants. Renting has costs that owning doesn't, including the cost of the painting, carpets, new boilers, etc, that I mentioned above in relation to owning that are reflected in rents but not in mortgages. The place has to be maintained, and the rents will include an element to cover that, but it's in addition to any mortgage costs.

[scaryjim]

I suspect what I'm about to say may anger you a bit ...

Not at all, everyone's entitled to their own opinion and interpretation of both language and situations

What exactly have you done to deserve to own a house?

Well, I used to own one. So I - personally - deserve to own a house - I've proven this in the past. Although you may wish to make the distinction that I "deserved" to own a house. But that's the first issue - saying "people who can't save £10K don't deserve a house" puts no time limit on it - there's a strong implication that because a person can't currently save £10k that they should be kept out of the housing market. They could be working really hard but just have a lousy job, or have a lot of genuine expenses, that prevent them from saving. Or they could be slobbing on the dole. By your measure that doesn't matter - they're simply "not worthy" of owning a house.

And let me turn it around - does being able to save £10k mean you automatically deserve a house? It certainly gives you the power to buy one, but I'm not sure that's the same thing. You might have won the money in a lottery, or been left it by a relative - yet somehow that makes someone "worthy" of owning a house?

By your own admission, you aren't saving anything, aren't working 60+ hour weeks or suffering a stressful job.

It looks to me like you have made some life choices - ones that look like good ones to me TBH - and not being able to afford a house is the result of that.

As I said earlier, I have no issue with being told I can't afford a house. Nor am I expecting someone to give me one according to some divine or assumed personal right - I certainly don't inherently deserve a house. I can see how you could argue that currently I don't "deserve" to own a house.

The problem is "deserve" is an emotive word with many shades of meaning - yes, it can just mean "earn by merit or actions", but it can also mean "be worthy of" or "have a claim to" - and if you're not careful with it you start dividing the world into the "deserving" and the "undeserving", at which point you're potentially making value calls about the worth of a person. And in this instance you're doing that based on their disposable income, which I find abhorent.

Ultimately what I'm getting at here, is that having to have a large lump sum of money put away before you can even be considered for buying a house is a bit ridiculous. It was alright back in the day when I was buying, because house prices were a lot more reasonable then (and banks were lending a much larger proportion) and saving a deposit wasn't such a chore. But house prices are still so high, and banks so hesitant to lend, that house ownership is now being decided based entirely on disposable wealth - and I'm afraid I'm cynical enough to think that the rich aren't necessarily the best, or most deserving, people to own houses.

There should be more ways of getting on to the housing ladder than having to put down (from most people) more than a full year's pre-tax wages. Whilst I've been looking for rental properties this week I have found a rent-to-buy scheme which looks pretty good (sadly it only has 2 properties in Manchester, one of which is too small for us and the other too expensive! ), and that's a step in the right direction. There's no reason that entry to the housing market should be predicated on disposable income.

That said, I personally think that the benefits of house ownership are massively overstated, and a lot of people would be a lot happier if they weren't desperately trying to buy a house to increase their perceived self-worth. As you say, I've made a certain set of life choices, I'm very happy with them, and I really have no interest in owning a house right at this minute. But there are people out there who work hard, live well, and probably do want, and deserve, to own a house both on personal merit and effort, but can't do it because of the current huge entry costs. And I still think you were being a little harsh to them...


EDIT: just to agree with pretty much everything Saracen said in his last post. Pretty much covers all the reasons I'm very happy to be renting currently!
EDIT2: Apologies to OP for derailing their thread!

[j.o.s.h.1408]

That's what Google's for.

Is it really so onerous to install Firefox if you're considering spending 00s of 000s of pounds on a massive investment.

calm down

[kalniel]

Rent is higher than mortgage payments (in some cases by a huge amount)

Or not.

We're saving for a large deposit, even when we get that the estimated mortgage payments from agreements in principal are nearly twice our current rent for the same area.

And yes, said deposit is well over two years pre-tax salary, and that's still barely the minimum we need to get reasonable rates. House prices are ridiculous.

[badass]

Well, I used to own one. So I - personally - deserve to own a house - I've proven this in the past. Although you may wish to make the distinction that I "deserved" to own a house. But that's the first issue - saying "people who can't save £10K don't deserve a house" puts no time limit on it - there's a strong implication that because a person can't currently save £10k that they should be kept out of the housing market.

I also put no time limit on the saving of £10,000.
Someone who cannot currently save £10,000 does not currently deserve to own their own house.
Someone who can never save £10,000 will never deserve to own their own house. If they can't manage their finances enough to ever save £10,000, why should they be trusted with a £150,000 loan?

They could be working really hard but just have a lousy job, or have a lot of genuine expenses, that prevent them from saving. Or they could be slobbing on the dole. By your measure that doesn't matter - they're simply "not worthy" of owning a house.

So life may be a bit tough through genuine non fault hardship or it could be just plain laziness. Owning a house is a luxury, not a necessity. However I think there is a subtle difference between saying deserve and worthy of and will not use not worthy of in the place of deserve. An example of the difference in my mind is this:
A person owns their own house. Barring extreme examples such as they acquired it through conning someone out of it, they are worthy of owning the house. However they don't necessarily deserve that house. They may have never lifted a finger their whole lives.

And let me turn it around - does being able to save £10k mean you automatically deserve a house? It certainly gives you the power to buy one, but I'm not sure that's the same thing. You might have won the money in a lottery, or been left it by a relative - yet somehow that makes someone "worthy" of owning a house?

I just said those than cannot save £10,000 don't deserve the luxury of owning their house. I didn't say those that can find £10,000 do deserve anything whatsoever. A perfect example of this is a thief that saves up all of the money acquired through theft.

As I said earlier, I have no issue with being told I can't afford a house. Nor am I expecting someone to give me one according to some divine or assumed personal right - I certainly don't inherently deserve a house. I can see how you could argue that currently I don't "deserve" to own a house.

Exactly.

The problem is "deserve" is an emotive word with many shades of meaning - yes, it can just mean "earn by merit or actions", but it can also mean "be worthy of" or "have a claim to" - and if you're not careful with it you start dividing the world into the "deserving" and the "undeserving", at which point you're potentially making value calls about the worth of a person. And in this instance you're doing that based on their disposable income, which I find abhorent.

TBH I think you're taking a very specific statement and taking it too far. For example a person could be a champion of charitable causes, raising a fortune for good causes with no personal benefit, but they may also be well paid in their job but be utterly useless with money, opting to blow every penny as it arrives on designer clothes and getting drunk.
They most certainly wouldn't deserve to own their own house, but would be "worth their weight in gold" as a person.

Ultimately what I'm getting at here, is that having to have a large lump sum of money put away before you can even be considered for buying a house is a bit ridiculous.

You can make that lump sum smaller - opt for a smaller house or one in a less desirable area

that house ownership is now being decided based entirely on disposable wealth

Most luxuries do have their ownership decided on disposable wealth. Why should home ownership be any different?

There should be more ways of getting on to the housing ladder than having to put down (from most people) more than a full year's pre-tax wages.

I made a case for saving £10,000. The average salary is over £25,000pa. £10,000 is less than 5 months pre tax wages.

But there are people out there who work hard, live well, and probably do want, and deserve, to own a house both on personal merit and effort, but can't do it because of the current huge entry costs. And I still think you were being a little harsh to them...

I disagree with the both on personal merit and effort point. If you can't save £10,000 in your whole life, why do you deserve the luxury of owning a house?
Just because you may have been able to in the past in the same circumstances does not meant you deserve to now or at any point in the future.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

wow, what are we discussing here? whether people deserve to have a mortgage? gone way off topic now lads

[mikerr]

Bad choice of words, should be who can afford a mortgage, not who deserves one IMO

That's really what badass is saying, if you can't save 10k, you cant afford / support a mortage either.

[scaryjim]

wow, what are we discussing here? whether people deserve to have a mortgage? gone way off topic now lads

Yeah, I know, my apologies - I got drawn into a pick over language (I think deserve is the wrong word to use, although I agree with badass' general point). To put my last word in - if someone says they want to buy a house and could obviously afford to save something, but doesn't, then they probably don't deserve to own a house. But being unable to save, or choosing not to, doesn't mean you don't deserve to own a house. It just means you're unable to at the moment. As I say, I think deserve implies a value judgment which can't really be made...

That said, one of the biggest issues at the minute is the general affordability of properties, and that is kind of relevant to your question too, I guess - the wider the price range you can afford, the more properties you can look at before choosing one. If I was thinking of buying right now, the list of possibilities would be very short, so I probably wouldn't look round many! OTOH, when I first bought, houses were much more affordable and I had the option of shopping around and viewing quite a few properties before I settled on one to buy (or in my case, 3, down to various incompetents!). It sounds like you've got somewhere to live and money saved for a deposit already, so you're probably in a good position to shop around and be picky...

[j.o.s.h.1408]

One of the problems is the stamp duty. many first time buyers would not like to go over 250k even if they have say a 30k deposit simply for the fact that you ned nearly 10k more for stamp duties and thats a killer for some. For some, thats maybe another year to save up for that.

Thing is, its all good saying "keep saving and wait for prices to settle" but it can also backfire because the longer u wait, the more likely u will have to cough up 3% for stamp duty .

Also, HSBC told me that i can only get a property worth max of 275k as the bank can only lend me someting liek 250k max based on my salary and my wifes.

So unless both u and your missus are earning decent pay, you wont even be allowed to get a 300k house.

Now in London, its expensive. damm expensive, especially zone 1-3. Houses in Zone 1-3 "start" at around the 300k mark. im lucky enough that in my area it starts around teh 220k mark and is only a 30min train journey to liverpool street.

Prices in London are holding there own and if you work in a kind of IT sector like me, Most jobs are in cenral london and no poin buying a house outside london spending £300 a month on travel and spending over an hour going home either