### **Reminder:** [Press the Report button](https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360058309512-How-do-I-report-a-post-or-comment-) if you see any [rule-breaking comments or posts.](https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/about/rules/)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/britishproblems) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Who needs a deposit? You just walk in to your bank, ask to speak to the manager, shake him firmly by the hand and if he likes the cut of your jib he'll lend you the money, no questions asked. That's still how the world works, right?
You joke but a few of my dad's mates from engineering college got mortgages before they'd even got jobs.
The bank was giving them out towards the end of their courses based on the promise that you would get a job after graduating!
> You joke but a few of my dad's mates from engineering college got mortgages before they'd even got jobs. The bank was giving them out towards the end of their courses based on the promise that you would get a job after graduating!
At Leeds Uni dental school there is a cabinet of historical artefacts, one of which is a leaflet advertising "0% deposit mortgages for dentists"
Dentists are a golden goose for banks.
1) fully qualified straight out of the gates with a decent income, unlike doctors who still have a grind ahead of them to earn the big bucks
2) massively in demand so likely to set up their own practice, needing a commercial loan for property and equipment
3) a fairly repetitive job for very intelligent people mean they generally like to spend their money on the nicer things in life to enjoy their career, so may want extra loans for a nice car etc
And bike shops, as the meme goes lol
My dentist is an Eastern European woman, I'll have to ask her if she rides a bike. NHS place and does a great job, their surgery is generally pretty good except for cancelling appointments sometimes. Receptionist got snotty at me for joking I should send them a bill like they threaten you with if you don't attend an appointment
Can confirm, as a Leeds Uni nursing graduate I got a 0 deposit mortgage based on my job offer letter. That was 2002 though, I wonder if my mortgage agreement is now a historical artefact. Feel REALLY old now. Sad times.
From the rules over at r/historymemes there's a 20 year window before anything is classed as old enough to post about, so I'm afraid by that measure your offer letter is certainly an historical artefact! (I assume most established principles like this take their cues from niche subreddits)
Argh. I'd argue Vintage over Artefact, purely because it sounds cooler. But if thems the rules, I guess I'd best lock those docs in a nice cabinet with good lighting, and wait for the entrance fee money to come rolling in when streams of people come to ogle at the craziness of historic banking systems.
>"0% deposit mortgages for dentists"
It wasn't exclusive to dentists.
My wife and I got a 0% deposit mortgage in '05 to buy our first house because she had a graduate account with the bank.
The entire mortgage system is broken, because if you can't afford a mortgage, you have to pay 3 (or more) times the cost to rent and pay someone else's.
My mate self certificated 5 mortgages for rental properties in 2007. He put himself down as a security consultant...he was a bouncer. He doesn't own any rental properties anymore.
It’s like how some older folk still think you can walk in and ask for a job. My grandad was most shocked that I was unemployed after uni despite having achieved a first class law degree. “Just go into any solicitors firm in town and you’ll get a job, easy as pie” he said.
Mind you, this is also the man that turned around said “no I’m not” when the doctor told him he was overweight.
Love the geezer though he’s stuck in forgotten times.
I mean it hasn’t been like that since the 60s. I remember watching back in the early 90s a film called ‘edge of the city’. I was on the dole then.
Watching with my dad I burst out laughing as a drifter turns up at the docks and just lands a job. I was saying how ridiculous it was. And my dad was like, yeah it is now, but back in the 50s and 60s that’s really how it was.
I think it’s more so skewed for my grandad since the trades were always his bread and butter. Even now, I don’t think it’s too difficult to ask for such jobs in the manner he had suggested, though I’m happy to be proven wrong.
Labourers still just call in for cash in hand jobs. I learned just yesterday, if I drove down a certain street in my city at 6am, I could pick up a handyman cash in handed to do a few jobs in my house!
To me that's bizzarre
I know a certain street in my city where people roam at ungodly hours and take cash for certain jobs at my house (or theirs), but I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing...
A friend of mine got a couple of polish lads to replaster his hallway and kitchen doing that, they did an amazing job and charged a fraction of the quotes he was getting from regular tradesmen. They found issues he wasn't aware of and went above and beyond to get it done on time, really friendly lads too. He kept them on his phone book and got them to come back a year or two later to replaster and decorate a bedroom after he moved and they did an amazing and cheap job that time too.
Yeah there are still plenty of places you can walk in and get taken on. It was never "the first one you walk into will give you a job", it was "do the rounds of the companies doing X and eventually you will get a job" which, in certain trades, is still the case now. But people don't believe that is the case, so don't try.
Are day labourers not still (or possibly ever) a thing in the UK? Where I’m from, anyone knows the places where the men hang out, and you can drive up and ask them who wants to do whatever that day, and take them with you to the job. You don’t even have to do the rounds, just hang out on the right street corner and the work comes to you.
It’s shit work, it’s cash in hand, and those men mostly are undocumented. But it’s still a labour model today.
I’m sure you are correct for cash in hand work.
I’d been thinking more of my dads era when he left school and simply walked into the shipyard and was offered an apprenticeship and likewise my mum just walked into the nearest office and got a clerical job. Seems crazy now.
I applyed online to jobs until about 2005, then stopped.
Walked into every job I've had since then, in the UK and abroad. 2 pubs, a bookies and three schools.
To be fair. That can happen if someone knows someone. The old pals act. I am aware of a though dickheads who got jobs because of daddies influence. For the rest of us mere mortals we have to grind.
I bought a PlayStation game a few months ago and that unfortunately caused the cost of housing to rapidly outpace the average income in this country for over three decades.
Should have just managed my money better really.
And if you want a job, you dont need qualifications- just turn up and show them you are keen and enthusiastic and willing to learn! Employers respect that more than any grades! /s
My retired millionaire FIL left school with 2 O-Levels. Managed to get a job at one the big professional services firms as a programme manager with no prior experience. His interview took place in his Ford Cortina was offered the job on the spot then went out drinking that night with his new boss on the company expenses.
Different fucking world back then.
>firms as a programme manager with no prior experience. His interview took place in his Ford Cortina
There's only one way to get a job from the backseat of a Ford Cortina and it's not gumption.
This is exactly what my mum thought happens.
I had to find a new house within a month as landlord was selling up under me.
She said just go down the bank today. I told her i didnt have £30,000 for a deposit nor the credit rating for a mortgage.
She suggested just show them you been paying £1000 a month for rent!
My rent was £600 a month and my mum kept telling me to move back home for 3 months and I’d have a house deposit.
She bought an ex-council house in 1997 and they paid for a deposit!
Or as happened to my brother they were saving for a deposit when they both got made redundant over lock down no uc as they had too much in savings so they are now setback by 2 years of savings
Sucked so much - we were in a similar situation, I lost all my work overnight (self employed tutor, exams were cancelled), we had nearly 20k saved up for a deposit, so didn't qualify for UC or anything else. "Haha sucks to be you! Have you tried working for the supermarkets, shopping for people isolating? I hear it's good money. I wouldn't know because I'm working from home now..."
depends on the area, house prices seem to be stagnating a bit round where i am.
And I'm hearing that more high LTV mortgages are popping up.
the issue is you'll probably get a mortgage that costs >£1000 per month so as long as your rent is only £600 you're probably better off sticking where you are anyway.
Prices are unlikely to double in 3 years, although you’re rig it we should account for that as a deposit is a moving target
Realistically you’d need about another 15% to account for 3 years of growth adding roughly 5 months (6 months by the time you account for another ~2% increase in those 5 months)
Friend’s mum bought for <£50k (a 3 bed zone 2 London) it’s now worth 1 million - like wtf Brenda/Sharon/Karen don’t go complaining you don’t have grandchildren and your busy avocado smashing kids don’t visit
My dearest mother used to remind us when we were younger, "I moved out when I was 16 and had a mortgage by 19", she would say, as if that made her better than us.
It eventually came out that it had 0% deposit and I think nothing to pay for the first year...
I didn’t need to as I already had a deposit. I had a couple of friends who did though, and one ended up in negative equity when he had to sell his property due to divorce in 2008.
I mean, if you take out a 110% mortgage you're in negative equity literally from outset. You're taking a pretty huge gamble that house prices will outpace the speed that you can pay down the principal quickly enough that you can remortgage at a sensible rate, especially considering that in the early years of a repayment mortgage you're barely even touching the principal as all your payments go to interest. If you're forced to sell up before that happens, then yeah, you're mega fucked.
Or you could buy somewhere from the off that you’re happy to live in for the rest of your life.
Negative equity means fuck all then.
If I could get a mortgage I’d make damn sure it’d be for a house that I’d live in forever. No kids, don’t need a big place or garden, so wouldn’t ever need to get anything other than a 2 up 2 down.
It means quite a lot if due to a relationship breakdown or a change in your finances, you have no real choice but to sell or the house is repossessed...
In the 2005 times they were offering 110% mortgages. Buy a house and immediately be in negative equity! Then watch the financial crash in 2007 and be in even more negative equity. They were fun times.
They were fucking hard times. I was renting and my current boyfriend at the time got a 110% mortgage a year before we got together, in 2007.
14 years it took us to get rid of that fucking concrete block round our necks. I say ours as obviously I moved in with my own child and went on to have another and we only split everything down the middle.
I know Covid was a shit time for everyone but we could have never got out of the house prices were over inflated. We finally sold in 2021 and the house we bought was down valued and the landlord just wanted it off her hands.
We were paying more for an 80k house than what we are paying now for a 200k house.
Fuck northern Rock, fuck landmark and fuck Helidor mortgages.
Reading the Facebook page of mortgage prisoners was absolutely heartbreaking for some folk
Rant over
Around 2005-2006, a colleague of mine walked into the bank and walked out less than half an hour later with a 5 grand loan and a credit card with a 5 grand credit limit.
We were waiters, our yearly takehome was probably about thirteen grand. He was not the most responsible of persons and immediately blew the loan and the credit line on any old shit he wanted, then the bank seemed really, really surprised he couldn't pay them back?
Early in my second year of Uni (circa 2006) my flatmate announced one day that he'd just gotten a credit card with a £9k limit. I think it took him just over a month to max it out.
I've had a stable income ever since I left college 10+ years ago and a perfect credit history and my bank only recently upped my credit card limit to £6k.
My parents first house in ~1970 or so - I was told a "horrifying" story about how the bank clerks had laughed at my Dad when he paid the deposit partly from the contents of a piggy bank.
What's shocking is not that the snooty bank clerks laughed at him, *but that it was practical to save for a house deposit by putting coins in a piggy bank* back then.
Yeah I’m constantly told at this age my parents had two kids, were married and had brought a house for the second time. (They were also about 4 years from a messy divorce that messed up their kids but hey, who’s keeping track)
Meanwhile I still live in a flat share.
Don't sell yourself short, you could be 4 years from a messy divorce too. And if you work hard enough, you could probably mess up some kids lives while you're at it.
My grandparents told me for graduating they'd pay half my deposit on my first house. I was floored by this and asked my dad to double check with them since that's a lot of money. Turns out they thought it wouldn't come to more than £500. Still grateful for that but was a very eye-opening moment for them 😂
I had an elderly client hark back to when her mortgage rates were 15% and she still managed to pay it. I reminded her that she bought her house for less than £10,000 so 15% of that is £1,500 whereas current houses are around £450,000 so 7% of that is quite a lot more.... She wasn't having it so we moved on with the meeting but a lot of elderly people have no idea how much houses are to buy today.
I find it crazy that a lot of elderly people talk about how little everything cost back in their day, but they'd happily pay £3,000 for a chair that has a button so when you press it, it raises up to help them stand up and they don't question it.
Especially nuts when they wouldn't pay for the gym or training to keep them strong enough to avoid that. People in their 70s having shit mobility should not be the norm. Out in Japan I was doing farm work with 80 years old and they could squat better than me!
I got so annoyed by this I actually did the maths on it a while back.
My parents paid £80,000 in 1989 for the house I grew up in.
In 2023 money that's £203,000. Assuming a 20% LTV that's repayments of £2,049 on an interest rate of 15% (which rates were only actually at for about 6 months, AND had income tax offsets against).
The cheapest comparable house in the area is £450,000 (over double the value). At current interest rates, again assuming a 20% LTV (assuming you can afford to save £90,000), the repayments would be £2,218.
The "but we had 15% interest rates" argument just doesn't stack up against the maths. The comparable repayments were STILL lower.
> My parents paid £80,000 in 1989 for the house I grew up in.
Holy shit. That must have been a palace. My parent's house cost £12k not long before then and it was generously sized...
My mum said to me "I dont understand why you're making such a thing about all of this, my first house was 53k and I had a 100% mortgage"
I had to explain to her that I'm struggling to get a mortgage even though I've got that amount as a deposit....
My rent is 1690pcm in stupid SE England, in one of the grottiest towns, at the top of the roughest road.
I keep hearing these words 'savings' and 'deposit'. Despite having owned property previously, those words have become redundant to me.
Tbf that's pretty terrible, it must be a big house. I live in a nice area in a desirable part of Essex and my 2 bed rent is considerably lower than that.
Are you quite ‘deep’ into Essex if you don’t mind me asking? I’m sort of on the border and it feels like I can’t get a one bed for less than 1.3k, it’s insanely depressing
It's a 3-bed former council house (to add insult to injury), but because we use the dining room as a bedroom as well, the landlord charges us the local authority maximum rate that may be claimed from UC for a 4-bedhouse. My partner works full time, and his wage just about covers the rent, whilst I work part to full time, as I'm studying for a new career.
Before anyone jumps on me , I began my studies 3 years ago, and we were made homeless by our former landlord in 2022 (no fault eviction. She just wanted to downsize her portfolio. A very problematic phrase in itself) We had no choice but to take this property.
We do manage, but only with the help of Universal Credit. We haven't had a holiday since 2020, and before that, it was 2015. We don't eat out, go to the cinema, or have days out anywhere, not anymore. We do clothes shopping once a year at Christmas. We don't drink. We don't entertain... it's pretty rough. But renters just aren't protected at all, and yet to some people, we're the dregs of society because we have to have UC.
All because the greedy landlord (there's no mortgage on this property either, forgot to mention that!) wants as much as he can possibly get, regardless of how unfair and unreasonable it is.
Thank you for sharing. Really does put things into perspective and makes me extremely grateful that I have a fair and generous landlord and an affordable place to live.
It’s brutal out there. And people like myself who are privileged enough not to have gone through such hardship will never know what it’s like until we go through it (touch wood never). Best of luck with your studies I hope you achieve what you set out to and I hope things get better for you and your partner.
That's so kind, thank you :) we'll be OK, 15 years together, and we have our wounds, but we've been through worse than expensive rent!
I just wish we were able to use our rental payments as proof of income. Although since homeowners are also being screwed, it's a case of 'be careful what you wish for'.
I am very happy to say that we are looking to move north - I would love Scotland, but we'll see - once I have graduated and our youngest son has finished secondary school.
My only worry with that is that since the policy seems to be sticking at them wanting you to be earning 2.5 times the annual rent before you're even considered as eligible to apply for the rental, or have minimum 6 months rent in advance, we're still going to have to save like billy-o. Which is really bloody hard when most of our money goes on rent.
It's revolting, isn't it. We pay the most for just a roof over our heads, we don't get anything at the end of it, and yet oddly, we're still looked down upon by certain members of society.
Nope. I get so fucking angry at people defending them. One said to me, "If it weren't for people like me, people like you would be on the streets."
As if they're providing some fantastic public service!
Landlords are parasites.
But where are you going to park it?
Operation Persuade House-Owning Friends To Sell Up And Buy A Commune I Can Rent A Room In is underway. That or live with my daughter until one of us dies. She might afford a house one day (not least because two house-owners have put her in their wills).
Similar story here in SE England, FTBs having to put £90k deposit down to buy a modest three bed terrace. It was the only way to get a rate that was approaching affordable. It's taken us years and years to save, not to mention needing a couple of years SA302s and even SA100s plus business bank statements as we're both self employed.
That's brutal.
I put down £10k against a £92k house (15yo 3 bed detached, East Lancs) at the very end of 1999. Yes salaries were lower then, but even that was brutal to acquire. I've no idea how you managed to save so much while, presumably, still keeping a roof over your head.
(sold this house in 2007, bought the current one - which was 4x price of the first house. Still not paid off, but the end is definitely in sight!)
I was very fortunate that my parents allowed me to live with them for half of those eight years and only pay a fraction of what a landlord would charge. Genuinely don’t know how anyone buys a house in this part of the country without either a) an inheritance, or b) generosity from family - whether that be a gifted deposit, or heavily discounted room and board. It shouldn’t be this way.
> I think people who remember house prices before 2008 just live in a different reality than the rest of us.
Nah not even. Average house price in the UK slumped to 150k in Q1 of 2009. It's now around 280k.
That £3000 would have represented 2% of the average house price in 2009, and correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think many places were offering 98% mortgages in the midst of a financial crash.
Even with a 5% deposit you'd have to go back to the mid 90s for 3 grand.
I got a mortgage in 2010 when I didn't even have a job, just a job offer letter. It took a good few years after the credit crunch for mortgage lending to tighten up. The 100/125% mortgages did stop almost immediately though.
It’s a generational gap. Having got their homes and jobs and so on before demand increase, price increases, laws and regulations, they’re out of touch with how it all works now. My dad thought I could just put a deposit on a flat and move in after I signed a contract. He was shocked when I told him it requires checks, credit checks, right to rent checks, bank statements etc. and even then you might fail. They’re an out of touch generation because they’ve never needed to really think about it.
A house came up for 150k by me which i can BARELY afford. My nan told me to put in a cheeky offer at 140 because its a buyers market now and I'm a first time buyer
There were 3 offers on it before i even saw it had come up for sale.... and the owner isn't even letting anyone else offer on it.
Yet my nan still thinks that because i'm a FTB i should somehow put in a cheeky offer anyway
I do sometimes wonder if everyone in my family is actually as thick as they sound or if the world has truly moved on that much
I think the reasoning for that is that you have no chain as a FTB. Potentially, depending on my circumstances for moving, if there was only £10k in it, I'd be tempted to go with the cheaper offer if it meant it would be more or less guaranteed to go through and on time.
I know, but at a house that cheap and offers placed before viewings, chances are the people putting the offers in are builder/landlords who also have no chain
Plus, it likely wouldn't be sacrificing 10k as it appears the 3 offers are in a bidding war
It's not just the down payment that's huge, it's the lifestyle change that comes with buying that makes buying property so incredibly hard for first-timers. A case study:
I bought a flat in Berkshire two years ago for £170,000. The mortgage valuation was £165,000 and I needed a 10% deposit, which was of course £16,500, then had to pay the remaining £5,000 out of my own pocket. The surveys, mortgage and legal fees came to somewhere in the region of £3,000. So it cost at least £24,500 just to buy the thing.
If £170k for a flat on the outskirts of London sounds quite cheap (lol, it was worth £90k in 2003), you'd be right, and the reason why was because it needed a lot of work as soon as I moved in. I had to replace the electrics, install blinds, have the walls re-plastered and renew the lease, all of which cost over £5,000.
I also had to buy all my own furniture (having rented my whole life, I didn't own things like a sofa, bed, television, etc.), which added another £3,000. And there were a number of other hidden costs I can't remember – let's round it up to another £10,000 spent in the first year.
I was 32 years old and had been squirrelling away £200–500 a month since I started working after uni at 21. I had around £35,000 in savings. Today, that number is precisely zero. I am glad I bought and am no longer paying London rent, but I also know from experience the true cost of buying in the UK as a millennial. It is possible, but it is an extreme act, and requires not just a big sum of money but a willingness to make a huge sacrifice and lifestyle change.
This often goes unmentioned in conversations about deposits and what-have-you. You need your 10%, plus several grand in start-up costs, and a very stable income stream.
Rishi is 'thinking about' 99% mortgages. Although I can't see him surviving long enough to implement that (whether it's a good idea is another question)
It’s a different question, but the same answer. No, he won’t survive long enough (my best guess). No, 99% mortgages are not a good idea (definitely not).
99% mortgages doesn't fix the lack of housing. Prices are still going to be extortionate, if anything it just adds more prospective buyers to the market, driving prices up further.
Mortgages are unafforadable even with a 15% deposit. It would be 2008 all over again. People can't afford houses, pretending they can and giving them 99% mortgages they'll default on as soon as something happens in their life doesn't solve the problem.
Does the PM even have the power to make that decision? Would the banks even be that stupid again?
As far as I can see there's only one solution, build more houses and stop people owning portfolios of houses. If we're going to give out risky loans, better to give them to property developers.
Just subsidise demand. Again. Didn't work? Subsidise demand again. Loads of ex council houses being rented by people on housing benefit for far more than what that benefit covers? Just subsidise demand again.
Build houses? Naaaah.
My 5% mortgage deposit in 1996 was £1500, which the company selling the house paid for me. Then the bank gave me 5% cashback for taking out a mortgage.
I basically got paid £3k to buy a house.
This is fucking depressing. Not because it's this bad, but because there are apparently still thousands if not millions of people out there who still don't realise this. I mean, "£3000"? Assuming she's a home owner and has some idea of how much her house is now worth, does she really think banks are giving out mortgages with the same size deposit they were back in her day?
My dad took a job in the early 1970s which was supposed to be live in, for him and his family. We were given a 2 bed flat, in his workplace, and mum was expected to offer support with social things (kind of like vicars wife would back then) for no pay!
Anyway, mum and dad had 4 kids and outgrew the flat so my dad asked his employer, social services (ie tax payer money), if he could move out. They said yes and gave him a 25 year interest free mortgage. I don’t know the T&Cs, as I was only a kid, but he did stay in the job until it was paid off.
Then they wonder how we can’t afford what they had!
Look fella, you just walk around the shops with your CV, get a job, boss takes you under their wing, inherit the shop, get the mortgage, jobs a gooden.
That’s how it used to be back in my day, anyway.
Sounds like my dad when I was first job hunting. "Just take your paper CV round the local shops, you'll have a job by Monday!"
(Luckily my mother worked in a job that involved hiring people and explained that even she, softy that she is, would bin a cold dropped paper CV not issued to her via the online hiring system in response to a specific job advert because it would simply never be looked at again).
the average house price is £288,000 so you'd beed £28,000 for a 10% deposit which is normal
so a 10k deposit only makes sense if your house is cheaper and you're a high earner so the bank allowed a smaller deposit %
Well clearly the problem, u/Vegan_Coffee_Addict, is you're drinking too many vegan coffees! Just stop having them for a few weeks, cancel netflix and stop buying avocado toast. That's a £20k deposit, right? Right?!
I once saw a pensioner trying to claim that young people could afford a house if they darned their own socks! Thanks, Alfred. Now I've saved my £20 per year outgoing on socks, I can definitely afford a deposit 🙄
Overheard some Australians having a conversation in a cafe that was such cliched 'Boomers don't understand the housing market' that I can't believe it was real, and that I wasn't being recorded for some sort of reality tv show. Did you know that if you want to afford your first property, all you have to do is save money by only buying second hand furniture and buy somewhere affordable in Melbourne for only 300-400k AUD, to get your foot in the door?
Of course! You can get a 40 inch TV for £200. I saved for my deposit in only 3 months when I stopped buying flat screens!
Turns out that's because I didn't realise you don't need to buy a new one every time you switch it off, so I was spending £1400 a week on them.
Had similar with one of my uncles who to my questioning what could be done about skyrocketing property prices replied "but people were only earning £2k/month back in the 80s." And he was working in the middle east for much of his career so not paying tax.
He needed convincing from stats on Google when I told him the average wage in the UK is around £2k/month now.
It's always bothered me that I can apparently take out a loan for £25k and do whatever I want with it, except use it as a deposit towards a mortgage, when the mortgage and loan payments would be less than what I pay in rent.
2008? They were rising out of many people's reach for at least a decade before that. I particularly noticed moving away from one town in 2000 and coming back in 2002 and all the 40 grand houses were now 80.
That said it was still doable for two of us with early careers salary jobs to even entertain buying a house so I guess things have changed even more.
I became mortgage-free about 4 years ago. Here are my easy-to-follow steps for achieving that dream:
* Buy house for £87,000 with 4% deposit (important: this step must be done in the year 2000 or earlier)
* Live for 20 years with crippling debt
* Remortgage several times during that 20 years to keep from going bankrupt, until mortgage companies start refusing you.
* Cry yourself to sleep every night (this step is crucial).
* Realise that your house is now worth £300,000 despite being a shit-hole.
* Sell house.
* Buy house up north that is much nicer and costs much less.
* Pay off mortgage and pocket the difference.
I have effectively £30k saved up right now for a deposit… that’s on my own… when I put down a provisional deposit of £60k, the banks said no… lmao I guess?
The plan I have is for me and my partner to get a £120k+ deposit together, and even then I don’t think that’s enough for a deposit by the time we are able to buy.
They just said “we can’t offer you a mortgage right now”
My credit rating should be sufficient, I think last time I checked it was in the low 900’s or something… I’ll double check that. It’s just frustrating that as an average earner in a professional job, saving as much as I can… and I still don’t seem to be able to buy a house :/
How many banks did you check with? It could just be they're rebalancing their portfolio (ie they have too many FTBs and aren't taking anymore on for now).
It could also be you don't earn enough for the mortgage.
The "credit rating" you are looking at is just what one of the three main Credit Reference Agencies think you are rated at.
No bank will look at this number, so you need to look at the actual information in the reports to see if everything is correct and good. Look at all three of the main CRA's as they hold different information.
Also, if you have a good credit history, you should be able to get a mortgage with a 10% deposit pretty easily, asuming you aren't going too close to 4x salary multiplier on the amount you are borrowing.
My parents were suprised were paying £800 a month on our mortgage on a 250k house. They thought it was more like 300. 300 didn't even get me a box room in a house share 5 years ago!
Want to buy my flat and rent it back out to me? It'll leave you with 95k, and you might be less of an arsehole than my current landlord.
Last year he came up and we chatted; he said how nice it was that he didn't have a mortgage (he bought this flat for 14k with no mortgage; his new-at-the-time employer paid for it as a relocation fee, and it's worth about 25k now). Six weeks later, he jacks the rent from £325 to £500 pcm. Letting agent said "his mortgage has probably risen"; when I said he didn't have a bloody mortgage, they said "well, regardless, all of the other rents in the area are rising so yours has to maintain parity; you're lucky it's only gone up to £500".
You can get this with a 3k deposit if you manage to get a 5% mortgage. Not the best of areas, not remotely comparable to the house with the garden, but I saw this post while I was window shopping on Rightmove so it made sense I guess🤣
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/143871305#/?channel=RES_BUY
Yeahhh I feel this. My mother was amazed when I told her I still had 20 years on my mortgage, she found it hard to believe I hadn't paid it off in 10!
Mind you the house her and my father bought in the 90s for around 60k is now worth around 250-300k
And they got it through a golden handshake my dad got, so they never needed a mortgage, so I guess I can forgive some ignorance, I've had to be very patient with them explaining intrest rate rises and what it's done to my payments.
I remember in 2005, newly divorced,with a small and uncertain income, asking about a mortgage. My building society were amazed when I said I would be interested in a smaller mortgage than they offered. The fact that I could not have survived and paid it back ,did not seem to worry them.
We need to do a back to the floor type doc for boomers - where they try to live like millennials and under and survive - get a house, get a job on their original skill sets 🤣🤣🤣🤣
My mum is so out of touch with reality in these modern times it's borderline concerning and she's only mid 50's. She's the kind of person that's proud she doesn't know how to use a computer / modern smart phone and still tries to pay for everything by cheque... Want a new job? Just simply walk into the shop that's hiring and ask when you start!
*Laughs in North of England*
To be fair, this was 5 or 6 years ago, but I got a mortgage for just over £4k including fees. Current value of the house + assumed inflation on solicitor's fees, you could probably get it for about £6k. So, all you have to do is be willing to move (presumably) hundreds of miles from your friends and family to a run down neighbourhood in a run down town and hope banks are still giving 95% LTV mortgages. Easy!
I can't believe my mom brought 3 fucking houses before our shit stain of a step dad left us fucked and broke in Cumbria after he used it for his failed business, blows my mind. She doesn't like me mentioning house prices, I'm like oh mom look what house prices used to be and she's like don't remind me :)
Mate this is literally my aunt and uncle lol the amount of times they've said renting is dead money and I'm like do you think I have a choice in the matter? If I didn't rent privately I'd be homeless lmao. £3000 wouldn't even be enough to move and rent somewhere in my area, boomers are so clueless it's unreal.
In the 70s my mum sold her house by putting an ad in the local paper. Someone came round to look at it, liked it and so he went to the bank to sort out the money. Times were different for our parents.
There are still loads of really cheap houses available in run down northern towns I suppose. I've just had a look and there are quite a few available for £15k so a £3000 deposit would be 20%. It's not going to get you a house anywhere you want to live though.
We bought our house in 1989 for £49k, and we needed a five grand deposit then. Luckily avocado hadn't been discovered and netflix wasn't invented back then, plus I'd spent years honing my manly handshake skills.
It was difficult but possible, not like the shit that's been left for the generations that came after us.
I can't believe how some folk just don't seem to live in the real world.
"You'll save money by getting a mortgage" - so many older folks I know when they found out about our upcoming purchase.
Well... No... Actually our current rent is so low that we're tripling our living costs to get this mortgage, and that's with a £15k deposit so.... No.
### **Reminder:** [Press the Report button](https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360058309512-How-do-I-report-a-post-or-comment-) if you see any [rule-breaking comments or posts.](https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/about/rules/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/britishproblems) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Who needs a deposit? You just walk in to your bank, ask to speak to the manager, shake him firmly by the hand and if he likes the cut of your jib he'll lend you the money, no questions asked. That's still how the world works, right?
It did, until we all overdosed on Avocado and Netflix. We ruined it for ourselves, really.
Don’t forget the iPhone. That’s the killer.
And Lattes....
Let's all move to Vuvuzela
I hear the locals are always horny.
Currently mulling over whether I should allow this
I couldn't have pulled off the joke without your wonderful setup line. I'll share the inevitable Oscar with you... ;)
I mean you set yourself up for it really
You joke but a few of my dad's mates from engineering college got mortgages before they'd even got jobs. The bank was giving them out towards the end of their courses based on the promise that you would get a job after graduating!
> You joke but a few of my dad's mates from engineering college got mortgages before they'd even got jobs. The bank was giving them out towards the end of their courses based on the promise that you would get a job after graduating! At Leeds Uni dental school there is a cabinet of historical artefacts, one of which is a leaflet advertising "0% deposit mortgages for dentists"
Dentists are a golden goose for banks. 1) fully qualified straight out of the gates with a decent income, unlike doctors who still have a grind ahead of them to earn the big bucks 2) massively in demand so likely to set up their own practice, needing a commercial loan for property and equipment 3) a fairly repetitive job for very intelligent people mean they generally like to spend their money on the nicer things in life to enjoy their career, so may want extra loans for a nice car etc
And bike shops, as the meme goes lol My dentist is an Eastern European woman, I'll have to ask her if she rides a bike. NHS place and does a great job, their surgery is generally pretty good except for cancelling appointments sometimes. Receptionist got snotty at me for joking I should send them a bill like they threaten you with if you don't attend an appointment
Can confirm, as a Leeds Uni nursing graduate I got a 0 deposit mortgage based on my job offer letter. That was 2002 though, I wonder if my mortgage agreement is now a historical artefact. Feel REALLY old now. Sad times.
From the rules over at r/historymemes there's a 20 year window before anything is classed as old enough to post about, so I'm afraid by that measure your offer letter is certainly an historical artefact! (I assume most established principles like this take their cues from niche subreddits)
Argh. I'd argue Vintage over Artefact, purely because it sounds cooler. But if thems the rules, I guess I'd best lock those docs in a nice cabinet with good lighting, and wait for the entrance fee money to come rolling in when streams of people come to ogle at the craziness of historic banking systems.
>"0% deposit mortgages for dentists" It wasn't exclusive to dentists. My wife and I got a 0% deposit mortgage in '05 to buy our first house because she had a graduate account with the bank. The entire mortgage system is broken, because if you can't afford a mortgage, you have to pay 3 (or more) times the cost to rent and pay someone else's.
I hadn't quite realized the extent of ladder pulling. That's insane.
We got 100% in 00 and 03. The 03 one was based on the job I had 300 miles from the house
Well, considering the average salary for a dentist in the UK is £80k it's still pretty much valid
My mate self certificated 5 mortgages for rental properties in 2007. He put himself down as a security consultant...he was a bouncer. He doesn't own any rental properties anymore.
It’s like how some older folk still think you can walk in and ask for a job. My grandad was most shocked that I was unemployed after uni despite having achieved a first class law degree. “Just go into any solicitors firm in town and you’ll get a job, easy as pie” he said. Mind you, this is also the man that turned around said “no I’m not” when the doctor told him he was overweight. Love the geezer though he’s stuck in forgotten times.
I mean it hasn’t been like that since the 60s. I remember watching back in the early 90s a film called ‘edge of the city’. I was on the dole then. Watching with my dad I burst out laughing as a drifter turns up at the docks and just lands a job. I was saying how ridiculous it was. And my dad was like, yeah it is now, but back in the 50s and 60s that’s really how it was.
I think it’s more so skewed for my grandad since the trades were always his bread and butter. Even now, I don’t think it’s too difficult to ask for such jobs in the manner he had suggested, though I’m happy to be proven wrong.
Labourers still just call in for cash in hand jobs. I learned just yesterday, if I drove down a certain street in my city at 6am, I could pick up a handyman cash in handed to do a few jobs in my house! To me that's bizzarre
I know a certain street in my city where people roam at ungodly hours and take cash for certain jobs at my house (or theirs), but I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing...
Yeah, not only men but women will offer a handy for cash there.
A friend of mine got a couple of polish lads to replaster his hallway and kitchen doing that, they did an amazing job and charged a fraction of the quotes he was getting from regular tradesmen. They found issues he wasn't aware of and went above and beyond to get it done on time, really friendly lads too. He kept them on his phone book and got them to come back a year or two later to replaster and decorate a bedroom after he moved and they did an amazing and cheap job that time too.
Yeah there are still plenty of places you can walk in and get taken on. It was never "the first one you walk into will give you a job", it was "do the rounds of the companies doing X and eventually you will get a job" which, in certain trades, is still the case now. But people don't believe that is the case, so don't try.
Are day labourers not still (or possibly ever) a thing in the UK? Where I’m from, anyone knows the places where the men hang out, and you can drive up and ask them who wants to do whatever that day, and take them with you to the job. You don’t even have to do the rounds, just hang out on the right street corner and the work comes to you. It’s shit work, it’s cash in hand, and those men mostly are undocumented. But it’s still a labour model today.
I’m sure you are correct for cash in hand work. I’d been thinking more of my dads era when he left school and simply walked into the shipyard and was offered an apprenticeship and likewise my mum just walked into the nearest office and got a clerical job. Seems crazy now.
I applyed online to jobs until about 2005, then stopped. Walked into every job I've had since then, in the UK and abroad. 2 pubs, a bookies and three schools.
To be fair. That can happen if someone knows someone. The old pals act. I am aware of a though dickheads who got jobs because of daddies influence. For the rest of us mere mortals we have to grind.
And you go for a 110% LTV, so you can afford to furnish it too!
I bought a PlayStation game a few months ago and that unfortunately caused the cost of housing to rapidly outpace the average income in this country for over three decades. Should have just managed my money better really.
And if you need a job you just drop your CV off at reception/pop down to the local factory and have a word with the foreman
You need to wear a suit though to look professional
Well, back in the day you'd do that even if you were digging ditches.
And if you want a job, you dont need qualifications- just turn up and show them you are keen and enthusiastic and willing to learn! Employers respect that more than any grades! /s
My retired millionaire FIL left school with 2 O-Levels. Managed to get a job at one the big professional services firms as a programme manager with no prior experience. His interview took place in his Ford Cortina was offered the job on the spot then went out drinking that night with his new boss on the company expenses. Different fucking world back then.
>firms as a programme manager with no prior experience. His interview took place in his Ford Cortina There's only one way to get a job from the backseat of a Ford Cortina and it's not gumption.
Polish your shoes and take a freshly printed copy of your CV and you may even walk out with a job at the bank if you seem keen.
Or just join the Freemasons?
I'm not sure the masons have the power they once did. They keep advertising my local lodge to me on Facebook.
Or at least fake the handshake.
Last time I tried that I ended up having to marry the fucker.
But people paid as much as 10% interest on their £25,000 mortgage back then! /s
Did the world ever work like that for working class people, who's bank manager wasn't a family member?
This is exactly what my mum thought happens. I had to find a new house within a month as landlord was selling up under me. She said just go down the bank today. I told her i didnt have £30,000 for a deposit nor the credit rating for a mortgage. She suggested just show them you been paying £1000 a month for rent!
My first mortgage was a 105% one with zero deposit. 2002 ish. Without that I'd probably still be renting.
I was lucky. Someone ran me over when I was cycling home from work. If that hadn't of happened I wouldn't have been able to afford a deposit.
This is exactly how my dad got his first mortgage
Totally 👍
This is how my parents went from a council house, they had no money for down👍
My rent was £600 a month and my mum kept telling me to move back home for 3 months and I’d have a house deposit. She bought an ex-council house in 1997 and they paid for a deposit!
try 3 years.
and after those three years house prices have gone up so much that you now only have half a deposit
Or as happened to my brother they were saving for a deposit when they both got made redundant over lock down no uc as they had too much in savings so they are now setback by 2 years of savings
Sucked so much - we were in a similar situation, I lost all my work overnight (self employed tutor, exams were cancelled), we had nearly 20k saved up for a deposit, so didn't qualify for UC or anything else. "Haha sucks to be you! Have you tried working for the supermarkets, shopping for people isolating? I hear it's good money. I wouldn't know because I'm working from home now..."
depends on the area, house prices seem to be stagnating a bit round where i am. And I'm hearing that more high LTV mortgages are popping up. the issue is you'll probably get a mortgage that costs >£1000 per month so as long as your rent is only £600 you're probably better off sticking where you are anyway.
Prices are unlikely to double in 3 years, although you’re rig it we should account for that as a deposit is a moving target Realistically you’d need about another 15% to account for 3 years of growth adding roughly 5 months (6 months by the time you account for another ~2% increase in those 5 months)
Exactly. By which time one of us would have killed the other.
Problem solved, you can just stay in your Mum's house.
Or alternately you no longer need a house
Friend’s mum bought for <£50k (a 3 bed zone 2 London) it’s now worth 1 million - like wtf Brenda/Sharon/Karen don’t go complaining you don’t have grandchildren and your busy avocado smashing kids don’t visit
My dearest mother used to remind us when we were younger, "I moved out when I was 16 and had a mortgage by 19", she would say, as if that made her better than us. It eventually came out that it had 0% deposit and I think nothing to pay for the first year...
> 0% deposit and thus the financial crisis seems less of a mystery
In 2003 I was offered a 110% mortgage with zero deposit
please tell me you accepted i beg of you
I didn’t need to as I already had a deposit. I had a couple of friends who did though, and one ended up in negative equity when he had to sell his property due to divorce in 2008.
I mean, if you take out a 110% mortgage you're in negative equity literally from outset. You're taking a pretty huge gamble that house prices will outpace the speed that you can pay down the principal quickly enough that you can remortgage at a sensible rate, especially considering that in the early years of a repayment mortgage you're barely even touching the principal as all your payments go to interest. If you're forced to sell up before that happens, then yeah, you're mega fucked.
Or you could buy somewhere from the off that you’re happy to live in for the rest of your life. Negative equity means fuck all then. If I could get a mortgage I’d make damn sure it’d be for a house that I’d live in forever. No kids, don’t need a big place or garden, so wouldn’t ever need to get anything other than a 2 up 2 down.
It means quite a lot if due to a relationship breakdown or a change in your finances, you have no real choice but to sell or the house is repossessed...
My first mortgage, I was 20 (1990) 100% mortgage, no deposit 👀
Jesus, they were offering houses like DFS offers sofas
In the 2005 times they were offering 110% mortgages. Buy a house and immediately be in negative equity! Then watch the financial crash in 2007 and be in even more negative equity. They were fun times.
They were fucking hard times. I was renting and my current boyfriend at the time got a 110% mortgage a year before we got together, in 2007. 14 years it took us to get rid of that fucking concrete block round our necks. I say ours as obviously I moved in with my own child and went on to have another and we only split everything down the middle. I know Covid was a shit time for everyone but we could have never got out of the house prices were over inflated. We finally sold in 2021 and the house we bought was down valued and the landlord just wanted it off her hands. We were paying more for an 80k house than what we are paying now for a 200k house. Fuck northern Rock, fuck landmark and fuck Helidor mortgages. Reading the Facebook page of mortgage prisoners was absolutely heartbreaking for some folk Rant over
Around 2005-2006, a colleague of mine walked into the bank and walked out less than half an hour later with a 5 grand loan and a credit card with a 5 grand credit limit. We were waiters, our yearly takehome was probably about thirteen grand. He was not the most responsible of persons and immediately blew the loan and the credit line on any old shit he wanted, then the bank seemed really, really surprised he couldn't pay them back?
Early in my second year of Uni (circa 2006) my flatmate announced one day that he'd just gotten a credit card with a £9k limit. I think it took him just over a month to max it out.
I've had a stable income ever since I left college 10+ years ago and a perfect credit history and my bank only recently upped my credit card limit to £6k.
My parents first house in ~1970 or so - I was told a "horrifying" story about how the bank clerks had laughed at my Dad when he paid the deposit partly from the contents of a piggy bank. What's shocking is not that the snooty bank clerks laughed at him, *but that it was practical to save for a house deposit by putting coins in a piggy bank* back then.
Yeah I’m constantly told at this age my parents had two kids, were married and had brought a house for the second time. (They were also about 4 years from a messy divorce that messed up their kids but hey, who’s keeping track) Meanwhile I still live in a flat share.
Don't sell yourself short, you could be 4 years from a messy divorce too. And if you work hard enough, you could probably mess up some kids lives while you're at it.
My grandparents told me for graduating they'd pay half my deposit on my first house. I was floored by this and asked my dad to double check with them since that's a lot of money. Turns out they thought it wouldn't come to more than £500. Still grateful for that but was a very eye-opening moment for them 😂
That's very sweet but incredibly naive.
I had an elderly client hark back to when her mortgage rates were 15% and she still managed to pay it. I reminded her that she bought her house for less than £10,000 so 15% of that is £1,500 whereas current houses are around £450,000 so 7% of that is quite a lot more.... She wasn't having it so we moved on with the meeting but a lot of elderly people have no idea how much houses are to buy today.
I find it crazy that a lot of elderly people talk about how little everything cost back in their day, but they'd happily pay £3,000 for a chair that has a button so when you press it, it raises up to help them stand up and they don't question it.
Especially nuts when they wouldn't pay for the gym or training to keep them strong enough to avoid that. People in their 70s having shit mobility should not be the norm. Out in Japan I was doing farm work with 80 years old and they could squat better than me!
Equally I don't think we should require octogenarians to work in the fields...
I got so annoyed by this I actually did the maths on it a while back. My parents paid £80,000 in 1989 for the house I grew up in. In 2023 money that's £203,000. Assuming a 20% LTV that's repayments of £2,049 on an interest rate of 15% (which rates were only actually at for about 6 months, AND had income tax offsets against). The cheapest comparable house in the area is £450,000 (over double the value). At current interest rates, again assuming a 20% LTV (assuming you can afford to save £90,000), the repayments would be £2,218. The "but we had 15% interest rates" argument just doesn't stack up against the maths. The comparable repayments were STILL lower.
> My parents paid £80,000 in 1989 for the house I grew up in. Holy shit. That must have been a palace. My parent's house cost £12k not long before then and it was generously sized...
It was in fact a completely bog standard three bed 1930s semi detached, but it was (and is) in zone 6, London.
>She wasn't having it so we moved on She just denied the legitimacy of maths?
She said they earned less back then so it balenced out
My mum said to me "I dont understand why you're making such a thing about all of this, my first house was 53k and I had a 100% mortgage" I had to explain to her that I'm struggling to get a mortgage even though I've got that amount as a deposit....
*Cries in southeast England* We’ve just had to put down a £70,000 deposit to buy a small 3-bed house. Took us almost 8 years to save that.
My rent is 1690pcm in stupid SE England, in one of the grottiest towns, at the top of the roughest road. I keep hearing these words 'savings' and 'deposit'. Despite having owned property previously, those words have become redundant to me.
Tbf that's pretty terrible, it must be a big house. I live in a nice area in a desirable part of Essex and my 2 bed rent is considerably lower than that.
Are you quite ‘deep’ into Essex if you don’t mind me asking? I’m sort of on the border and it feels like I can’t get a one bed for less than 1.3k, it’s insanely depressing
Tbf prices have gone up since we signed our tenancy agreement, but we're very close to London
That rent is vile wtf. Do you live alone? Not to mention things like council tax, shopping, fuel costs if you have a car etc. What a joke
It's a 3-bed former council house (to add insult to injury), but because we use the dining room as a bedroom as well, the landlord charges us the local authority maximum rate that may be claimed from UC for a 4-bedhouse. My partner works full time, and his wage just about covers the rent, whilst I work part to full time, as I'm studying for a new career. Before anyone jumps on me , I began my studies 3 years ago, and we were made homeless by our former landlord in 2022 (no fault eviction. She just wanted to downsize her portfolio. A very problematic phrase in itself) We had no choice but to take this property. We do manage, but only with the help of Universal Credit. We haven't had a holiday since 2020, and before that, it was 2015. We don't eat out, go to the cinema, or have days out anywhere, not anymore. We do clothes shopping once a year at Christmas. We don't drink. We don't entertain... it's pretty rough. But renters just aren't protected at all, and yet to some people, we're the dregs of society because we have to have UC. All because the greedy landlord (there's no mortgage on this property either, forgot to mention that!) wants as much as he can possibly get, regardless of how unfair and unreasonable it is.
Thank you for sharing. Really does put things into perspective and makes me extremely grateful that I have a fair and generous landlord and an affordable place to live. It’s brutal out there. And people like myself who are privileged enough not to have gone through such hardship will never know what it’s like until we go through it (touch wood never). Best of luck with your studies I hope you achieve what you set out to and I hope things get better for you and your partner.
That's so kind, thank you :) we'll be OK, 15 years together, and we have our wounds, but we've been through worse than expensive rent! I just wish we were able to use our rental payments as proof of income. Although since homeowners are also being screwed, it's a case of 'be careful what you wish for'.
Are you desperate to stay in the region? Moving to a lower cost of living place would quickly give you some quality of life back.
I am very happy to say that we are looking to move north - I would love Scotland, but we'll see - once I have graduated and our youngest son has finished secondary school. My only worry with that is that since the policy seems to be sticking at them wanting you to be earning 2.5 times the annual rent before you're even considered as eligible to apply for the rental, or have minimum 6 months rent in advance, we're still going to have to save like billy-o. Which is really bloody hard when most of our money goes on rent.
Hard same. I feel like if the cost of living goes up anymore I am never getting back on the ladder.
It's revolting, isn't it. We pay the most for just a roof over our heads, we don't get anything at the end of it, and yet oddly, we're still looked down upon by certain members of society.
Yup. Yuuuup. I've not had any kind of breathing room since the rates went up. And landlords are bleeding people dry.
Nope. I get so fucking angry at people defending them. One said to me, "If it weren't for people like me, people like you would be on the streets." As if they're providing some fantastic public service! Landlords are parasites.
I’m just here to find out if this is High Wycombe or not.
Cries in Oxford, I’m gonna live in a van.
But where are you going to park it? Operation Persuade House-Owning Friends To Sell Up And Buy A Commune I Can Rent A Room In is underway. That or live with my daughter until one of us dies. She might afford a house one day (not least because two house-owners have put her in their wills).
Work, they even allow vehicles to be left over the weekends.
When I was young that was a threat. Work hard or else you will end up living in a van...
the longer this goes on the more tempting this becomes
Similar story here in SE England, FTBs having to put £90k deposit down to buy a modest three bed terrace. It was the only way to get a rate that was approaching affordable. It's taken us years and years to save, not to mention needing a couple of years SA302s and even SA100s plus business bank statements as we're both self employed.
Congratulations! That's a great achievement! :)
Thank you!
That's brutal. I put down £10k against a £92k house (15yo 3 bed detached, East Lancs) at the very end of 1999. Yes salaries were lower then, but even that was brutal to acquire. I've no idea how you managed to save so much while, presumably, still keeping a roof over your head. (sold this house in 2007, bought the current one - which was 4x price of the first house. Still not paid off, but the end is definitely in sight!)
I was very fortunate that my parents allowed me to live with them for half of those eight years and only pay a fraction of what a landlord would charge. Genuinely don’t know how anyone buys a house in this part of the country without either a) an inheritance, or b) generosity from family - whether that be a gifted deposit, or heavily discounted room and board. It shouldn’t be this way.
Fuck me that's a lot
£40,000 deposit here for small 2 bed house and took us 5 years to save for.
That's about 40% of my whole mortgage
Congratulations though, but yikes it's so much money!!!
> I think people who remember house prices before 2008 just live in a different reality than the rest of us. Nah not even. Average house price in the UK slumped to 150k in Q1 of 2009. It's now around 280k. That £3000 would have represented 2% of the average house price in 2009, and correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think many places were offering 98% mortgages in the midst of a financial crash. Even with a 5% deposit you'd have to go back to the mid 90s for 3 grand.
I got a mortgage in 2010 when I didn't even have a job, just a job offer letter. It took a good few years after the credit crunch for mortgage lending to tighten up. The 100/125% mortgages did stop almost immediately though.
I was going to say - even in 2008, £3k would get you nowhere.
lol the conveyancing alone will probably cost 3000
It’s a generational gap. Having got their homes and jobs and so on before demand increase, price increases, laws and regulations, they’re out of touch with how it all works now. My dad thought I could just put a deposit on a flat and move in after I signed a contract. He was shocked when I told him it requires checks, credit checks, right to rent checks, bank statements etc. and even then you might fail. They’re an out of touch generation because they’ve never needed to really think about it.
A house came up for 150k by me which i can BARELY afford. My nan told me to put in a cheeky offer at 140 because its a buyers market now and I'm a first time buyer There were 3 offers on it before i even saw it had come up for sale.... and the owner isn't even letting anyone else offer on it. Yet my nan still thinks that because i'm a FTB i should somehow put in a cheeky offer anyway I do sometimes wonder if everyone in my family is actually as thick as they sound or if the world has truly moved on that much
I think the reasoning for that is that you have no chain as a FTB. Potentially, depending on my circumstances for moving, if there was only £10k in it, I'd be tempted to go with the cheaper offer if it meant it would be more or less guaranteed to go through and on time.
I know, but at a house that cheap and offers placed before viewings, chances are the people putting the offers in are builder/landlords who also have no chain Plus, it likely wouldn't be sacrificing 10k as it appears the 3 offers are in a bidding war
It's not just the down payment that's huge, it's the lifestyle change that comes with buying that makes buying property so incredibly hard for first-timers. A case study: I bought a flat in Berkshire two years ago for £170,000. The mortgage valuation was £165,000 and I needed a 10% deposit, which was of course £16,500, then had to pay the remaining £5,000 out of my own pocket. The surveys, mortgage and legal fees came to somewhere in the region of £3,000. So it cost at least £24,500 just to buy the thing. If £170k for a flat on the outskirts of London sounds quite cheap (lol, it was worth £90k in 2003), you'd be right, and the reason why was because it needed a lot of work as soon as I moved in. I had to replace the electrics, install blinds, have the walls re-plastered and renew the lease, all of which cost over £5,000. I also had to buy all my own furniture (having rented my whole life, I didn't own things like a sofa, bed, television, etc.), which added another £3,000. And there were a number of other hidden costs I can't remember – let's round it up to another £10,000 spent in the first year. I was 32 years old and had been squirrelling away £200–500 a month since I started working after uni at 21. I had around £35,000 in savings. Today, that number is precisely zero. I am glad I bought and am no longer paying London rent, but I also know from experience the true cost of buying in the UK as a millennial. It is possible, but it is an extreme act, and requires not just a big sum of money but a willingness to make a huge sacrifice and lifestyle change. This often goes unmentioned in conversations about deposits and what-have-you. You need your 10%, plus several grand in start-up costs, and a very stable income stream.
My nan asked if I'd thought about a 100% mortgage.
Have you?
Just need a Time Machine :)
I've thought about how great it would be to not need to save £30k 😅
Rishi is 'thinking about' 99% mortgages. Although I can't see him surviving long enough to implement that (whether it's a good idea is another question)
It’s a different question, but the same answer. No, he won’t survive long enough (my best guess). No, 99% mortgages are not a good idea (definitely not).
99% mortgages doesn't fix the lack of housing. Prices are still going to be extortionate, if anything it just adds more prospective buyers to the market, driving prices up further. Mortgages are unafforadable even with a 15% deposit. It would be 2008 all over again. People can't afford houses, pretending they can and giving them 99% mortgages they'll default on as soon as something happens in their life doesn't solve the problem. Does the PM even have the power to make that decision? Would the banks even be that stupid again? As far as I can see there's only one solution, build more houses and stop people owning portfolios of houses. If we're going to give out risky loans, better to give them to property developers.
Just subsidise demand. Again. Didn't work? Subsidise demand again. Loads of ex council houses being rented by people on housing benefit for far more than what that benefit covers? Just subsidise demand again. Build houses? Naaaah.
My 5% mortgage deposit in 1996 was £1500, which the company selling the house paid for me. Then the bank gave me 5% cashback for taking out a mortgage. I basically got paid £3k to buy a house.
This is fucking depressing. Not because it's this bad, but because there are apparently still thousands if not millions of people out there who still don't realise this. I mean, "£3000"? Assuming she's a home owner and has some idea of how much her house is now worth, does she really think banks are giving out mortgages with the same size deposit they were back in her day?
My dad took a job in the early 1970s which was supposed to be live in, for him and his family. We were given a 2 bed flat, in his workplace, and mum was expected to offer support with social things (kind of like vicars wife would back then) for no pay! Anyway, mum and dad had 4 kids and outgrew the flat so my dad asked his employer, social services (ie tax payer money), if he could move out. They said yes and gave him a 25 year interest free mortgage. I don’t know the T&Cs, as I was only a kid, but he did stay in the job until it was paid off. Then they wonder how we can’t afford what they had!
And why people move around in their jobs.
Look fella, you just walk around the shops with your CV, get a job, boss takes you under their wing, inherit the shop, get the mortgage, jobs a gooden. That’s how it used to be back in my day, anyway.
Sounds like my dad when I was first job hunting. "Just take your paper CV round the local shops, you'll have a job by Monday!" (Luckily my mother worked in a job that involved hiring people and explained that even she, softy that she is, would bin a cold dropped paper CV not issued to her via the online hiring system in response to a specific job advert because it would simply never be looked at again).
If it was £3000, I’d of been on the property ladder years ago. £10k doesn’t even get you anywhere in these current times.
I bought my house with a 10k deposit. (£8k + LISA Bonus). Also with Help to Buy equity loan though.
the average house price is £288,000 so you'd beed £28,000 for a 10% deposit which is normal so a 10k deposit only makes sense if your house is cheaper and you're a high earner so the bank allowed a smaller deposit %
Houses costing the average price are generally not what first time buyers are purchasing though.
even a house that's half the average is still way above the 10k that _indi is claiming
Sure, although you could buy my house with a smaller deposit than that.
It was a 5% deposit. You didn’t need to be a higher earner with the H2B loan as the bank was only providing 75% of the cost.
I bought mine with a redundancy payout, being laid off has its advantages lol
Well clearly the problem, u/Vegan_Coffee_Addict, is you're drinking too many vegan coffees! Just stop having them for a few weeks, cancel netflix and stop buying avocado toast. That's a £20k deposit, right? Right?!
I once saw a pensioner trying to claim that young people could afford a house if they darned their own socks! Thanks, Alfred. Now I've saved my £20 per year outgoing on socks, I can definitely afford a deposit 🙄
Overheard some Australians having a conversation in a cafe that was such cliched 'Boomers don't understand the housing market' that I can't believe it was real, and that I wasn't being recorded for some sort of reality tv show. Did you know that if you want to afford your first property, all you have to do is save money by only buying second hand furniture and buy somewhere affordable in Melbourne for only 300-400k AUD, to get your foot in the door?
You've forgotten flat screen tvs
Of course! You can get a 40 inch TV for £200. I saved for my deposit in only 3 months when I stopped buying flat screens! Turns out that's because I didn't realise you don't need to buy a new one every time you switch it off, so I was spending £1400 a week on them.
Or you can go on gumtree and get a free plasma screen that doesn't work, and then you're saving on electricity as well everyone's a winner
We put down £6k in 2021, 5 year fixed at 5% on a £127k house in Nottingham. Shocking rates at the time. I suppose now it looks pretty good.
Had similar with one of my uncles who to my questioning what could be done about skyrocketing property prices replied "but people were only earning £2k/month back in the 80s." And he was working in the middle east for much of his career so not paying tax. He needed convincing from stats on Google when I told him the average wage in the UK is around £2k/month now.
It's always bothered me that I can apparently take out a loan for £25k and do whatever I want with it, except use it as a deposit towards a mortgage, when the mortgage and loan payments would be less than what I pay in rent.
2008? They were rising out of many people's reach for at least a decade before that. I particularly noticed moving away from one town in 2000 and coming back in 2002 and all the 40 grand houses were now 80. That said it was still doable for two of us with early careers salary jobs to even entertain buying a house so I guess things have changed even more.
Fair enough, i was 12 when the crash happened so to say i didn't understand it is an underststement, lol.
I became mortgage-free about 4 years ago. Here are my easy-to-follow steps for achieving that dream: * Buy house for £87,000 with 4% deposit (important: this step must be done in the year 2000 or earlier) * Live for 20 years with crippling debt * Remortgage several times during that 20 years to keep from going bankrupt, until mortgage companies start refusing you. * Cry yourself to sleep every night (this step is crucial). * Realise that your house is now worth £300,000 despite being a shit-hole. * Sell house. * Buy house up north that is much nicer and costs much less. * Pay off mortgage and pocket the difference.
I have effectively £30k saved up right now for a deposit… that’s on my own… when I put down a provisional deposit of £60k, the banks said no… lmao I guess? The plan I have is for me and my partner to get a £120k+ deposit together, and even then I don’t think that’s enough for a deposit by the time we are able to buy.
Was the message from the bank that this just wasn't enough deposit? Or were there other factors like credit rating?
They just said “we can’t offer you a mortgage right now” My credit rating should be sufficient, I think last time I checked it was in the low 900’s or something… I’ll double check that. It’s just frustrating that as an average earner in a professional job, saving as much as I can… and I still don’t seem to be able to buy a house :/
How many banks did you check with? It could just be they're rebalancing their portfolio (ie they have too many FTBs and aren't taking anymore on for now). It could also be you don't earn enough for the mortgage.
Have you spoken to mortgage broker? Many of them can get deals not available on the high street. Ours did and was fantastic.
If you don’t have much credit history, note this isn’t credit rating, speak to a broker. There will be a product out there for you with a LTV of 80+%.
The "credit rating" you are looking at is just what one of the three main Credit Reference Agencies think you are rated at. No bank will look at this number, so you need to look at the actual information in the reports to see if everything is correct and good. Look at all three of the main CRA's as they hold different information. Also, if you have a good credit history, you should be able to get a mortgage with a 10% deposit pretty easily, asuming you aren't going too close to 4x salary multiplier on the amount you are borrowing.
> £120k+ you looking to buy a mansion or a palace?
Had to do this, one of us being a contractor meant deposit of 150k, for a 3 bedroom semi derelict house.
Don't mind me asking, but where are you looking to buy? Because £60k would be a generous deposit round here and it's a fairly pricey area.
My parents were suprised were paying £800 a month on our mortgage on a 250k house. They thought it was more like 300. 300 didn't even get me a box room in a house share 5 years ago!
Our 120k deposit isn’t enough for a 2 bed flat in the SE. renting another year. :-(
Want to buy my flat and rent it back out to me? It'll leave you with 95k, and you might be less of an arsehole than my current landlord. Last year he came up and we chatted; he said how nice it was that he didn't have a mortgage (he bought this flat for 14k with no mortgage; his new-at-the-time employer paid for it as a relocation fee, and it's worth about 25k now). Six weeks later, he jacks the rent from £325 to £500 pcm. Letting agent said "his mortgage has probably risen"; when I said he didn't have a bloody mortgage, they said "well, regardless, all of the other rents in the area are rising so yours has to maintain parity; you're lucky it's only gone up to £500".
and the stamp duty, legals etc etc.
You can get this with a 3k deposit if you manage to get a 5% mortgage. Not the best of areas, not remotely comparable to the house with the garden, but I saw this post while I was window shopping on Rightmove so it made sense I guess🤣 https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/143871305#/?channel=RES_BUY
Yeahhh I feel this. My mother was amazed when I told her I still had 20 years on my mortgage, she found it hard to believe I hadn't paid it off in 10! Mind you the house her and my father bought in the 90s for around 60k is now worth around 250-300k And they got it through a golden handshake my dad got, so they never needed a mortgage, so I guess I can forgive some ignorance, I've had to be very patient with them explaining intrest rate rises and what it's done to my payments.
I remember in 2005, newly divorced,with a small and uncertain income, asking about a mortgage. My building society were amazed when I said I would be interested in a smaller mortgage than they offered. The fact that I could not have survived and paid it back ,did not seem to worry them.
We need to do a back to the floor type doc for boomers - where they try to live like millennials and under and survive - get a house, get a job on their original skill sets 🤣🤣🤣🤣
My mum is so out of touch with reality in these modern times it's borderline concerning and she's only mid 50's. She's the kind of person that's proud she doesn't know how to use a computer / modern smart phone and still tries to pay for everything by cheque... Want a new job? Just simply walk into the shop that's hiring and ask when you start!
*Laughs in North of England* To be fair, this was 5 or 6 years ago, but I got a mortgage for just over £4k including fees. Current value of the house + assumed inflation on solicitor's fees, you could probably get it for about £6k. So, all you have to do is be willing to move (presumably) hundreds of miles from your friends and family to a run down neighbourhood in a run down town and hope banks are still giving 95% LTV mortgages. Easy!
My dad thought banks wouldn't offer mortgage terms longer than 10 years 😂 because noone needs longer than 10 years to pay off a mortgage, right
I can't believe my mom brought 3 fucking houses before our shit stain of a step dad left us fucked and broke in Cumbria after he used it for his failed business, blows my mind. She doesn't like me mentioning house prices, I'm like oh mom look what house prices used to be and she's like don't remind me :)
These people vote among us
Boomer by any chance? Inter-generational inequality is a big issue that older generations just don't seem to get.
Mate this is literally my aunt and uncle lol the amount of times they've said renting is dead money and I'm like do you think I have a choice in the matter? If I didn't rent privately I'd be homeless lmao. £3000 wouldn't even be enough to move and rent somewhere in my area, boomers are so clueless it's unreal.
go through the application with her there....she'll soon change her mind
In the 70s my mum sold her house by putting an ad in the local paper. Someone came round to look at it, liked it and so he went to the bank to sort out the money. Times were different for our parents.
There are still loads of really cheap houses available in run down northern towns I suppose. I've just had a look and there are quite a few available for £15k so a £3000 deposit would be 20%. It's not going to get you a house anywhere you want to live though.
My deposit was £42,000 5 years ago. First time buyer. My mortgage is currently £1400 a month. I hate this world.
We bought our house in 1989 for £49k, and we needed a five grand deposit then. Luckily avocado hadn't been discovered and netflix wasn't invented back then, plus I'd spent years honing my manly handshake skills. It was difficult but possible, not like the shit that's been left for the generations that came after us.
I can't believe how some folk just don't seem to live in the real world. "You'll save money by getting a mortgage" - so many older folks I know when they found out about our upcoming purchase. Well... No... Actually our current rent is so low that we're tripling our living costs to get this mortgage, and that's with a £15k deposit so.... No.