A First Time Buyer Reports
It was with a great sense of trepidation that my partner and I decided to, at last, start looking for our first home. My partner, always the more finically acute, was wary of paying for a property that had an inflated value due to the continued rise of house prices.
According to The Council of Mortgage lenders (CML) £28.6bn was lent by banks, and building societies during the month of December, a sharp decrease from November high of £33.2bn, indicating that hopeful home owners are finding it harder to get onto the housing ladder.
Many first time buyers find themselves saving for several years (at least five – six) whilst living with parents. We had been renting since 2003; my partner had been studying full-time whilst I was working. We had been unable to save a decent amount for a deposit, due to paying rent, paying off debts and the general cost of living, but we could afford to pay the various and expensive set up fees (arrangement fees, application fees, valuation fees, solicitors fees etc) needed to purchase a property.
A third of all first-time buyers look to pay around £95,000 to £145,000 for their first property – a recommended 10% deposit would be £9,500 – £14,500 of the price, an almost unreachable prospect for many. Indeed, 15% of first time buyers, us included, had no money saved at all and a quarter admitted that their finances wouldn’t stretch to furnishings when they did eventually buy. One in five new buyers ask parents for help with a deposit, but more than one in five, like us, needed a 100% mortgage product.
We didn’t want to stretch our finances any more than we really needed to. We were looking to buy somewhere in Bury St Edmunds were my partner was going to start a new job. House prices in the area were above the amount we could afford (around £140,000) and we’d begun to look further a field, starting with a five, then ten and finally a fifteen mile radius. Although we did find affordable property in Bury St Edmunds and within a five mile radius it would have meant compromising by buying a property, in what some would term as ‘sink estates’ (generally known as council estates) and which would surely devalue in price once house prices started to stagnate or even fall. So, the lack of choice for decent properties led us to look for smaller and increasingly more rural properties – we had to live with the fact that we would have a forty-five minute or so journey to work.
The next step was to find a mortgage lender. The best place we discovered to find and compare mortgages was on the internet. Many sites have mortgage price comparisons, some comparing thousands of mortgages – quite a choice! Eventually, after some searching on the site we were able to find a mortgage that suited us - twenty five years repayments with a fixed interest for two years.
After several weeks of searching we found a property, admittedly some distance from where we’d initially liked to have been and also a little smaller than we’d hoped, but unlike some of the houses we’d seen it has potential and, due to it’s location, a good chance of getting a profit when we decide to move on.
According to The Council of Mortgage lenders (CML) £28.6bn was lent by banks, and building societies during the month of December, a sharp decrease from November high of £33.2bn, indicating that hopeful home owners are finding it harder to get onto the housing ladder.
Many first time buyers find themselves saving for several years (at least five – six) whilst living with parents. We had been renting since 2003; my partner had been studying full-time whilst I was working. We had been unable to save a decent amount for a deposit, due to paying rent, paying off debts and the general cost of living, but we could afford to pay the various and expensive set up fees (arrangement fees, application fees, valuation fees, solicitors fees etc) needed to purchase a property.
A third of all first-time buyers look to pay around £95,000 to £145,000 for their first property – a recommended 10% deposit would be £9,500 – £14,500 of the price, an almost unreachable prospect for many. Indeed, 15% of first time buyers, us included, had no money saved at all and a quarter admitted that their finances wouldn’t stretch to furnishings when they did eventually buy. One in five new buyers ask parents for help with a deposit, but more than one in five, like us, needed a 100% mortgage product.
We didn’t want to stretch our finances any more than we really needed to. We were looking to buy somewhere in Bury St Edmunds were my partner was going to start a new job. House prices in the area were above the amount we could afford (around £140,000) and we’d begun to look further a field, starting with a five, then ten and finally a fifteen mile radius. Although we did find affordable property in Bury St Edmunds and within a five mile radius it would have meant compromising by buying a property, in what some would term as ‘sink estates’ (generally known as council estates) and which would surely devalue in price once house prices started to stagnate or even fall. So, the lack of choice for decent properties led us to look for smaller and increasingly more rural properties – we had to live with the fact that we would have a forty-five minute or so journey to work.
The next step was to find a mortgage lender. The best place we discovered to find and compare mortgages was on the internet. Many sites have mortgage price comparisons, some comparing thousands of mortgages – quite a choice! Eventually, after some searching on the site we were able to find a mortgage that suited us - twenty five years repayments with a fixed interest for two years.
After several weeks of searching we found a property, admittedly some distance from where we’d initially liked to have been and also a little smaller than we’d hoped, but unlike some of the houses we’d seen it has potential and, due to it’s location, a good chance of getting a profit when we decide to move on.
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Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_147464_33.html
Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_147464_33.html
Labels: real estate
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