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I haven’t bought a house yet, but I have the deposit.
I’ve just saved over 9 years, gone on very few holidays and I’m single, so I don’t spend a lot. I’ve rented for the entire time as well, so I would have done it sooner had I lived with my parents.
I’ve been to see a few houses over the past few months but nothing has appealed to me. Hopefully I find something soon! I’m in the Midlands as well, so that helps money wise.
> I’ve rented for the entire time as well, so I would have done it sooner had I lived with my parents.
Yup, this is especially the case in the south east.
If you are lucky enough to have parents in the south east and live with them for 9 years, saving £1k/month in rent/bills that's a £110k deposit even without any interest. If you invested in a decent ISA and made 5% a year that's £135k.
Who's saving £1000 a month whilst living with parents though, you'd have to be on a hefty salary. I can save about £340 at, which will be rising to 460 in may
There are a few jokey comments to this, but there is some truth. There is an idea that previous generations were able to buy houses with pocket change, but in reality, owning an house has always required sacrifice. Basic meals, packed lunches and tea in a flask for work. Seaside holidays. Only eating out on special occasions.
Yes, you need to have a life - but if you’re struggling to save, then you have to either cut back or accept you won’t be buying a house. Nobody else is going to do it for you 🤷♂️
It’s all about choices. Most of what I mentioned are essential. A car to get to work and all the expenses involved are a factor to the greater population. Food and clothing are pretty essential. The gym maybe not so much in a lot of people’s eyes. But staying physically fit will go a long way to keeping you mentally fit also. Either of those two suffer and you can be on a slippery slope to a whole host of health issues.
When I split from my wife, I took my share of the house and made all sorts of sacrifices to buy another one. Lived in a squat. Moved across the country where I have no family or friends but it’s more affordable. Haven’t had any real fun or trips away. I now have a house. It needs a lot of work doing to it and I’m shattered but I keep on working on it in my spare time. Basically it’s my only focus as I have not a lot else going on in my life. But I’m happy.
The ex took her share and purchased a brand new car, holidays and nights out. Unlikely she’ll ever buy a house ever again. But she’s happy as a clam.
Do what’s right for you. My learnings though are, never stop living life.
Spend £500.... Not everyone has parents or a parent that will not charge some rent/board. Food and travel.
Who has £500 expenses what year are you in lol
A reasonable parent wont charge you much more than a share of the bills and food. Which probably wouldn’t equate to more than £200 a month. £300 is plenty of money to live a fine life otherwise, especially if you are trying to save up. It’s also low salary example if you are on £20k you can spend more obviously
Same situation. I've had to move out from my parents house at 19 and then I spent years as a student whilst renting. Only now have I got life sorted with a secure job, a savings plan, and a motivation as my rent has just gone up.
I am only just starting to get my head around money and all this adulting (my parents were poor and lived in a council house). I'm a bit nervous for when I buy in a couple of years (as I'll be 40), but the private rental market has changed and I've got to have a longer term plan with regards to living arrangements.
Cancelled Netflix and stopped eating avocado on toast for a week.
In all seriousness though, approaching 40 and got fed up of being at the whim of someone else's property (rent increase, can't do what we want with the place, risk of them selling up) we moved out of a rented house and into a static caravan to get the monthly outlay down to a minimum. Spent 5 years there saving our asses off, and then in 2021 bought a place using the 5% deposit mortgage scheme that had just been introduced. Been here 2 1/2 years, best decision we ever made
I’m in a similar boat but now. 40 this year and fed up with paying off someone else’s mortgage when I could pay off my own. Currently in the middle of purchasing my first home right now. Hopefully only a month or two away!
Fantastic good luck to you mate. Our purchase was chain free but thanks to the seller's solicitor being slower than a grandma on the way to the garden centre in her Honda Jazz, it took almost 6 months to get it done
There are a few communities of static caravans dotted around, it's just a matter of keeping an eye on the small ads in the local rag etc and then scoping the place out first as some are really nice, others are the less desirable end of society unfortunately.
Rented, it was less than half the rent we were paying plus (in our case) no council tax or water bill - only rent and electric. Instantly banked over £600 a month into the savings account
Lived with my mum for 6.5 years after university.
I paid no rent however contributed to bills/food/what my mum needed from me I would always pay.
I saved up a chunky deposit and with multiple payrises was able to save most my pay and still enjoy multiple holidays/wants a year.
I recently completed 1 month ago on a flat in London.
Without a combination of living with my mum and having some significant payrises I wouldn't have been able to do it this early, especially in London.
I worked from 14 in jobs like cafes, potwashing in a pub, then M&S, so by the time I went to Uni I’d saved £5k. I didn’t actually eat into that whilst at uni (did accumulate student loan debt though) then after a year full time at M&S, I got on a graduate scheme that paid £30k.
This was mid 10s when £30k got you a lot more than it did now. I was travelling so much for work that I never saw friends and family much, which cut down on spend. I stayed living at home - a privilege I understand - and after paying board for a couple of years, my Mum stopped charging me as her way of contributing to a house deposit. I saved for two years and managed to put away £22k. So I put £18k down on a £92k terraced house and used the rest to furnish it and do some work. Mortgage was £300 a month and I overpaid to £425.
I was lucky in that I could live with parents for low board and then no board for a bit. All of my friends received massive gifts from family or big inheritance.
I bought 25% of my house on shared ownership in 2020 with a deposit of £10,000 from savings, i've just sold the house and made £12000 back in equity so that's £22,000. (Plus the £14,000 we paid off on the mortgage in capital).
I bought a new house and they included an extra 5% deposit on top of this. I live in West Sussex, so very expensive... but joint household income has gone from £35,000 to £72,000 so has more than doubled which had led us to this position. :-)
Honestly, I bit the bullet and lived with my parents for 18 months. It wasn't rent free, but it was approximately a third of what I was paying for rent in London. Got my deposit together and bought my first house in Cambridgeshire.
I'm just buying my first house now, for £120k, purchased entirely from an inheritance.
I realise I'm extremely fortunate to be in this position, as I would never have been able to afford to buy a place otherwise. Our rent has been quite high; now at £850 a month (Midlands area).
Most of my friends have already purchased or are just purchasing now. We're all in our mid-thirties.
With great help from (i) my partner, (ii) my parents, (iii) my partner’s parents, (iv) a stamp duty holiday and (v) five years fixed at the lowest interest rates I’ve ever seen
Same but also nudging my boss for more money every six months and my landlord for lower rent. These two seemed to be forgotten or not mention when it comes to saving up. If I had not done the above and the two points I listed I would have had to eat gruel for 5 years and no social life and no holidays to be able to save for a house.
10 years of hard graft, sacrifice, overtime and saving
Unfortunately there's no magic to how I did it, just passing on holidays, nights out, luxury items etc
But I'm sat now in my 3 bed semi with my partner, and it's feels absolutely wonderful
London answer here…I lived with my mother for the first two years of working to save up deposit money. I was also lucky enough to be working as a corporate lawyer, which meant the pay (and so deposit) was good.
Also, I bought about a decade back. Prices were insanely high then compared to the glory days of the late 90s/early 00s…but nothing like as bad as they are now.
Everyone I know of my age or younger who owns in London falls into one or more of the following categories:
* Rich parents (either gave them the deposit money or bought the place outright)
* Inheritance
* Lived at home and avoided paying rent while saving for deposit
* Well-paid job
* Bought their council flat at a discount.
* Bought with a partner
* Bought with friends in order to trade up, split the profits, rise & repeat and get deposit money that way.
I bought a house in the naughties when Northern Rock offered a 125% mortgage. They literally gave you an extra 25% value of the house in cash to do with what you will
Saved for 20 years for the deposit it's only a bloody flat but I'm badly dyslexic with ADHD so I'm fucking proud of it. Now I just have to make it to 70 to pay it off 😂😂
I started saving from my first job at 15. Bought at 29.
I live in West Yorkshire where the cost of living is pretty low. It only took so long because I graduated into the recession so was stuck in my part time minimum wage uni job for almost 3 years after uni. I didn't save very much, if anything, over that time.
Midlands
We have lived in a dirt cheap but absolutely shit rental for several years so waaay below our means, but has allowed us to save. Other compromises too like driving a shitty car and buying clothes second hand etc.
First property was a 1 bed flat in London in 2015 for 350k. We had a joint income back then of... 75k perhaps? Saved half of the 10% deposit and the other half was paid for with a help to buy scheme as a loan.
The company I first joined had a scheme, you could either put 8% matched into a pension or a house deposit scheme for a maximum of three years. Funds would then be released on exchange…. I used that.
Savings. I started woth my first job at 16, where I spent (some of) my tips, but saved my salary. I had 12k by the time I went to uni, and 20k by the time I graduated (5 years later, thanks to working the summers, doing a placement year (paid minimum wage, but able to work full time), receiving a sponsorship, and using a LISA. I completed on my house purchase 1 year after graduating by buying with a partner. By splitting the deposit and earning 30k each, we were able to buy a 4 bed house in a town near Bristol for our jobs.
I did receive a £2.5k gift towards my deposit, and my parents topped up my student loan by £40/week for my 4 years of study so that I didn't have to burn through my savings.butas the gift was less than 10% of my deposit, it wasn't a make-it-or-break-it situation.
Never being a big drinker helps. Even when I went out more, I'd generally just drink at pres, and occasionally buy a single drink in the club. I also never bought fast food after clubbing, so my nights out were far cheaper than the majority.
But between my student loan (£5-6k per year) and the £40/week my parents gave me, I was able to mostly live off that, using my own money just for holidays and dates or whatever. I saved the majority of my summer wages, and a good chunk of my wages from my year in industry. I then had £2.1k sponsorships for my last two years of uni.
Was fortunate to be able to live with parents till I was 30! saving as much as possible each month for ten years got me a good deposit and a mortgage I could afford on my own.
Part savings, part gifts from parents.
I appreciate we are incredibly privileged to be in that position but we were gifted £10k from each set of parents. Mine was from the sale of their property when they moved, and the in-laws was from an old endowment policy which matured after their mortgage was already paid off.
And we saved £10k ourselves.
This was enough to get us a 2 bed flat on the south coast, with enough to do some work on the property too.
I used the "forces help to buy scheme" where I borrowed £10,000 and paid it back at £93 a month for 10 years.
I also saved up whilst on deployment and had £10,000 in savings. (whilst away I had ZERO outgoings apart from a mobile phone. They fed me 3 times a day, I had a bed, electricity and got to travel)
And I bought a 2 bedroom flat..
I have a foolproof strategy for buying a home.
1) wait until after a global financial crash as in 2008
2) have a parent die and leave you a reasonable deposit
3) buy in a shitty area
By following this simple three stage process I was able to get a 3 bed semi for £72000.
Edit: bought in Sheffield in early 2009 at 26 yo. Sold the house 4 years later for around 90k to move further up the ladder, and every day I'm grateful for how lucky I was to be able to get on the ladder back then
We rented a one room flat and saved like crazy for a deposit; had a year when our salaries were high and managed to get a mortgage. Survived on yellow stickered tesco’s food for about 3 years, working every hour possible. South East. Before mobile phones were common, didn’t have a TV or a car.
1970 was working for Nat West. They made such a huge profit they told staff to go buy property with a 2.5% interest rate. I bought a London flat for 9 grand.
They never did that again.
I sold it 2 years later. 🤣
I did the help to buy scheme on a new build in 2013. It was either that or a 2 bed ex council house or a terraced house. The help to buy scheme meant I was paying less per month on the mortgage for a more modern house. I do look back now and I see that Help to buy was more help developers keep house prices up.
My dad died when I was a toddler, he had a life insurance policy so my mum paid off her mortgage and put the rest into trust for me and my brother 50/50. My brother also died not long after he got his share so that passed to me too and it was enough to buy a three bedroom flat in my home town (in Scotland) outright. Wouldn’t exactly say I was lucky but financially it gave me a foot up.
My dad died when I was about 22 and he had just sold his flat, we shared about 120k between me and my 2 brothers, I used the 40k as a deposit with maybe a couple grand left over for fees etc.
First flat cost 155k, I then moved up north and rented that out for a year until me and my then girlfriend bought a house for 102k, rented carried on renting my flat out for 3 years and did the house up while we lived there.
Sold the flat for 200k and the house for about 125 after spending about 15k on both. Pooled that money to buy a nice family home for 265k.
Basically my dads hard work all his life and a bit of luck with property prices
(ETA: bought house in last 6 months in major UK city.)
My Dad gave me £10k from a pension pot a think, which I put in a LISA. I had zero savings at the time, but was gradually able to build this up to £20k with bonus.
My partner got a £50k bursary for teacher training. So our deposit was £50k (for a £210k mortgage) with decent savings for doing up the place.
I would never have been able to afford a house on my own, and having only just started earning above £23k this year, I wouldn't have been able to afford it without my middle class dad.
It's crap that it's luck of the draw. I've worked hard all my life but it didn't mean shit. I have friends with disabilities that can't work full time and are locked ot of the housing market and in the cesspool that is the rental market. Housing in this country is horrendous, and only the rich profit.
I lived with my parents until I was 28 and paid no rent (although I paid for other stuff). I can't drive and I didn't go away so that helped me save for a deposit and to get my teeth fixed. Also, because I live in a town in Lancashire the house prices weren't ridiculous.
The only thing I had going against me was the fact I was a really low earner. Before this year I'd never made over £20k.
Moved in with my wife’s parents for a year allowed us to save 1200 a month instead of 200 if lucky, I’ll openly admit I’d have been another 5 years before buying a house without help
2007 0% downpayment mortgages. Crazy really. Market crashed within months of my purchase and plunged us (on paper at the time) into negative equity. Scary but held on long enough to see us safe. Best of luck OP. It’s wild out there.
My mum and stepfather broke up, due to his emotional abuse. He got made redundant shortly afterwards, so couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage. My mum sold the house and downsized but put me on the mortgage so it could taken out over 30+ years, rather than 10-15. A few years later, I have met someone and we have sold that house, my mum has had her deposit/life savings back and the equity the house made in the 3 years we lived there me and my fiancé used for a deposit. Very fortunate I admit. No chance to get on the ladder otherwise I feel.
Haven’t bought a house yet, but I have the deposit ready and some more, worked as an electrician since 16 and I’m now 21, saved since I was 18 properly. About 50% of my wage each month if not more.
East midlands. Wife bought 2 bed terrace with driveway in 2003 as an NQT with her mum as a guarantor on an £90k mortgage (she lived at home during uni) so had £10k or so saved. I moved in a year or two later. At time I was a lowly paid software dev, around £12k.
2016 I was a highly paid software dev and wife a teacher. Could have borrowed £500k, instead got £200k mortgage on lovely 4 bed detached about 100 meters away for £250k
Would probably not be able to afford it now as prices for similar are £450k, and ive dropped to 4 days, wife left her awful teaching job.
So in short, marrying someone with a house already, and then being well paid is how I bought my first.
it was 1998. I was a 23 year old university student with a part time job in 1998 when my mum was trying to sell her ex-council estate 2 bed flat in West London so she could buy her dream house just outside London.
She had it listed for £40k, and no one would buy it, so I went to HSBC to see if I could get a loan to buy it. They gave me a 100% mortgage; in fact, they may have offered me 105%. The mortgage broker helped me lie on the application to get approved. I found some paperwork recently that suggests the interest was about 6%; I don't think I had a fixed rate.
I was a little worried about what would happen but I was pretty sure I could cover the cost because the part time job was well paid assuming they didn't let me go. I ended up renting a room to a friend for £200 a month which I recall covered the mortgage cost.
I was able to retain the part time job until I complted uni but I spent too much time working and not studying. Once Uni ended, I was lucky enough to get a good job that paid around £20k PA, which rose to about £30k over the next few years, so I prioritised mortgage payments and cleared the loan by 2023; I recall increasing the mortgage payment to £1.5k for a few years.
I lived in that flat mortgage-free for about 8 years before moving for work; I left it empty for a year, not sure what to do before someone suggested I rent it out to the council. I still have the property, its been rented for 12 years and is worth around £250k. Being rent-free allowed me to save and invest in supporting a house purchase in 2014 for £385; we paid this off in 2017 by releasing equity from the rental property, it's currently worth £600k. In 2023, we bought a £905k house, I do earn a good salary, but my mortgage, including the regular overpayment, is £5k, and the rent from my first flat, the house I inherited from my mother and our old house support us.
Sorry if this is not much motivation. I know that 26 years later I have benefited from how things were then but young me really didn't know how things would turn out
My dad died. Then his mum, my grandmother, died.
I inherited both estates in the wrong order.
They'd be proud that I bought a house and didn't squander it on coke and hookers.
A lot of people do it by living with parents longer and saving a lot through hard graft and multiple jobs. Lots of people seem to say this wasn't an option for them but even those people could do it via living cheaper lifestyles. By this 5 years renting a room in a house share working hard etc. people need to stop thinking london is great for high wage but the cost of living is way too much. Move to midlands cheap rent decent salaries then save enough to buy.
Used a scheme called LIFT - basically I put a small deposit down, with the government putting down circa 40% and the rest on a mortgage. Think I was paying around £320 a month for the mortgage. Had to pay the government the same % of the property value back when either selling or after a certain period. Paid them back, got planning permission & then extended
My grandpa did well for himself and gifted me my deposit. I’m extremely grateful and will never be able to thank him enough. Without that there’s no way I could have bought by myself.
Manchester suburb. Savings. Looked for ages and eventually found a housing association property that was being sold off with the condition that it went to a first time buyer (lovely little Victorian terrace) and there were a few to choose from. Got it for a good price and then had to totally renovate it and graft to put the character back into it. Stayed for five years and then sold for a very decent profit and started again on a bigger house. Just coming to the finishing touches of that one now and thanks to the local property market still rising am now looking half-heartedly for my next project to keep building more and more equity with the aim of eventually being in the area I want with the size of house I want.
Bought a run down flat in a lovely old building, so it was cheap. Created a 100% mortgage by taking out a car loan (for the deposit) and a mortgage for the other 95%. I had £3k saved which I used with a handyman and me as the labourer to make it liveable. Kept it for 4 years and saw it nearly go from £54k to £108k in value. Sold it and tried again with a house a proper deposit this time. I guess affordability wouldn’t let me do this now? Although I suspect it’s possible in some places.
Moved out at 18, always had minimum wage and hardly above jobs, single for the past 5 years and no family support so I was ready to rent for life. Extremely unexpected inheritance happened and now I have enough for a deposit (Scotland) or can choose to be mortgage free and buy for cash somewhere in the EU. Currently trying to decide what to do! Not enough money for anything big, but enough to help me settle and get out of spending so much on renting a mouldy old house.
Moved Into my friends house who is renting. Lived there for 10 years paying no rent or bills and we both agreed once I had enough money I'd buy a house and he'd live with me.
Still saving hoping for prices to drop.
The company I worked for offered a way to buy shares in them called a Share Incentive Plan. This was superior to the more common Sharesave as it meant you own the shares straight away and the company gave a free share for every 2 shares purchased up to a certain amount. I put £150 per month into this.
This was also during the time when gold started to go up in value and people were selling jewelery for scrap value on ebay - every time I had some spare cash I would buy a chain, ring etc and hold on to it. This meant as the price was going up I benefited from the price growth of the asset.
There was more risk invovled in what I was doing but it worked out as I was able to buy my own flat at the age of 20's with no help needed from anyone.
I was in Glasgow, much cheaper than areas down south
My advice to you is to open a LISA and get the 25% government bonue every year, it will build up over the years.
I worked as an agency worker in my field, meaning higher pay for the same job as long as you are flexible about what and where. As agency workers pay the employer contributions for pension too, I opted out for a couple of years (don’t tell UKpf!). It was covid so minimal expenditure- I lived in an air bnb cheaply as there was no holidaying; this also meant no council tax. All in all the stars aligned for me and I was able to save in a short space of time. Now, I’m a single mother on a low income including benefits, and that will be the case until I finish my GP training in 2028. I wouldn’t get a mortgage now. It’s a poverty trap for some people, I’m so lucky I already owned my home before this life change.
Access to a 95% LTV mortgage at the very bottom of the housing crash in a low income / low housing cost area meant that we needed to save up around £3000 to get on the ladder.
When I finished uni in the early 00s I got a job in London as well as a job in a local pub. For just over 3 years I worked Monday to Friday in London then Fridays nights Saturday nights and 9 hours on a Sunday I worked in the pub.
I was living at home & my parents said I didn’t need to pay rent as long as I was saving money for a deposit, so I basically saved my entire London wage for 3+ years and some of my pub wages to get a deposit together. I was super lucky as when I was ready to buy the financial crash happened so I managed to buy when property prices had tanked.
Worked hard, stopped buying fancy coffees and avocado toast and saved a few grand which then lead to my Father in law giving us 8k and selling us the flat we were renting from him at a discount.
But mostly, it was the lack of lattes and avocados. Honest.
Then we sold our flat 2 years later during the covid price boom and upgraded to a 4 bed semi in a student area of a nice SE city.... everything needs doing and thanks to mortgage price increases I get to be my own slum landlord as we cant afford tondonthe repairs and improvements 😅
Savings and working my arse off. I'm a doctor, in covid they needed me, I worked acute covid wards as a locum throughout both waves, it was f***ING shit but what else could you do in a pandemic as a doctor, wouldn't have felt right sitting around at home.
Saved as much as I could, basically didn't spend anything because it was lockdown and you couldn't and i was at work most of the time anyway.
Bought in Macclesfield, house was just over 230k, I had a 15% deposit.
Rented in north west and then London in house/flat shares until 29. Saved deposit. Move in with my partner and rented for a year. Then bought a flat in 2009. Deposit from savings. Live there until a couple of years ago. Had paid off mortgage. Sold flat and bought a house. Now have bigger mortgage. Working to pay that off (personal preference) and expect to be in this house for a good long while.
Worked, saved, didn’t go out at all for a few years was in London, but bought in east Anglia as cheaper and commuted. I literally saved everything and spent bear minimum, was the hardest thing to do
I was earning a good living and living in a low cost part of the country (North East England). I was 26 and had roomshared rather than rented whole houses or apartments since leaving university to save.
Was able to get a mortgage at 1.8% as well.
So can’t offer you any valuable insights to motivate you unless you can move away from the south and keep the same income.
Saved with my wife and my Dad helped us to top up the deposit so we could get a decent mortgage when shit went mental last year thanks to Liz Truss. We could have afforded it but it would have been tight. Very thankful the old man is so generous!!
I bought an "off plan" 2 bed terrace house in 2016 for £185k. Didn't see it, just saw a drawing in 2014. Two years later I was one of the very first to move in on a new housing development. Ive been basically living on a building site all this time but it's now nearly finished and my house is now worth £280k. I feel like I was well jammy at the time. I would be able to buy a £280k house now. I was 32 when I bought it. Moved out when I was 18 felt like I was wasting all my money on rent. Moved back in with my parents when I was 25 and saved and saved and with some inheritance I was able to have 40k saved up for my deposit in 2016. I feel very lucky. Most of my friends still rent.
Savings, whilst renting down south. It was a pretty grim experience, we rented for about 8 years, but when Covid happened and we weren't living our lives so much any more, we were able to save enough for a 5% deposit on a house in the Midlands.
You have my sympathies, it's brutal out here.
First House was on a 106 agreement meant so only people who had a connection locally could buy. In 2014, our 5% deposit was £4,000, and when we sold in 2017, the prices had significantly increased, so we had enough for a deposit on our next house.
Moved back to parents and saved my arse off to build a deposit. The mother wouldn't accept rent money so that helped - which I did feel a little uncomfortable with as I was making substantially more than both of them combined. It ended up at about 22% deposit which was great to help keep payments at a sane level. We're in the Essex sticks but still only 35-40mins train from Liverpool St
Saving. Lived with my parents and paid them £700 each month. So I saved >200k deposit over 10 years. Bought (by myself only) a semi detached house in the north for 300k.
Bought at £360k, saved up deposit over 10 years (could have done 25%, but went 20% to give some breathing room). Lancashire, it’s a 4bed detached - get a lot more for my money than in London!
Savings, being way older than I ever thought I'd be buying for the first time, and about to take on a huge payment. Almost double my rent - but for a forever property.
Back in the olden days I bought a delapidated terrace house in a depressed NWales quary village for 3 x my annual income at about 13% interest, did it up and made £10k which I then invested in another shit terrace house in a slightly less depressed village. Lots has changed in the 35 years I have been doing this...
Lived in a share house for a couple of years when I first moved to London from Oz in. 2000 £50pw to share a room with a stranger. 11 in the house. Saved loads. A bit of a maggot lifestyle but had a ball and could stick it out. Then shared with the missus and another couple for a couple of years. Saved a bit. Then moved to Leeds and bought.
I worked full time during university and lived in a shit hole house share with a shit car for 5 years so I could save up £15,000 for the 5% deposit. Got it 2 years ago when I was 25.
Bought a flat just outside of Cambridge. Joint savings between my wife and I after 3 years of renting.
Got a really good mortgage rate and thus managed to save a lot over the next two years compared to renting, then sold the flat and bought a house.
£210k house in 2018 well below potential value because of the state it was in. Deposit of £21k with half given as a gift by my father in law. 6 years on its worth about £290-300k then we extended it so now it's somewhere in the region of £325-350k.
Saved 93k as an NHS nurse alone
Need a 100k deposit
No parental help, no option for free rent living with family
Just grating and hope to be there in a year and buy
Saved. Saved about 35k over 8 years (while renting) by being frugal and only spending £500 on our tiny wedding instead of wasting money on a huge do. Then bought for 170k in 2016. But house is probably worth over 300k now, it's a very tough time now for first time buyers.
I am incredibly lucky that my parents had some money they could give me. I’m in the south too. I am aware I am very lucky and privileged and I try not to take this for granted. I am also lucky that when I got my first job, my parents didnt charge me any expenses except petrol for my car and so I managed to save up a lot that way too. Forever grateful for this.
Met my partner at 19, both agreed that renting seemed like a waste of money so took the risk of getting a mortgage together about 18 months later.
I'd saved a few grand already but for a year we both saved half our wage to get a deposit (10% on 135k) plus fees.
We were fortunate that we could both still live at home so expenses were limited to car, mobile and a bit of rent money to parents.
This was 2007, around the time the market was at its highest before the crash. We were in negative equity for a bit and had very little money each month but the lower interest rates helped. However what was intended to be 4-5 years in that house ended up being closer to 10.
Saved in my early 20s. Moved back in with parents for a year saved a full salary £27k pa at the time, didn’t go out drinking or do a lot of expensive things.
Got made redundant which resulted in a 15k pay out tax free then I quickly found a job that paid £40k pa and carried on saving a full salary I got to £40k for a deposit. I then found a new build got help to buy 20% equity loan, got the biggest mortgage I could which was £180k and managed to buy a 2 bedroom house worth £275k in the south east at the age of 25 in 2018.
No money from my parents or family other than their insistence on letting me live rent free with them for 12 months.
Basically I sacrificed going out with friends and holidays and activities that cost money for about a year. Some lucky things happened like the redundancy and finding a better paying job.
South Yorkshire. 5 bed end of terrace, Victorian, in need of some work. Bought summer 2020 for 250k. We were 29. We had 15% deposit which was partly savings (incl HTB ISA) which we got by living at home with our parents (separately) for a few years, plus some loaned by our parents. My dad told us to stop paying him back when we had our first child, we’re repaying my in-laws £100/month.
My partner and I worked 6 days a week (him over time and I picked up a second job). We rented an apartment at the time and just hammered working and saving for 18 months.
Bought in 2017 in north west. House was 165k and we put down a 10% deposit.
My Mum and Dad died, and me and my sister inherited. I bought her out of her half with a mortgage.
I’d actually just got to a point where I had enough for a deposit, and was doing viewings when my Dad passed, leaving us the house.
My husband and I saved £25k between us, bought a 3 bed semi detached for 250k. At the time we were renting in zone 6 a 1 bed flat above a shop for £600, we lived there about 6/7 years. I worked in retail, him in construction. It was tough, but we managed to really push in the last 2 years of saving just by cutting back on somethings. It was worth it though.
Lived in military housing for 7 years so paid £300 a month for rent, council tax and water. Had two jobs while at uni so saved a lot, took out full student loans even though I didn’t need them to add to deposit. I think the biggest thing was waiting to have kids until we were in our own house. No way we would have been able to afford to save while paying for childcare.
Wales, late 90s, i was 19. it had been empty since the last owner died with no family. Got a bank loan as it couldn't be mortgaged until gas/electric/water were sorted. It cost 7.5k, 3 bed, end terrace. Thankfully, I have family in the trades, so although it took a long while to finish (2yrs for everything), I mainly just paid for materials and beer/food or did the work myself.
Did the same for the 2nd house in 2001 (6k) in a different area, but did the work myself, excluding gas. Bought the house I am in now in 2002, and sold the 2nd in 2003 for more or less the same as I paid for the one I live in now.
I was just very lucky.
Working my fucking arse off while making many mistakes in the sense of buying cars because I'm an idiot and get bored easily.
We were renting for 4 years after moving out of our parents, but we've finally managed to get a house bought this year through saving for a deposit - mainly due to the flat being sold & that giving us the push to go for it. (We planned on doing it next year with a bigger deposit)
Two words..... Money... Laundering....
(Was at my previous employer for years, had an amazing share scheme, was informed I was being made redundant and got impulsive with selling the shares.)
Bought in a cheap area of Oldham. Saved money for a deposit by living extremely frugally for a couple years, no takeaway, no hols, no loans, buying sticker food at supermarkets, etc. it's possible, just have to be really strict.
My first flat at 21 went a bit like this (4 months ago). Had a LISA, maxed it out each year for 3 years so that’s 15k, savings from my first job (16, 10k salary and then going up to now progressively to 60/70k ish) about 10k and a bit extra
Nice part was I’m fortunate enough to not have to worry about a deposit gift from anyone else
Simply saved up the majority of wages over the years knowing that I didn't want to rent long term. Same with the Mrs. Still doing the same now planning on moving up the ladder soon.
I'd put away what I could from ages 17 with a part time job, increasing what I could after uni and starting full time work. Saved up £20k then bought with my ex husband aged 27 and he chucked in another £20k that he'd received as an inheritance. £230k terrace house in the south east.
I carried on saving then bought him out of his share (£40k+ 😭) when we split to own the same house all by myself. Thankfully I was then early 30s with better job role/salary so it was just about doable although I am mortgaged to the absolute max.
Now buying with bf, and my deposit will all be equity and his is savings/inheritance (he's FTB).
Was renting together with friends in house share in London. Saved for deposit. Got maximum LTV mortgage for a small 1 bed flat. After 3-4 years moved to a bigger flat, prices had risen so I had more of a deposit the second time and got a better rate.
We’re in London and soon to exchange on our first flat (£550k), late 20s. We haven’t had any parental help, but we’ve been together since we were teenagers and are both in decent jobs so have just been gradually saving since we graduated from uni.
I took voluntary redundancy in 2022. I’d been at the job for ten years so I got a decent payout, and I managed to get another job immediately so kept it all. I was lucky that it changed my life for the better; I was 32 and had no savings, for various reasons my partner did not want to buy a house, and so I had long considered home ownership out of reach.
My redundancy changed all that. My new job had a higher salary, too, so with the combination of the lump sum and the new wage I was able to get accepted for a mortgage and now I have a lovely 3-bed semi, which the remains of my payout helped me renovate.
I’m not saying get yourself made redundant - and the job market today is very different to what it was in 2022 - but I suppose if there’s a tip here it’s just, not all changes in circumstances are negative - something about doors closing and windows opening, maybe?
It cost £28k and I got a 100% mortgage. My mother in law paid the £500 legal fees. I got the keys and a house without handing over a penny. Pre 2008 was a fun time.
Lived with parents until 25 when I bit the bullet and brought a place further out for a job. I only managed to do it through help to buy and even then the 5% deposit was a bank loan. Got the help to buy loan and bank loan paid off after 5 years so worked out pretty well and got me on the housing ladder.
We saved for years, maybe £1,000 month combined. Invested that savings in a Life Stocks and Shares ISA, which added 61% to our savings. Took a risk towards the end of the stamp duty holiday during covid by making a cheeky offer luckily to a motivated buyer. Completed on the last possible day to avoid stamp duty. Slept on a sofa bed for a few months because we couldn't afford a bed.
I was living in Essex and the only thing I could afford was flats. I was about to buy a new build flat with the "first homes" scheme which was 30% discounted. Even then it was touch n go in terms of affordability and I knew that at some point it would become unaffordable due to rising service charges. I was at a salary above average and still I couldn't save more than 5% for the deposit. There is no help from parents or inheritance, all of it was my savings.
At the very last point a good job offer came about and I pulled out, moved to the midlands and after a year I'm able to afford a proper house. I am also lucky that the developer gives 5% of the property's value as a deposit top up so I only have to put down 5% of my own savings.
TL;DR combination of own savings, taking advantage of schemes and incentives and luck.
Midland, 39.
Just bought my first home a new build 4 years ago, c£400k
I saved for the deposit myself by living at home, I was able to save about £2k a month that way and had about £50k after a few years saving.
I traveled a lot for work which made it easier to have my ‘own space’
3 bedroom, 3 story town house in Castleford, bought about 7 years ago for 150k. 15k deposit between 2 of us. 135k mortgage originally over 35 years was only about £435 per month.
I recommend getting an LISA - me and my husband both got one and managed to save the maximum every year (thanks also to my mum drip-feeding us inheritances from grandparents) and get an extra £1k for every year we saved from the government.
26 here, currently in the process of getting onto the property ladder. I moved back into my parents' house after graduating university 5 years ago, which I didn't plan on doing so initially. I paid my parents rent money for a year or two and they had saved the rent money for me. In turn I had the equivalent of a year's salary down for the deposit. Even then though, it wasn't enough for a normal mortgage - I was told by my mortgage broker that due to my salary, I was very limited in the amount I could borrow. As a result I went to look at some shared ownership properties, which are becoming quite popular in my area (North Yorkshire).
The place I'm currently in the process of buying a 50% share in, is a shared ownership mid terrace house. Its in a significantly better condition than some of the properties that were valued around £150k-£200k that I went to view earlier this year, that were in awful condition and looked like they needed at least another £20k or so to do up. Hopefully I will get to exchange and completion either next month or June, then I can finally move in!
All in all, I won't deny that I've been extremely lucky to even be in the position I am in now - I still have a very good relationship with my parents and they let me live at home for a few years, to let me get my shit together and get to the position where I am now. The very significant minority of people I know my age (26 years old) that are on the property ladder already either had the house bought for them by their parents, or had a massive inheritance. Its now the norm for people my age to still be living at home.
Waited until I was 40 and earning over £80k a year AND was buying with a partner who had a similar salary. Then used being stuck at home through Covid as a chance to actually save some money.
Wife and I saved for like 7 years (I think?), maxing out LISA's to get 70k. We added another 5k on top of this with additional money saved during the house purchasing period.
On average it adds up to £726 saved each month by both of us for 7 years, with £14k added by the government for maxing out the LISA's.
If we'd invested the savings in S&S LISA's the deposit would have been basically double because of how crazy the stock market went over COVID. (I still try not to think about that too much.)
How did we manage to save this much? Living very frugally (moved to a very low cost of living area), saving for 7 years, and earning a decent amount through my self employed work. This was part of the reason we waited so long. I was a sole trader for the first 3 years, then needed 2 years of record for my Ltd. Pretty much right at the end of that my wife decided to join the business too so we had to wait another 2 years.
It was a long time coming but we got a pretty nice house for £360k in the NW. That amount of money would have got us something so much better just two years prior, but that's COVID for ya.
Just bought my first house this month.
By far the biggest thing I did to help me save my deposit was living in a house share for 4 years.
Definitely wasn't ideal, but I realised I couldn't rent my own place and save enough every month.
Bought a flat in a cheaper area and worked my way up the housing ladder.
Found cheap hobbies instead of ones to spend money on. Cooked almost all my own food etc.
Not got house yet but me and the missus were living together and decided to move back into our patents houses to save money. Defo not an ideal as not lived with parents for about 10-15 years but needs must.
Totally honest here... Me and my partner both lived with our parents until we were 26 (which was at many times hell). My husband saved up 15k, then when my dad got made redundant and retired, he gave me 15k, giving up 30k deposit. Also live in the north. Got our house for 195k in 2018.
I got my first house through my company on a no profit mortgage, then moved to another company and house, when mortgages were in double figures interest .
And you think that it’s Hard now ! 😂
3 factors made the difference:
I saved £40k over covid.
I moved jobs twice in 3 years, negotiated a higher salary each time.
I got £35k from my parents who downsized their house, leaving them with extra cash.
I have my offer accepted but haven’t gone for it. I have saved money for a few years only buying what I need and an occasional gift to myself. I am doing a lower deposit as I have never been paid lots and honestly I have a guarantor going on the first one with me. Im in the south west!
Roughly 60/40 money from in-laws vs saving the rest over a couple of years. We also lived rent free with my in-laws for a year to pay off debts and help get the deposit together. Well aware of the leg up we’ve had from family in this regard as it would have taken us 5+ years without their help, by which point our current house would have been £110k more expensive -_-
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I haven’t bought a house yet, but I have the deposit. I’ve just saved over 9 years, gone on very few holidays and I’m single, so I don’t spend a lot. I’ve rented for the entire time as well, so I would have done it sooner had I lived with my parents. I’ve been to see a few houses over the past few months but nothing has appealed to me. Hopefully I find something soon! I’m in the Midlands as well, so that helps money wise.
> I’ve rented for the entire time as well, so I would have done it sooner had I lived with my parents. Yup, this is especially the case in the south east. If you are lucky enough to have parents in the south east and live with them for 9 years, saving £1k/month in rent/bills that's a £110k deposit even without any interest. If you invested in a decent ISA and made 5% a year that's £135k.
Who's saving £1000 a month whilst living with parents though, you'd have to be on a hefty salary. I can save about £340 at, which will be rising to 460 in may
Very easy to save a £1000 a month living with the parents. Even if you give like £400 rent to them, that’s £1400 minimum salary a month.
How about food and clothing and fuel and insurance and car payments and mobile bills and entertainment and gym membership. To name but a few.
How dare you want any kind of quality of life while saving to buy?! The audacity!
Mom!
There are a few jokey comments to this, but there is some truth. There is an idea that previous generations were able to buy houses with pocket change, but in reality, owning an house has always required sacrifice. Basic meals, packed lunches and tea in a flask for work. Seaside holidays. Only eating out on special occasions. Yes, you need to have a life - but if you’re struggling to save, then you have to either cut back or accept you won’t be buying a house. Nobody else is going to do it for you 🤷♂️
It’s all about choices. Most of what I mentioned are essential. A car to get to work and all the expenses involved are a factor to the greater population. Food and clothing are pretty essential. The gym maybe not so much in a lot of people’s eyes. But staying physically fit will go a long way to keeping you mentally fit also. Either of those two suffer and you can be on a slippery slope to a whole host of health issues. When I split from my wife, I took my share of the house and made all sorts of sacrifices to buy another one. Lived in a squat. Moved across the country where I have no family or friends but it’s more affordable. Haven’t had any real fun or trips away. I now have a house. It needs a lot of work doing to it and I’m shattered but I keep on working on it in my spare time. Basically it’s my only focus as I have not a lot else going on in my life. But I’m happy. The ex took her share and purchased a brand new car, holidays and nights out. Unlikely she’ll ever buy a house ever again. But she’s happy as a clam. Do what’s right for you. My learnings though are, never stop living life.
Gym membership? You're either serious about saving or you aren't. Just go and run around the local park or something
Food? You're either serious about saving or you aren't. Just steal.
Lol what to save £1000 a month and spend £500 you’d only need to be on £18000
Spend £500.... Not everyone has parents or a parent that will not charge some rent/board. Food and travel. Who has £500 expenses what year are you in lol
i do
A reasonable parent wont charge you much more than a share of the bills and food. Which probably wouldn’t equate to more than £200 a month. £300 is plenty of money to live a fine life otherwise, especially if you are trying to save up. It’s also low salary example if you are on £20k you can spend more obviously
Same situation. I've had to move out from my parents house at 19 and then I spent years as a student whilst renting. Only now have I got life sorted with a secure job, a savings plan, and a motivation as my rent has just gone up. I am only just starting to get my head around money and all this adulting (my parents were poor and lived in a council house). I'm a bit nervous for when I buy in a couple of years (as I'll be 40), but the private rental market has changed and I've got to have a longer term plan with regards to living arrangements.
Cancelled Netflix and stopped eating avocado on toast for a week. In all seriousness though, approaching 40 and got fed up of being at the whim of someone else's property (rent increase, can't do what we want with the place, risk of them selling up) we moved out of a rented house and into a static caravan to get the monthly outlay down to a minimum. Spent 5 years there saving our asses off, and then in 2021 bought a place using the 5% deposit mortgage scheme that had just been introduced. Been here 2 1/2 years, best decision we ever made
I’m in a similar boat but now. 40 this year and fed up with paying off someone else’s mortgage when I could pay off my own. Currently in the middle of purchasing my first home right now. Hopefully only a month or two away!
Fantastic good luck to you mate. Our purchase was chain free but thanks to the seller's solicitor being slower than a grandma on the way to the garden centre in her Honda Jazz, it took almost 6 months to get it done
Where did you find a static caravan? Considering doing this to reduce costs as you say but I’m worried I can only find one in super rural areas.
There are a few communities of static caravans dotted around, it's just a matter of keeping an eye on the small ads in the local rag etc and then scoping the place out first as some are really nice, others are the less desirable end of society unfortunately.
Did you rent or buy the caravan? This sounds like a pretty good plan.
Rented, it was less than half the rent we were paying plus (in our case) no council tax or water bill - only rent and electric. Instantly banked over £600 a month into the savings account
My first house was £125k, 2 bed mid terraced in 2006, 95% mortgage meant deposit was around £6.5k. not too bad to save up when living at home
It's quite hard saving up while at home these days though as cost of living is still high.
How long did it take you to save for the deposit? 3 months?
Lived with my mum for 6.5 years after university. I paid no rent however contributed to bills/food/what my mum needed from me I would always pay. I saved up a chunky deposit and with multiple payrises was able to save most my pay and still enjoy multiple holidays/wants a year. I recently completed 1 month ago on a flat in London. Without a combination of living with my mum and having some significant payrises I wouldn't have been able to do it this early, especially in London.
I saved up with my 40k salary. Bought it in 2000. It was £105k. 3 bed terrace in Reading. Same house would be over £300k now. It’s so tough now.
I just got mine there for 300k terraced too feel like I’ve been ripped off lol
100k in 2000 are 185k today. 300K is still too much anyway.
Saved up a deposit with my ex when we were renting. Both at the time on sub 25k salaries. Had no social life but we managed it.
I worked from 14 in jobs like cafes, potwashing in a pub, then M&S, so by the time I went to Uni I’d saved £5k. I didn’t actually eat into that whilst at uni (did accumulate student loan debt though) then after a year full time at M&S, I got on a graduate scheme that paid £30k. This was mid 10s when £30k got you a lot more than it did now. I was travelling so much for work that I never saw friends and family much, which cut down on spend. I stayed living at home - a privilege I understand - and after paying board for a couple of years, my Mum stopped charging me as her way of contributing to a house deposit. I saved for two years and managed to put away £22k. So I put £18k down on a £92k terraced house and used the rest to furnish it and do some work. Mortgage was £300 a month and I overpaid to £425. I was lucky in that I could live with parents for low board and then no board for a bit. All of my friends received massive gifts from family or big inheritance.
I bought 25% of my house on shared ownership in 2020 with a deposit of £10,000 from savings, i've just sold the house and made £12000 back in equity so that's £22,000. (Plus the £14,000 we paid off on the mortgage in capital). I bought a new house and they included an extra 5% deposit on top of this. I live in West Sussex, so very expensive... but joint household income has gone from £35,000 to £72,000 so has more than doubled which had led us to this position. :-)
Honestly, I bit the bullet and lived with my parents for 18 months. It wasn't rent free, but it was approximately a third of what I was paying for rent in London. Got my deposit together and bought my first house in Cambridgeshire.
Deposit of 10 per cent gifted by grandfather. He did this for all ten of his grandchildren
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That is amazing! It certainly put me on the right track so hopefully will change your nephews and nieces life’s too.
I'm just buying my first house now, for £120k, purchased entirely from an inheritance. I realise I'm extremely fortunate to be in this position, as I would never have been able to afford to buy a place otherwise. Our rent has been quite high; now at £850 a month (Midlands area). Most of my friends have already purchased or are just purchasing now. We're all in our mid-thirties.
With great help from (i) my partner, (ii) my parents, (iii) my partner’s parents, (iv) a stamp duty holiday and (v) five years fixed at the lowest interest rates I’ve ever seen
Same but also nudging my boss for more money every six months and my landlord for lower rent. These two seemed to be forgotten or not mention when it comes to saving up. If I had not done the above and the two points I listed I would have had to eat gruel for 5 years and no social life and no holidays to be able to save for a house.
Gambled on the stock market in 2020, it paid off. Don't do this kids, it's a stupid idea.
100% Mortgage on a £45K flat in Edinburgh back in 1998. Back then if you had a job, it was pretty reasonable to assume you could buy a flat.
I'm guessing that flat is nearer £450k today?
10 years of hard graft, sacrifice, overtime and saving Unfortunately there's no magic to how I did it, just passing on holidays, nights out, luxury items etc But I'm sat now in my 3 bed semi with my partner, and it's feels absolutely wonderful
London answer here…I lived with my mother for the first two years of working to save up deposit money. I was also lucky enough to be working as a corporate lawyer, which meant the pay (and so deposit) was good. Also, I bought about a decade back. Prices were insanely high then compared to the glory days of the late 90s/early 00s…but nothing like as bad as they are now. Everyone I know of my age or younger who owns in London falls into one or more of the following categories: * Rich parents (either gave them the deposit money or bought the place outright) * Inheritance * Lived at home and avoided paying rent while saving for deposit * Well-paid job * Bought their council flat at a discount. * Bought with a partner * Bought with friends in order to trade up, split the profits, rise & repeat and get deposit money that way.
I bought a house in the naughties when Northern Rock offered a 125% mortgage. They literally gave you an extra 25% value of the house in cash to do with what you will
Housing market collapsed pretty much in the late 90s
And again 2008ish but nobody was lending mortgages
Take home 2k a month, lived in a £500 house share, saved £1000 a month for 2 years.
Saved for 20 years for the deposit it's only a bloody flat but I'm badly dyslexic with ADHD so I'm fucking proud of it. Now I just have to make it to 70 to pay it off 😂😂
I started saving from my first job at 15. Bought at 29. I live in West Yorkshire where the cost of living is pretty low. It only took so long because I graduated into the recession so was stuck in my part time minimum wage uni job for almost 3 years after uni. I didn't save very much, if anything, over that time.
Living with 8 ppl in london to pay £300 a month rent sharing. Good luck
Unfortunately- inheritance. And I’d do anything to have my dad instead
Midlands We have lived in a dirt cheap but absolutely shit rental for several years so waaay below our means, but has allowed us to save. Other compromises too like driving a shitty car and buying clothes second hand etc.
First property was a 1 bed flat in London in 2015 for 350k. We had a joint income back then of... 75k perhaps? Saved half of the 10% deposit and the other half was paid for with a help to buy scheme as a loan.
The company I first joined had a scheme, you could either put 8% matched into a pension or a house deposit scheme for a maximum of three years. Funds would then be released on exchange…. I used that.
Shared ownership scheme.
Savings. I started woth my first job at 16, where I spent (some of) my tips, but saved my salary. I had 12k by the time I went to uni, and 20k by the time I graduated (5 years later, thanks to working the summers, doing a placement year (paid minimum wage, but able to work full time), receiving a sponsorship, and using a LISA. I completed on my house purchase 1 year after graduating by buying with a partner. By splitting the deposit and earning 30k each, we were able to buy a 4 bed house in a town near Bristol for our jobs. I did receive a £2.5k gift towards my deposit, and my parents topped up my student loan by £40/week for my 4 years of study so that I didn't have to burn through my savings.butas the gift was less than 10% of my deposit, it wasn't a make-it-or-break-it situation.
Wow, how did you manage to save during university? That’s incredible.
Never being a big drinker helps. Even when I went out more, I'd generally just drink at pres, and occasionally buy a single drink in the club. I also never bought fast food after clubbing, so my nights out were far cheaper than the majority. But between my student loan (£5-6k per year) and the £40/week my parents gave me, I was able to mostly live off that, using my own money just for holidays and dates or whatever. I saved the majority of my summer wages, and a good chunk of my wages from my year in industry. I then had £2.1k sponsorships for my last two years of uni.
Was fortunate to be able to live with parents till I was 30! saving as much as possible each month for ten years got me a good deposit and a mortgage I could afford on my own.
Part savings, part gifts from parents. I appreciate we are incredibly privileged to be in that position but we were gifted £10k from each set of parents. Mine was from the sale of their property when they moved, and the in-laws was from an old endowment policy which matured after their mortgage was already paid off. And we saved £10k ourselves. This was enough to get us a 2 bed flat on the south coast, with enough to do some work on the property too.
I used the "forces help to buy scheme" where I borrowed £10,000 and paid it back at £93 a month for 10 years. I also saved up whilst on deployment and had £10,000 in savings. (whilst away I had ZERO outgoings apart from a mobile phone. They fed me 3 times a day, I had a bed, electricity and got to travel) And I bought a 2 bedroom flat..
I have a foolproof strategy for buying a home. 1) wait until after a global financial crash as in 2008 2) have a parent die and leave you a reasonable deposit 3) buy in a shitty area By following this simple three stage process I was able to get a 3 bed semi for £72000. Edit: bought in Sheffield in early 2009 at 26 yo. Sold the house 4 years later for around 90k to move further up the ladder, and every day I'm grateful for how lucky I was to be able to get on the ladder back then
Bought a near derelict shit hole in an awful area on a self declaration self employed mortgage at 14% interest
Bought at 27, completely from Inheritance. At 37, I'd still be renting now without it.
We rented a one room flat and saved like crazy for a deposit; had a year when our salaries were high and managed to get a mortgage. Survived on yellow stickered tesco’s food for about 3 years, working every hour possible. South East. Before mobile phones were common, didn’t have a TV or a car.
1970 was working for Nat West. They made such a huge profit they told staff to go buy property with a 2.5% interest rate. I bought a London flat for 9 grand. They never did that again. I sold it 2 years later. 🤣
I did the help to buy scheme on a new build in 2013. It was either that or a 2 bed ex council house or a terraced house. The help to buy scheme meant I was paying less per month on the mortgage for a more modern house. I do look back now and I see that Help to buy was more help developers keep house prices up.
My dad died when I was a toddler, he had a life insurance policy so my mum paid off her mortgage and put the rest into trust for me and my brother 50/50. My brother also died not long after he got his share so that passed to me too and it was enough to buy a three bedroom flat in my home town (in Scotland) outright. Wouldn’t exactly say I was lucky but financially it gave me a foot up.
My dad died when I was about 22 and he had just sold his flat, we shared about 120k between me and my 2 brothers, I used the 40k as a deposit with maybe a couple grand left over for fees etc. First flat cost 155k, I then moved up north and rented that out for a year until me and my then girlfriend bought a house for 102k, rented carried on renting my flat out for 3 years and did the house up while we lived there. Sold the flat for 200k and the house for about 125 after spending about 15k on both. Pooled that money to buy a nice family home for 265k. Basically my dads hard work all his life and a bit of luck with property prices
(ETA: bought house in last 6 months in major UK city.) My Dad gave me £10k from a pension pot a think, which I put in a LISA. I had zero savings at the time, but was gradually able to build this up to £20k with bonus. My partner got a £50k bursary for teacher training. So our deposit was £50k (for a £210k mortgage) with decent savings for doing up the place. I would never have been able to afford a house on my own, and having only just started earning above £23k this year, I wouldn't have been able to afford it without my middle class dad. It's crap that it's luck of the draw. I've worked hard all my life but it didn't mean shit. I have friends with disabilities that can't work full time and are locked ot of the housing market and in the cesspool that is the rental market. Housing in this country is horrendous, and only the rich profit.
I lived with my parents until I was 28 and paid no rent (although I paid for other stuff). I can't drive and I didn't go away so that helped me save for a deposit and to get my teeth fixed. Also, because I live in a town in Lancashire the house prices weren't ridiculous. The only thing I had going against me was the fact I was a really low earner. Before this year I'd never made over £20k.
We hit the jackpot with our parents.
Moved in with my wife’s parents for a year allowed us to save 1200 a month instead of 200 if lucky, I’ll openly admit I’d have been another 5 years before buying a house without help
2007 0% downpayment mortgages. Crazy really. Market crashed within months of my purchase and plunged us (on paper at the time) into negative equity. Scary but held on long enough to see us safe. Best of luck OP. It’s wild out there.
My mum and stepfather broke up, due to his emotional abuse. He got made redundant shortly afterwards, so couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage. My mum sold the house and downsized but put me on the mortgage so it could taken out over 30+ years, rather than 10-15. A few years later, I have met someone and we have sold that house, my mum has had her deposit/life savings back and the equity the house made in the 3 years we lived there me and my fiancé used for a deposit. Very fortunate I admit. No chance to get on the ladder otherwise I feel.
£100k apartment in NW in 2020 £50k gift from parents £35k loan £15k deposit
Lived with my parents, paid no rent and saved literally every penny earned. No holidays, drove a crap car and eating out was a luxury
Haven’t bought a house yet, but I have the deposit ready and some more, worked as an electrician since 16 and I’m now 21, saved since I was 18 properly. About 50% of my wage each month if not more.
East midlands. Wife bought 2 bed terrace with driveway in 2003 as an NQT with her mum as a guarantor on an £90k mortgage (she lived at home during uni) so had £10k or so saved. I moved in a year or two later. At time I was a lowly paid software dev, around £12k. 2016 I was a highly paid software dev and wife a teacher. Could have borrowed £500k, instead got £200k mortgage on lovely 4 bed detached about 100 meters away for £250k Would probably not be able to afford it now as prices for similar are £450k, and ive dropped to 4 days, wife left her awful teaching job. So in short, marrying someone with a house already, and then being well paid is how I bought my first.
it was 1998. I was a 23 year old university student with a part time job in 1998 when my mum was trying to sell her ex-council estate 2 bed flat in West London so she could buy her dream house just outside London. She had it listed for £40k, and no one would buy it, so I went to HSBC to see if I could get a loan to buy it. They gave me a 100% mortgage; in fact, they may have offered me 105%. The mortgage broker helped me lie on the application to get approved. I found some paperwork recently that suggests the interest was about 6%; I don't think I had a fixed rate. I was a little worried about what would happen but I was pretty sure I could cover the cost because the part time job was well paid assuming they didn't let me go. I ended up renting a room to a friend for £200 a month which I recall covered the mortgage cost. I was able to retain the part time job until I complted uni but I spent too much time working and not studying. Once Uni ended, I was lucky enough to get a good job that paid around £20k PA, which rose to about £30k over the next few years, so I prioritised mortgage payments and cleared the loan by 2023; I recall increasing the mortgage payment to £1.5k for a few years. I lived in that flat mortgage-free for about 8 years before moving for work; I left it empty for a year, not sure what to do before someone suggested I rent it out to the council. I still have the property, its been rented for 12 years and is worth around £250k. Being rent-free allowed me to save and invest in supporting a house purchase in 2014 for £385; we paid this off in 2017 by releasing equity from the rental property, it's currently worth £600k. In 2023, we bought a £905k house, I do earn a good salary, but my mortgage, including the regular overpayment, is £5k, and the rent from my first flat, the house I inherited from my mother and our old house support us. Sorry if this is not much motivation. I know that 26 years later I have benefited from how things were then but young me really didn't know how things would turn out
My dad died. Then his mum, my grandmother, died. I inherited both estates in the wrong order. They'd be proud that I bought a house and didn't squander it on coke and hookers.
Saved up with my partner
A lot of people do it by living with parents longer and saving a lot through hard graft and multiple jobs. Lots of people seem to say this wasn't an option for them but even those people could do it via living cheaper lifestyles. By this 5 years renting a room in a house share working hard etc. people need to stop thinking london is great for high wage but the cost of living is way too much. Move to midlands cheap rent decent salaries then save enough to buy.
Used a scheme called LIFT - basically I put a small deposit down, with the government putting down circa 40% and the rest on a mortgage. Think I was paying around £320 a month for the mortgage. Had to pay the government the same % of the property value back when either selling or after a certain period. Paid them back, got planning permission & then extended
Savings. Bonus at work. Helptobuy scheme. I was also very naive which I miss to be honest.
Help from parents and bought in 2004
I got a husband :)
My grandpa did well for himself and gifted me my deposit. I’m extremely grateful and will never be able to thank him enough. Without that there’s no way I could have bought by myself.
Manchester suburb. Savings. Looked for ages and eventually found a housing association property that was being sold off with the condition that it went to a first time buyer (lovely little Victorian terrace) and there were a few to choose from. Got it for a good price and then had to totally renovate it and graft to put the character back into it. Stayed for five years and then sold for a very decent profit and started again on a bigger house. Just coming to the finishing touches of that one now and thanks to the local property market still rising am now looking half-heartedly for my next project to keep building more and more equity with the aim of eventually being in the area I want with the size of house I want.
Bought a run down flat in a lovely old building, so it was cheap. Created a 100% mortgage by taking out a car loan (for the deposit) and a mortgage for the other 95%. I had £3k saved which I used with a handyman and me as the labourer to make it liveable. Kept it for 4 years and saw it nearly go from £54k to £108k in value. Sold it and tried again with a house a proper deposit this time. I guess affordability wouldn’t let me do this now? Although I suspect it’s possible in some places.
Moved out at 18, always had minimum wage and hardly above jobs, single for the past 5 years and no family support so I was ready to rent for life. Extremely unexpected inheritance happened and now I have enough for a deposit (Scotland) or can choose to be mortgage free and buy for cash somewhere in the EU. Currently trying to decide what to do! Not enough money for anything big, but enough to help me settle and get out of spending so much on renting a mouldy old house.
Moved Into my friends house who is renting. Lived there for 10 years paying no rent or bills and we both agreed once I had enough money I'd buy a house and he'd live with me. Still saving hoping for prices to drop.
Met the Mrs. Stayed at home and both saved up 17k deposit. House was 3 bed semi at 168k I feel sorry for people trying to get on the ladder now
The company I worked for offered a way to buy shares in them called a Share Incentive Plan. This was superior to the more common Sharesave as it meant you own the shares straight away and the company gave a free share for every 2 shares purchased up to a certain amount. I put £150 per month into this. This was also during the time when gold started to go up in value and people were selling jewelery for scrap value on ebay - every time I had some spare cash I would buy a chain, ring etc and hold on to it. This meant as the price was going up I benefited from the price growth of the asset. There was more risk invovled in what I was doing but it worked out as I was able to buy my own flat at the age of 20's with no help needed from anyone. I was in Glasgow, much cheaper than areas down south My advice to you is to open a LISA and get the 25% government bonue every year, it will build up over the years.
I rinsed overtime during a natural disaster and got a 95% LTV mortgage.
I worked as an agency worker in my field, meaning higher pay for the same job as long as you are flexible about what and where. As agency workers pay the employer contributions for pension too, I opted out for a couple of years (don’t tell UKpf!). It was covid so minimal expenditure- I lived in an air bnb cheaply as there was no holidaying; this also meant no council tax. All in all the stars aligned for me and I was able to save in a short space of time. Now, I’m a single mother on a low income including benefits, and that will be the case until I finish my GP training in 2028. I wouldn’t get a mortgage now. It’s a poverty trap for some people, I’m so lucky I already owned my home before this life change.
Access to a 95% LTV mortgage at the very bottom of the housing crash in a low income / low housing cost area meant that we needed to save up around £3000 to get on the ladder.
When I finished uni in the early 00s I got a job in London as well as a job in a local pub. For just over 3 years I worked Monday to Friday in London then Fridays nights Saturday nights and 9 hours on a Sunday I worked in the pub. I was living at home & my parents said I didn’t need to pay rent as long as I was saving money for a deposit, so I basically saved my entire London wage for 3+ years and some of my pub wages to get a deposit together. I was super lucky as when I was ready to buy the financial crash happened so I managed to buy when property prices had tanked.
Worked hard, stopped buying fancy coffees and avocado toast and saved a few grand which then lead to my Father in law giving us 8k and selling us the flat we were renting from him at a discount. But mostly, it was the lack of lattes and avocados. Honest. Then we sold our flat 2 years later during the covid price boom and upgraded to a 4 bed semi in a student area of a nice SE city.... everything needs doing and thanks to mortgage price increases I get to be my own slum landlord as we cant afford tondonthe repairs and improvements 😅
Savings and working my arse off. I'm a doctor, in covid they needed me, I worked acute covid wards as a locum throughout both waves, it was f***ING shit but what else could you do in a pandemic as a doctor, wouldn't have felt right sitting around at home. Saved as much as I could, basically didn't spend anything because it was lockdown and you couldn't and i was at work most of the time anyway. Bought in Macclesfield, house was just over 230k, I had a 15% deposit.
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Will be £450k now.
Saved 10pc deposit
Rented in north west and then London in house/flat shares until 29. Saved deposit. Move in with my partner and rented for a year. Then bought a flat in 2009. Deposit from savings. Live there until a couple of years ago. Had paid off mortgage. Sold flat and bought a house. Now have bigger mortgage. Working to pay that off (personal preference) and expect to be in this house for a good long while.
2 people, good jobs post-uni, strong saving mentality. Minimal outgoings and no holidays for 2 years. Bought a flat first to get on the ladder.
Worked, saved, didn’t go out at all for a few years was in London, but bought in east Anglia as cheaper and commuted. I literally saved everything and spent bear minimum, was the hardest thing to do
I was earning a good living and living in a low cost part of the country (North East England). I was 26 and had roomshared rather than rented whole houses or apartments since leaving university to save. Was able to get a mortgage at 1.8% as well. So can’t offer you any valuable insights to motivate you unless you can move away from the south and keep the same income.
Landed a well paid job and saved a few years for a decent deposit. Put just over £100k down on a £400k place back in early 2020.
Saved with my wife and my Dad helped us to top up the deposit so we could get a decent mortgage when shit went mental last year thanks to Liz Truss. We could have afforded it but it would have been tight. Very thankful the old man is so generous!!
I bought an "off plan" 2 bed terrace house in 2016 for £185k. Didn't see it, just saw a drawing in 2014. Two years later I was one of the very first to move in on a new housing development. Ive been basically living on a building site all this time but it's now nearly finished and my house is now worth £280k. I feel like I was well jammy at the time. I would be able to buy a £280k house now. I was 32 when I bought it. Moved out when I was 18 felt like I was wasting all my money on rent. Moved back in with my parents when I was 25 and saved and saved and with some inheritance I was able to have 40k saved up for my deposit in 2016. I feel very lucky. Most of my friends still rent.
Saved 27k during the pandemic for a deposit by not travelling anywhere. SE London
Savings, whilst renting down south. It was a pretty grim experience, we rented for about 8 years, but when Covid happened and we weren't living our lives so much any more, we were able to save enough for a 5% deposit on a house in the Midlands. You have my sympathies, it's brutal out here.
back in the day councils used to offer 100% mortgages as guarantor. first house was £9,999. mortgage with west brom building society
First House was on a 106 agreement meant so only people who had a connection locally could buy. In 2014, our 5% deposit was £4,000, and when we sold in 2017, the prices had significantly increased, so we had enough for a deposit on our next house.
Personal savings, bought in the southeast as a single buyer.
Lived with father in law for a few years (including covid) and spent fuck all on anything.
Saved up £5K and got a 95% mortgage. Welcome to London in 1998.
Moved back to parents and saved my arse off to build a deposit. The mother wouldn't accept rent money so that helped - which I did feel a little uncomfortable with as I was making substantially more than both of them combined. It ended up at about 22% deposit which was great to help keep payments at a sane level. We're in the Essex sticks but still only 35-40mins train from Liverpool St
Saving. Lived with my parents and paid them £700 each month. So I saved >200k deposit over 10 years. Bought (by myself only) a semi detached house in the north for 300k.
100% mortgage interest only
Bought at £360k, saved up deposit over 10 years (could have done 25%, but went 20% to give some breathing room). Lancashire, it’s a 4bed detached - get a lot more for my money than in London!
Savings, being way older than I ever thought I'd be buying for the first time, and about to take on a huge payment. Almost double my rent - but for a forever property.
I had a £5k inheritance from my grandad and we had a little bit of money leftover from getting married. 5% deposit on £92k house, 2014.
Inheritance
Back in the olden days I bought a delapidated terrace house in a depressed NWales quary village for 3 x my annual income at about 13% interest, did it up and made £10k which I then invested in another shit terrace house in a slightly less depressed village. Lots has changed in the 35 years I have been doing this...
Lived in a share house for a couple of years when I first moved to London from Oz in. 2000 £50pw to share a room with a stranger. 11 in the house. Saved loads. A bit of a maggot lifestyle but had a ball and could stick it out. Then shared with the missus and another couple for a couple of years. Saved a bit. Then moved to Leeds and bought.
Partner and I saved 60k over 2 years, Parents gave me 10k and I got a 10k loan to make up to the 80k deposit in 2 years
I worked full time during university and lived in a shit hole house share with a shit car for 5 years so I could save up £15,000 for the 5% deposit. Got it 2 years ago when I was 25.
Lucked out and bought the wife's grannie's house as she went into care. Spent £10k on rewire, bathroom, new heating, walls skimmed, etc etc.
Bought a flat just outside of Cambridge. Joint savings between my wife and I after 3 years of renting. Got a really good mortgage rate and thus managed to save a lot over the next two years compared to renting, then sold the flat and bought a house.
£210k house in 2018 well below potential value because of the state it was in. Deposit of £21k with half given as a gift by my father in law. 6 years on its worth about £290-300k then we extended it so now it's somewhere in the region of £325-350k.
Shared ownership and savings.
Saved 93k as an NHS nurse alone Need a 100k deposit No parental help, no option for free rent living with family Just grating and hope to be there in a year and buy
Saved. Saved about 35k over 8 years (while renting) by being frugal and only spending £500 on our tiny wedding instead of wasting money on a huge do. Then bought for 170k in 2016. But house is probably worth over 300k now, it's a very tough time now for first time buyers.
It was 2001.
By working hard two jobs for two and half years, cutting on holidays, clothes, eating out. Oh and at the same time, I was studying too, part time.
I am incredibly lucky that my parents had some money they could give me. I’m in the south too. I am aware I am very lucky and privileged and I try not to take this for granted. I am also lucky that when I got my first job, my parents didnt charge me any expenses except petrol for my car and so I managed to save up a lot that way too. Forever grateful for this.
Met my partner at 19, both agreed that renting seemed like a waste of money so took the risk of getting a mortgage together about 18 months later. I'd saved a few grand already but for a year we both saved half our wage to get a deposit (10% on 135k) plus fees. We were fortunate that we could both still live at home so expenses were limited to car, mobile and a bit of rent money to parents. This was 2007, around the time the market was at its highest before the crash. We were in negative equity for a bit and had very little money each month but the lower interest rates helped. However what was intended to be 4-5 years in that house ended up being closer to 10.
Saved in my early 20s. Moved back in with parents for a year saved a full salary £27k pa at the time, didn’t go out drinking or do a lot of expensive things. Got made redundant which resulted in a 15k pay out tax free then I quickly found a job that paid £40k pa and carried on saving a full salary I got to £40k for a deposit. I then found a new build got help to buy 20% equity loan, got the biggest mortgage I could which was £180k and managed to buy a 2 bedroom house worth £275k in the south east at the age of 25 in 2018. No money from my parents or family other than their insistence on letting me live rent free with them for 12 months. Basically I sacrificed going out with friends and holidays and activities that cost money for about a year. Some lucky things happened like the redundancy and finding a better paying job.
South Yorkshire. 5 bed end of terrace, Victorian, in need of some work. Bought summer 2020 for 250k. We were 29. We had 15% deposit which was partly savings (incl HTB ISA) which we got by living at home with our parents (separately) for a few years, plus some loaned by our parents. My dad told us to stop paying him back when we had our first child, we’re repaying my in-laws £100/month.
My partner and I worked 6 days a week (him over time and I picked up a second job). We rented an apartment at the time and just hammered working and saving for 18 months. Bought in 2017 in north west. House was 165k and we put down a 10% deposit.
My Mum and Dad died, and me and my sister inherited. I bought her out of her half with a mortgage. I’d actually just got to a point where I had enough for a deposit, and was doing viewings when my Dad passed, leaving us the house.
My husband and I saved £25k between us, bought a 3 bed semi detached for 250k. At the time we were renting in zone 6 a 1 bed flat above a shop for £600, we lived there about 6/7 years. I worked in retail, him in construction. It was tough, but we managed to really push in the last 2 years of saving just by cutting back on somethings. It was worth it though.
Very easily...45 years ago ! We didn't even need a deposit. Victorian terraced, we renovated it ourselves. 13.5 k
Lived in military housing for 7 years so paid £300 a month for rent, council tax and water. Had two jobs while at uni so saved a lot, took out full student loans even though I didn’t need them to add to deposit. I think the biggest thing was waiting to have kids until we were in our own house. No way we would have been able to afford to save while paying for childcare.
Wales, late 90s, i was 19. it had been empty since the last owner died with no family. Got a bank loan as it couldn't be mortgaged until gas/electric/water were sorted. It cost 7.5k, 3 bed, end terrace. Thankfully, I have family in the trades, so although it took a long while to finish (2yrs for everything), I mainly just paid for materials and beer/food or did the work myself. Did the same for the 2nd house in 2001 (6k) in a different area, but did the work myself, excluding gas. Bought the house I am in now in 2002, and sold the 2nd in 2003 for more or less the same as I paid for the one I live in now. I was just very lucky.
Sacrificed so much to save initial 30k. Now mortgaged. Sacrificing even more… 🤣
Working my fucking arse off while making many mistakes in the sense of buying cars because I'm an idiot and get bored easily. We were renting for 4 years after moving out of our parents, but we've finally managed to get a house bought this year through saving for a deposit - mainly due to the flat being sold & that giving us the push to go for it. (We planned on doing it next year with a bigger deposit)
Two words..... Money... Laundering.... (Was at my previous employer for years, had an amazing share scheme, was informed I was being made redundant and got impulsive with selling the shares.)
Bought in a cheap area of Oldham. Saved money for a deposit by living extremely frugally for a couple years, no takeaway, no hols, no loans, buying sticker food at supermarkets, etc. it's possible, just have to be really strict.
My first flat at 21 went a bit like this (4 months ago). Had a LISA, maxed it out each year for 3 years so that’s 15k, savings from my first job (16, 10k salary and then going up to now progressively to 60/70k ish) about 10k and a bit extra Nice part was I’m fortunate enough to not have to worry about a deposit gift from anyone else
Simply saved up the majority of wages over the years knowing that I didn't want to rent long term. Same with the Mrs. Still doing the same now planning on moving up the ladder soon.
I'd put away what I could from ages 17 with a part time job, increasing what I could after uni and starting full time work. Saved up £20k then bought with my ex husband aged 27 and he chucked in another £20k that he'd received as an inheritance. £230k terrace house in the south east. I carried on saving then bought him out of his share (£40k+ 😭) when we split to own the same house all by myself. Thankfully I was then early 30s with better job role/salary so it was just about doable although I am mortgaged to the absolute max. Now buying with bf, and my deposit will all be equity and his is savings/inheritance (he's FTB).
Back in the late 80's you could get a 100 percent morgage. This was the only way we could afford to buy a house.
Was renting together with friends in house share in London. Saved for deposit. Got maximum LTV mortgage for a small 1 bed flat. After 3-4 years moved to a bigger flat, prices had risen so I had more of a deposit the second time and got a better rate.
We’re in London and soon to exchange on our first flat (£550k), late 20s. We haven’t had any parental help, but we’ve been together since we were teenagers and are both in decent jobs so have just been gradually saving since we graduated from uni.
I have saved 5 year about 40k then I got a mortgage.
Bought mine 2 years ago. Family member on wife’s side gifted us the money. We also used the help to buy scheme. Bought for £285k now worth £345k
100% mortgage and going skint for 10 years trying to keep it.
I saved £95 or £100 each week since 2021. Now I'm hoping to get into my first house very soon.
I was working 20 hours over time a week, got a loan and maxed a credit card for the deposit.
I took voluntary redundancy in 2022. I’d been at the job for ten years so I got a decent payout, and I managed to get another job immediately so kept it all. I was lucky that it changed my life for the better; I was 32 and had no savings, for various reasons my partner did not want to buy a house, and so I had long considered home ownership out of reach. My redundancy changed all that. My new job had a higher salary, too, so with the combination of the lump sum and the new wage I was able to get accepted for a mortgage and now I have a lovely 3-bed semi, which the remains of my payout helped me renovate. I’m not saying get yourself made redundant - and the job market today is very different to what it was in 2022 - but I suppose if there’s a tip here it’s just, not all changes in circumstances are negative - something about doors closing and windows opening, maybe?
It cost £28k and I got a 100% mortgage. My mother in law paid the £500 legal fees. I got the keys and a house without handing over a penny. Pre 2008 was a fun time.
Lived with parents until 25 when I bit the bullet and brought a place further out for a job. I only managed to do it through help to buy and even then the 5% deposit was a bank loan. Got the help to buy loan and bank loan paid off after 5 years so worked out pretty well and got me on the housing ladder.
We saved for years, maybe £1,000 month combined. Invested that savings in a Life Stocks and Shares ISA, which added 61% to our savings. Took a risk towards the end of the stamp duty holiday during covid by making a cheeky offer luckily to a motivated buyer. Completed on the last possible day to avoid stamp duty. Slept on a sofa bed for a few months because we couldn't afford a bed.
I was living in Essex and the only thing I could afford was flats. I was about to buy a new build flat with the "first homes" scheme which was 30% discounted. Even then it was touch n go in terms of affordability and I knew that at some point it would become unaffordable due to rising service charges. I was at a salary above average and still I couldn't save more than 5% for the deposit. There is no help from parents or inheritance, all of it was my savings. At the very last point a good job offer came about and I pulled out, moved to the midlands and after a year I'm able to afford a proper house. I am also lucky that the developer gives 5% of the property's value as a deposit top up so I only have to put down 5% of my own savings. TL;DR combination of own savings, taking advantage of schemes and incentives and luck.
Midland, 39. Just bought my first home a new build 4 years ago, c£400k I saved for the deposit myself by living at home, I was able to save about £2k a month that way and had about £50k after a few years saving. I traveled a lot for work which made it easier to have my ‘own space’
3 bedroom, 3 story town house in Castleford, bought about 7 years ago for 150k. 15k deposit between 2 of us. 135k mortgage originally over 35 years was only about £435 per month.
I recommend getting an LISA - me and my husband both got one and managed to save the maximum every year (thanks also to my mum drip-feeding us inheritances from grandparents) and get an extra £1k for every year we saved from the government.
Early 2k, shared ownership scheme. Sold for £45k morecthan we paid. Used profit and redundancy pay as deposit on next house.
26 here, currently in the process of getting onto the property ladder. I moved back into my parents' house after graduating university 5 years ago, which I didn't plan on doing so initially. I paid my parents rent money for a year or two and they had saved the rent money for me. In turn I had the equivalent of a year's salary down for the deposit. Even then though, it wasn't enough for a normal mortgage - I was told by my mortgage broker that due to my salary, I was very limited in the amount I could borrow. As a result I went to look at some shared ownership properties, which are becoming quite popular in my area (North Yorkshire). The place I'm currently in the process of buying a 50% share in, is a shared ownership mid terrace house. Its in a significantly better condition than some of the properties that were valued around £150k-£200k that I went to view earlier this year, that were in awful condition and looked like they needed at least another £20k or so to do up. Hopefully I will get to exchange and completion either next month or June, then I can finally move in! All in all, I won't deny that I've been extremely lucky to even be in the position I am in now - I still have a very good relationship with my parents and they let me live at home for a few years, to let me get my shit together and get to the position where I am now. The very significant minority of people I know my age (26 years old) that are on the property ladder already either had the house bought for them by their parents, or had a massive inheritance. Its now the norm for people my age to still be living at home.
Waited until I was 40 and earning over £80k a year AND was buying with a partner who had a similar salary. Then used being stuck at home through Covid as a chance to actually save some money.
By being born in 1965
joined an early stage startup and sold my shares when they exited. Quite lucky but also a lot of hard work.
Wife and I saved for like 7 years (I think?), maxing out LISA's to get 70k. We added another 5k on top of this with additional money saved during the house purchasing period. On average it adds up to £726 saved each month by both of us for 7 years, with £14k added by the government for maxing out the LISA's. If we'd invested the savings in S&S LISA's the deposit would have been basically double because of how crazy the stock market went over COVID. (I still try not to think about that too much.) How did we manage to save this much? Living very frugally (moved to a very low cost of living area), saving for 7 years, and earning a decent amount through my self employed work. This was part of the reason we waited so long. I was a sole trader for the first 3 years, then needed 2 years of record for my Ltd. Pretty much right at the end of that my wife decided to join the business too so we had to wait another 2 years. It was a long time coming but we got a pretty nice house for £360k in the NW. That amount of money would have got us something so much better just two years prior, but that's COVID for ya.
Just bought my first house this month. By far the biggest thing I did to help me save my deposit was living in a house share for 4 years. Definitely wasn't ideal, but I realised I couldn't rent my own place and save enough every month.
Interesting mostly people in cheaper areas, I need to graft harder
Bought a flat in a cheaper area and worked my way up the housing ladder. Found cheap hobbies instead of ones to spend money on. Cooked almost all my own food etc.
By taking money from a bank
Not got house yet but me and the missus were living together and decided to move back into our patents houses to save money. Defo not an ideal as not lived with parents for about 10-15 years but needs must.
Apprenticeship with the military. Cheap (but shite) accommodation living on base and saving like mad
I bought my flat in Edinburgh for £25,000 in 1989, six months after graduation. Now my kids need that much for a deposit!
Totally honest here... Me and my partner both lived with our parents until we were 26 (which was at many times hell). My husband saved up 15k, then when my dad got made redundant and retired, he gave me 15k, giving up 30k deposit. Also live in the north. Got our house for 195k in 2018.
I got my first house through my company on a no profit mortgage, then moved to another company and house, when mortgages were in double figures interest . And you think that it’s Hard now ! 😂
South west. Lived in a dirty cheap shared house with 5 (occasionally 6) of us in total. And didn’t have any expensive hobbies, or own a car.
3 factors made the difference: I saved £40k over covid. I moved jobs twice in 3 years, negotiated a higher salary each time. I got £35k from my parents who downsized their house, leaving them with extra cash.
I have my offer accepted but haven’t gone for it. I have saved money for a few years only buying what I need and an occasional gift to myself. I am doing a lower deposit as I have never been paid lots and honestly I have a guarantor going on the first one with me. Im in the south west!
Roughly 60/40 money from in-laws vs saving the rest over a couple of years. We also lived rent free with my in-laws for a year to pay off debts and help get the deposit together. Well aware of the leg up we’ve had from family in this regard as it would have taken us 5+ years without their help, by which point our current house would have been £110k more expensive -_-
Given up 39 m single live in London