What does it take to buy a house for the first time when you’re over forty in the UK housing market today?
For me it was simply dogged determination and years of planning.
At the age of 44, it is kind of late in life to be a first time buyer. However, this is no longer a rare occurrence. Thousands of people are in my exact position. Priced out of the housing market until later life, spending our hard earned cash on rent rather than investment it in our future.
My ambition to buy my own home started many years ago, but with the prices in Hertfordshire’s commuter belt making the prospect of ownership so far out of reach it wasn’t even worth considering. Couple this with rental prices rising faster than I can count and the hope of saving any money was simply a dream. But although it was so far away from my reality at the time, I always new it was going to happen. One day, I would buy my own house.
However, when you are forced to buy a house in your forties, the universe seems to conspire against you by putting obstacle after obstacle in your way. Now being married with two children, we were renting a lovely three bedroom house in a sort after part of town. This was not exactly by design, but more by luck. The property came up for rent at the time when we were looking. We were the first to view it and agreed to rent it right away. At the time, as well a renting a house, I was also renting an office in a business centre and paying rent and services on that as I work for myself. At this time banks were scrutinising mortgage lending and it was tough to get a mortgage, let alone working for yourself where it seemed they wouldn’t even consider it.
In order to get a larger house for our growing family we decided, if I were to work from home (home office) we could save the cost of renting the office and put that towards renting a larger house, as the little two bedroom Victorian cottage we were in was getting increasingly cramped.
So that’s what we did. We rented the 3 bedroom house and I built an office in the garden at the cost of about £3500. Although this sounds a lot for what was basically a glorified shed, I was paying about £1000 per month for the old office, so buy the end of the first year it had saved us about £8500 in rent and services.
This is how we began to save money. We were living frugally, only buying the essentials, eating supermarket own brand products, not having expensive holidays. I don’t think I’ve been abroad in about 8 years. For holidays we bought a trailer tent off eBay and had camping holidays with the kids all over the UK at a fraction of the cost of going abroad. The kids love camping and we’ve met some great friends over the years.
So we are finally in a position that we could afford to buy. We had a nice deposit saved and began to enquire about mortgages. This is where we realised that we were totally priced out of the market.
The only property we could afford was a one bedroom flat(two bedroom at a push) within 30 miles of the town we’d grew up in and loved all our lives. So at forty two years old and desperate to get on the housing ladder, due to the fact I’d be knocking on the door of 70 years old by the time we’d finish paying the mortgage off, we thought about “buy to let”.
If we could only afford a flat, then maybe we should buy one and rent it out. Then in a few years, sell this (for a profit) and buy a bigger place that could actually accommodate our family. However, this is a big No No according to the banks. I was met with the same “No” responses from every bank or building society I asked, without them even looking at my finances. They all said they would not do “Buy to let” for first time buyers. Whether this was policy or the law, I’m not sure, but either way, we were stuffed, and stuck watching prices rise faster than we could save money. Short of winning the lottery, we were looking at a future of renting for the rest of our lives. This was worrying as with the way rents were rising, how the hell would we afford to pay rent in retirement.
Then two years later, close friends of ours told us they were moving away… They had decided to move to the coast and start a new life. This got us thinking. In the first instance it was jealousy. We would love to live by the sea and bring the kids up near a beach. Then we realised that why don’t we move to the coast? We had always dreamed of retiring to Cornwall in later life, but the house prices in Cornwall were on a par with Hertfordshire, so that was just a pipe dream. However, as our business was internet based, we could effectively run it from anywhere, as long as we had an internet connection. So we started to look at house prices in Suffolk where our friends planned to move, and were gobsmacked by the prices. As a comparison, a 3 bedroom house, identical to the house we are currently renting in Hertfordshire, just sold for £775k. The equivalent house in suffolk with a bigger garden, office, workshop, 5 minutes from the beach, two minutes walk to shops, etc was £275k. That’s half a million pounds cheaper for a better house in a better location. Wow..! Was our amazed reaction as we spent hours browsing houses on the internet, so excited about what we could get for our money. It was like being a kid in a candy shop. Suddenly instead of feeling hopelessly strapped for cash, we felt like we’d won the lottery.
So after months of weighing up pros and cons of moving away from friends and family, we decided to go. We got a mortgage and will be moving (hopefully) in February.
So why are the prices so cheap where we are moving to, I hear you ask. Well, quite simply, it is transport links. There are no motorways, the train takes ages, stopping at every little village, meaning companies tend to avoid the area, making employment options limited. Speaking to a friend of mine, about companies investing in the area, he said if it’s more than an hours drive from London, venture capitalists are not interested. Being about two hours drive from London, many will not consider it. On the plus side, if you are a person who works for yourself and are not bound by location, it seems that there are amazing bargains to be had. Fingers crossed that our move all goes as smooth as silk and we get to begin the next chapter of our lives owning our own home.