First-time buyer blues
Thousands of people in their twenties and thirties are trying to get onto the property ladder. With the market affected so heavily by the recession, it can prove to be a real struggle. Clare Reay shares some of her experience.
Time for a confession. I’m in love. In fact, I’ve fallen in love about six times over the last two years and none of those times have been with my husband…
Relax. I’m talking about falling in love with houses. We’ve been looking to buy one for around two years. When we started, one of the first things a friend said to my husband was “watch out, women feel emotionally connected to a house straight away and start mentally moving all your stuff in.” We laughed, but sure enough a few months later at a second viewing I’m already planning the dinner parties we’ll have in this fabulous dining room and telling Tom to hurry up (he’s taking an age asking all about this crack and that damp… who cares! Think how lovely that wedding picture would look on this wall!).
Breaking Up
Unfortunately, all this head-over-heels stuff only makes the break-ups even harder. With the first (beautiful new kitchen) our offer was trumped, with the second (south-facing garden) the owners decided they didn’t want to sell after all, and with the latest (huge master bedroom) our mortgage application was refused. We had acceptable credit scores, income and deposit, but our application just happened to coincide with the big, bad money-lending freeze. Joy. They all came as huge disappointments and on top of that we lost our survey fee on the last one. We retreated back to our one-bedroomed, concrete back-yarded flat thoroughly stung.
Conflicting advice
Ten months later we’re half-heartedly looking again, but we just have no idea what to expect. Back then, with each viewing the estate agents would tell us different stories.
“Market’s slow”
“Market’s picking up”
“Great time for first-time buyers”
“Tough time for first-time buyers (but don’t let that put you off!)”
Our friends all had different opinions too…
“You should get on the property ladder now” (we’re trying!)
“Move abroad; it’s so much cheaper” (trying to tell us something?)
“You should wait five years.”
That last one was the least appealing. Having already spent four years scrimping and saving for our 10% deposit, the thought of more waiting had me feverishly scrunching the bubble wrap (well it wasn’t being wrapped around our knick-knacks and breakables, so it might as well be put to good use!). But maybe time was what it would take – apparently the average deposit on a house in the last year has been 24%. Surely the only first-time buyers who can afford that either have parents with very deep pockets or a large inheritance.
Don’t Show us the Money?
Considering first-time buyers are the ones fabled to have the power to get the property market moving again, the banks sure are making it hard for us. We have money sat in the bank that nobody seems to want and I’m starting to envy our friends who bought a few years ago on 100% mortgages. Yes, they’re probably on ludicrously high fixed-term rates and they’re probably facing negative equity, but they have pretty houses to paint!
The truth is; I don’t think anybody really knows what will happen to the property market, so we can only keep trying. But at least I’ve learned my lesson about falling in love with every house we see – I’d settle for four walls and a roof now as long as they belonged to me!
For more info on how to buy a house why not read Making Sense of your Mortgage?
Written by Clare Reay.
Digg it
Reddit
Delicious
Stumble It!
Furl it
