Owning your own home

I'm only 28

well fuck you then

it would be great to build even greater equity in our place, in time for our next move

It doesn't really matter whether you build greater equity in your place, money in the bank, ISA, etc so long as you can access it when you buy the next place. It doesn't matter where the money comes from

If you're disciplined enough to save or overpay then the term doesn't mean that much.

If, on the other hand, if you have money you spend money then it may be best forcing yourself to put it into your mortgage by reducing the term and increasing repayments.

How does equity work when buying 'next' home?

If I have 70k of equity, and I want to buy a 700k place with a 10% deposit, how much do i need in 'cash' on top of that? I thought I needed 5% as cash outside of equity for some reason, but i don't know why.

(ignoring SDLT and moving costs)

tldr; we might accelerate our plan to move after 5 years of owning the flat, to 3 years (when our fixed term ends) which is next year, seeing as I think we're at a point where we're more likely to earn less in the future, than more.

Effectively it's all cash. Whether it comes from selling your previous property (and you may well never see the money as it may be instantly used to pay off mortgage and deposit for new place), withdrawing from an ISA, selling shares or other assets, it doesn't really matter.

edit - need to read

thanks, makes sense.

@umop3pisdn thats why i said ignoring SDLT ;)

That looks amazing. Would buy.

On the other hand - we will probably move again in 3-4 years

Lots of strong arguments against buying and selling in such a short timeframe, particularly stamp duty. Probably cheaper to sell your existing place, sit in cash and rent somewhere than to pay stamp duty twice in that period.

Only if house prices are stable.

If @swedeee is only two years in then he'll have only paid 5% stamp duty between £300 and £500k. Saved me a chunk as we'd budgeted for full whack.

Before:

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After (beds still need planting, and have agreed with neighbour to get rid of that holly tree but it requires council notification):

(Can't go on the grass for 2 weeks either. Hope it rains for the next two weeks to save me watering it.)

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It would be daft to consider moving cos houses in the area that are like yours are going for silly prices, but the ones in places you want to move to are pretty static, wouldn't it?

If he’s worried about the market exposure he can hang onto his old place and rent it out.

Thanks all for the advice.. agreed on the flexibility aspect - I do have the discipline to save/invest it and not piss it away so will likely just leave it to grow in time for the next house. Maybe up payment by 20% to a nice round number...

with regards to moving houses in short timeframes - our current place just made so much sense from a financial standpoint. The mortgage payments are less than half of what renting a similar property (Guildford) would be like . We got the reduced first time buyers SDLT so didn't cost too much first time round.... although it will hurt a bit next time round. Over the 5-6 years I anticipate we will be here we will be very much quids in over renting

Bulb are wanting to fit smart meters, SMETS2 variety.

No meter readings obviously appeals. Any reason to not go ahead with it?

Depending on your position you could have paid almost as most tax on the rent as you would on SDLT in a couple of years.

So long as it's not a pattern of buying and selling then accelerating one SDLT payment isn't going to make a huge deal of difference.

Have a look at this.

share.octopus.energy/grape-king-877

Reported for spam

^ Looks like this needs copy and paste.

Just send me the bottle Lagavulin 16.

You should repost the link with https:// at the front. I think that'll stop it from being turned into a forum link.

Grape King 877?

Solicitor question... we just got an offer accepted on a new build property but we don’t have a solicitor lined up. The developer are pushing us to use their “independent” recommended solicitor but I feel a little bit sceptical. Is it better to find our own solicitor or use their one?

Find your own, for sure.

This ^.

Never, ever use the solicitors recommended by the developer. No matter what 'incentives' they offer.