Owning your own home

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I've always thought that when the time comes to sell my flat I'll just start a thread on LFGSS. It's how I've sold umpteen bikes/components.

Well it's very very hard on one salary. Mortgages offered at 4.5x salary for two people plus borrow some money from family to plump up the deposit and huge stamp duty bill.

Or buy somewhere not so nice and hope it becomes a decent place to live.

Problem with my cunning plan of flogging my flat and then waiting until the market crashes in order to buy a mansion for cash is that I'd need to pay rent in the interim, which would hoover up all the cash I made in the sale.

It's fine, just do it the week before

£395

That's the price of a semi in Lincolnshire.

I ended up losing way more than that the last time I got a semi in Lincolnshire.

So I am at a starting point, I have cleared all debt, have about £5k deposit already that I can add about £700 to each month if i rein in a bit of silly luxury spending in order to up my deposit. I want to buy (not London, Kent) does anyone have any advice or tips for doing so?

I want to get my foot on the ladder so am not adverse to starter homes, part buy part rent, flats, a bit of doer-uppers etc. point is I need to get on the ladder and stop paying rent.

or "what did you all do at this point and what would you do differently with hindsight?"

I bought shared ownership and it was fine until I wanted to sell. In hindsight I would have bought the other half as soon as it was even slightly possible.

Instead of selling it and buying a new place you mean?

trouble is in my current area, there is a distinct lack of shared ownership sites. a few are coming up and I am on their email list.

"...what would you do differently with hindsight?"

Start hoarding bank statements and proactively obtain any in the last 12 months that you happen to be missing.

Open a 'Help to Buy ISA' - That was a free £1k for our deposit right there from 5 months of saving.

oooh good point. need to get that open for this tax year.

all my bank statements are paperless so I should be able to start downloading them now in readyness. disclaimer: I work for a bank but its one that isnt helpful with regard to mortgages that dont have 25% or more deposit so I will have to look elsewhere probably.

There are some things you can do with help to buy ISAs and Lifetime ISAs

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/help-to-buy-ISA

Help to Buy was easy, and I was one of the first customers Nationwide dealt with in claiming my bonus, so it should be even more straightforward now.

all my bank statements are paperless so I should be able to start downloading them now in readyness. disclaimer: I work for a bank but its one that isnt helpful with regard to mortgages that dont have 25% or more deposit so I will have to look elsewhere probably.

That might not work, unless the downloaded copies show your name and address on them.

Wood burning stoves:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39115829

oh, thats a good question. I will check and if not revert to paper. also my daily banking is fragmented across multiple banks. I should probably look at consolidating them, unfortunately my employer insists on paying my salary into one of their accounts so I have to transfer everything out of those.

I want to get my foot on the ladder so am not adverse to starter homes, part buy part rent, flats, a bit of doer-uppers etc. point is I need to get on the ladder and stop paying rent.

I'd lean towards doer uppers if you have the skills and can stomach it...

or "what did you all do at this point and what would you do differently with hindsight?"

...because the likelihood is that the first place you buy will disappoint you in some way. A doer upper will lower your expectations and also allow you to increase the value of the place reasonably easily, assuming most of the work you do will be cosmetic / non structural.

Like @BQ I also bought through SA. It was OK. Like BQ, I got pissed off at the staircasing process, even though objectively it's not bad.

The problem with SA is that you have all the responsibilities of ownership, but not all the advantages, i.e. I believe you'd pay 100% of your allocated major works charges, even if you only own 35% of the equity. But maybe some other leases are different.

Just consolidate your savings accounts, lenders like to see the deposit all in one place.

While I was living there, it was reasonably fine. Sure, the housing association were somewhat officious occasionally, and consistently useless at doing anything simple like engaging repair men, informing us that there would be scaffolding going up or finishing painting things, but I had 18 years in the place so it must have been alright. But HAs are generally interested only in building new flats and selling them on, just like any other developers.

When I wanted to sell it I was still a 50% owner, and had to buy the other half from the HA and sell it to the buyer at the same time (in something called back-to-back staircasing and sale). I had a massive ballache trying to persuade them to let me do this, and drop their 8 weeks option to sell it shared ownership to social tenants. Fine idea, but by then the market price was over half a million pounds, and anyone who could raise the £250,000 to buy the 50% would have been ineligible for shared ownership under their criteria anyway, so it would have been a 8 weeks of wasted time. This bit of maths eluded them for a while.

Then there was the discovery that people who work for housing associations are apparently the ones who were too slow and thick to get jobs in local councils. They were so inefficient, slow, useless and unprofessional that they almost torpedoed my sale, and it was only by ringing up loads of people there all the time and demanding that they sort things out right there while I was on the phone that I managed to complete in time.

I would have saved a ton of stress and panic by having bought out the whole flat and extended the lease during the 18 years I lived in it, thereby cutting the HA out of the loop entirely. And I would have made maybe £100,000 more money to boot.

its quite likely I am going to be saving for at least a year. I can utilise the £200 a month allowable payment into a help to buy isa but the rest of the available cash I can save is useless adding to that at 2% when I can put it into one or two regular saver accounts with First direct +another for example paying 5% (but maximum monthly deposit of £300). im trying to maximise the interest as quickly as possible. Before I approach any lenders, I will then consolidate the savings all into one place in order to make life easier.

bexleyheath.

provincial shit hole or next big thing?

Mother in law lives round there. Don't see it ever being the next big thing, but not exactly a shit hole. About as exciting as you'd expect a small town centre in the London/Kent suburbs.
Good Wilkos.

Strong dogging scene

...go on

My friends live that way, and they've got quite a nice house where the previous owners converted the loft into a mini pub. Complete with darts and a tiny pool table.

On the other hand it is pretty horrible to get there, and apparently most of the people who live on their road are taxi drivers.

Come be my neighbour http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-47046036.html