martinmilne

wats best in todays economy peoples opionons im self employed so i always got fear of no work but aside from that wats best way to go

GribbiN

If you can get a mortgage get one, its an investment, renting is just money down the pan buying someone else house.

steviecossie

i've just got my first mortgage and had an offer accepted on our house, was a lot easier than i thought TBH.

if you have seen a house and can afford the mortgage then i would defo buy mate

Alan_D

Buying a house is the way to go if you can afford it. Buying one outright would be great... as you could do a lot worse than owning land or property, even if there was drop in its value.

But the problem comes with a mortgage. When you take out a mortgage you're really borrowing the house, not the money. The money stands for the house, and if you don't pay the money back you have no house. If you can afford it then go for it, but remember, a house is a place to live, not necessarily an investment. So don't just think that any mortgage you can just about afford will do (because you think the value of the house will rise). When (not if) interest rates rise you could be crippled by the mortgage payments. Even if it's fixed to start with it will probably revert back to a variable rate at some point. And if you can only just afford the payments now (thinking it's a good time to borrow), you will have serious problems when it tracks the base rate and when that rate is higher than it is now. Basically, give yourself room to breathe with the payments, and if you can't do that then leave it and just rent.

So just think about it. Nothing wrong with renting at all. You're not throwing money away, you're paying to live somewhere, which is what a house is for.

Mark_

id love to buy a place however im finding it hard raising a deposit.

its just not as easy at it used to be,

Roosie

iTrader: (8)

im in opposite boat ive got the deposit actually i have 50% deposit but cant get a mortgage. as ive NEVER had credit on anything so they say they cant judge me against anything.

Mark_

thats the other thing that will sop me, ive only ever dealt with cash, no credit ever

PT

Get a credit card and start using that. Then pay it off in full every month. Also if you havent, join the electoral roll

Roosie

iTrader: (8)

ive been trying to get one for last year. ive had to get a credit card to build some credit which i hate. i was always bought up not to have credit cards and loans for cars etc only mortgage.

PT

Me to mate, when I started uni HSBC sent me one without asking. First time I used it was after that when travelling in America and my debit card wouldnt work lol

j6kyt

dont waste your money renting m8 but if you can.

Mark_

im on the electoral roll, but havent had a credit card before.

Alan_D

Is there no chance of you saving the full amount?

Shorty

iTrader: (1)

I have just got a moartgage on my own for a house to rent out, i am 20. Had a 15% deposit.

If you can buy then buy, renting is a waste of money isnt it! Plus the mortgage re payments will probably be lower on the house than renting would be...

Roosie

iTrader: (8)

yeah thats what im going to do i think hopefully this time next year i will buy one outright.

Alan_D

Nice one mate, that's the way to go if you can. There is this notion here and in other countries that houses are this magical investment, so the best thing to do is just buy them any way you can. Most of the people in the UK are debt slaves and they don't even realise it.

carcollector

i would learn how to read and write properly before thinking about signing any paperwork

Lambchop

iTrader: (1)

Morgate?

vaughant

iTrader: (1)

Fuck me that's good going!!!how old are you now then?and what sort of price house are you looking at?

I must admit that I had a windfall to buy my first house,well my old man died and the old girl sold the house,paid of the mortgage,bought another for cash and gave me and my sister a big lumper to use for our houses.she (sister) already had a house and effectively wasted her money but I put all of it into a house and it meant I've now got a £300k house with only say £ 90k mortgage. I've remortgaged once as well to sort the house out so it would probably be gone by now,but you've got to live in a nice place and at the end of the day paying a bit more each month to do that hasn't killed me.

I've been overpaying for a long time now and I've only got 8 years left on the mortgage so overall I've knocked 7 years off it.

Houses were a lot cheaper then (1999),as I paid £95000 for a 3 bed semi in a good area complete with a swimming pool under a conservatory and 140ft garden and a garage.

Sold it in 2007 a bit cheaper to the old girl but still got £280k for it effectively so it's certainly worth buying now,as in say 5 years time prices will be creeping back up.

The gambler in me says theyll dip a bit more but start levelling out later this year,although I still think it's a good time to buy.

Roosie

iTrader: (8)

28 mate

house prices around Norfolk are cheap compared to a lot of places i can get a good size house for 130-140k
saved upto 60k so far but if i needed to i have over 40k in cars i can sell lol. just cant get around to wanting to sell them.

vaughant

iTrader: (1)

Point taken but it doesn't always work that way.

Boy I worked with spent at least 7-8 years saving up to buy a house outright,he had about £50k put away in 2000 after he'd started saving in 1995,good going by anyones standards.

Problem was,everytime he saved 10k,houses went up 20,leaving him behind.we all know about the boom between say 2003-2007 where I know my own property went from say £150k to at it's peak in 2006-7 £300k,savings couldn't keep up with growth,and this guy was earning £40-50k per year,every year.

He's now ended up buying a flat in the Marina,ok he had about £75k to put down but the flat cost £175k so he still borrowed £100k.those flats only went for £40k when I was looking so realistically he could have bought 2,maybe 3 for the same money in 95,having by now paid 15years of a mortgage off completely.

Aside from those who bought in the boom,I can't see how you can realistically lose major amounts of money on a property and even they will eventually come out on top as in 20-25years time their mortgages will be paid off and they'll still own the property.

I suppose your correct about being a debt slave in a way but unless you want to live in a tent or with your parents til your 35 I don't see what options people have nowadays?

vaughant

iTrader: (1)

Well done mate,that's very impressive.never been to Norfolk,closest I got was a place called eye near peterbrough,funnily enough to buy some Cossie bits,well I was the van driver!!

What Ive seen on the telly it looks a nice part of the world.

Might be better to take a small mortgage out,even a loan if you can afford the repayments rather than sell all your cars. Tbh with your deposit you'll have access to awesome deals,I'm currently paying 0.17% above the BoE base rate which works out as 0.67% interest.that's for the term of my mortgage and I can pay off as much or as little as I like and cancel the term when I want.I only got the deal as I had over 50% equity in the house.

Tbh fella, you always come back to cars eventually and if it's something like that mk2 escort in your sig you'll only end up paying more again in the future for it if you see what I mean?

Alan_D

Well yes, in your example the guy you know didn't do that well when house prices were rising. But they have just been through a huge bubble. In fact, all the western consumer economies have been through a bubble and it's never going to come back. If house prices start rising again like they did before, it will without doubt be a bad thing.

Another thing to consider in your above post where you mention a levelling off in the market is that RPI inflation (retail price index) is running at around 4.5% at the moment. Now, it's in the interest of the people recording and presenting the figures to find ways of adjusting it to the downside by changing the way it's measured, so I'd say a conservative estimate of a rise in the real cost of living to the average person is around 5%. All this quantitative easing will work its way down the stuff we buy eventually and I really don't think it will be as little as 5% inflation then, regardless of the effect of cuts on 'demand'. So if house prices aren't rising by 5% then they are falling or not going anywhere. And if they are just levelling off then they are losing 5% a year. Not a great investment by any stretch of the imagination.

Then you have to think about the fact that interest rates WILL rise once this inflation kicks in. And the only thing propping up house prices right now is a record low base rate. That can't last forever.

Also, you could say that someone is wasting money by renting while they save to buy... but what about interest payments on a mortgage? That's certainly not anything to do with the value you see in the house, and it means that what you've paid for the house in the end is actually much more than you think you bought it for. So it's really a toss up in that respect.

Basically, over the last decade or so, house prices have rocketed while we spent money we borrowed from the rest of the world (as a nation). There is no way to keep up these standards of living without continuing to borrow. But no creditor on the planet will lend to someone (or a country) who needs to borrow more money to pay the money they already owe back. We're approaching the end game now, not getting out of recession as the media puppets would have you believe.

I guess what I'm saying is don't expect houses to rise in real terms. And maybe even get ready for them to fall further.