We are working class folk of modest means and through luck and good judgement now own a property we could not in our wildest dreams buy in todays market. On our current income we would struggle in the first time buyers arena.
These circumstances have got us thinking could we retire early and release the equity in our current property and downsize to something more modest, anyone else having similar thoughts?
Any other enlightening comments also welcome.

Yes through renting. Most of the nice houses are taken up with people who think property is an investment rather than something to live in 😉

Yes through renting. Most of the nice houses are taken up with people who think property is an investment rather than something to live in

A little off topic but what struck me about the recent research carried out by the BBC about the removal of the spare room subsidy, regardless of the other issues,is that if you rent your house ( in the UK at least) you are subject to the vagaries of the owner be they private or public landlords whatever their latest agenda is. I would not like to live like that ( just bought a house after quite a few years renting)

Back on topic.

If you can find somewhere you are happy to live, it sounds like a great idea to downsize.

It’s going to get a lot worse when all these fifty somethings get their hands on their pension pots, another boom bust scenario looms.

Yes. I’m sure the Government recognisd the pensions time bomb and decided that if I spent all my life paying for one substantially overpriced asset, I would be able to cover my own expenses in my dotage.

We sold the house we bought at 3x income in 2001 for 5x income in 2012.

House had gone up by a lot, income had barely moved…

I bet everyone is thinking the same so perhaps it’s the right thing to do? 🙂

My parents (not in this country) bought their house for 30K (bought mid-1970s) but now it’s worth 450K. They cannot not even contemplate downsizing because they will have to move very far to afford a small one. I cannot afford it at all with my current income. 😯

Bought our current house for 52k ,15 years and just had it valued at £275k, after a lot of work!
We are selling and downsizing as our kids have left home and we dont use half the house now

It’s the new “acceptable” face of serfdom, with the bankers and the politicans as the new “Lords”keeping us proles in check as we have “so much” to lose??

I’m planning on moving to a huge turnip.

Huge turnip sounds good, as long as it’s warm and dry. 🙂

The opposite problem here. We bought our first house just before the bust (after a decade of renting waiting for a bust!).

So our house is worth less than when we bought it, meaning it is difficult to move or remortgage and we’re stuck on a crappy standard rate mortgage.

Personally I would remain rather than move unless I have a serious need of money.

There was a statistic published last week about the number of MP’s who own, and rent out, multiple properties. Basically it’s all of them except Dennis Skinner.

So it’s no great surprise that the singular ‘economic policy, (such as it is) now involves the inflation of another ridiculous property bubble. With the changes in pension policy announced last week, expect another flurry of buy-to-let mania, as pensioners do the logical thing in the present barren economic climate, and invest it all in property

So what’s with all the hate re the new pension changes?

Comrade Binners et al – do you think the state should dictate what you spend your savings/pension on?

I’m not a BTL er by the way but I am paying into my pension hence my desire for the state to **** off telling me what to spend it on.

Coke, and wing suit flying lessons are where I shall be investing mine 😉

I missed the bandwagon, should have bought in the 90’s when I could have got something for £35k, after wasting rent for 7 years eventually bought first house after the boom. Buying in the 90’s would have left me nearly mortgage free now, but still glad to be on the housing ladder regardless.

Rent around here is £100-£200 more than my mortgage, and i’d had enough of landlords and their poor ideals in those 7 years I rented.

For £600 mortgage I get a three bed semi detached with a decent garden. Some of the renting prospects for £600 are literally squats in comparison

To get back to the OP, even though I missed the boom, I managed to upsize to bigger house in the middle of the housing lull around 2010, and now current house is worth £30k more than it was when I moved in three years ago. Which would make it unaffordable if buying today.

We bought our house in 2006 just before the crash. German lenders are very fussy at the best of times and now, being self employed, I would struggle even to get a mortgage today. A lot of my German friends were telling me I was mad to buy a house as it ties you down, too much work etc etc. but now as seeing as the rent prices in this city are rising exponentially in the desirable areas they have all since changed their tune and indeed the market for buying property has exploded to such a degree that some new neighbours of ours bought their house which is a similar size to our house for two and a half times the price that we paid for ours! 😯

Yeah definitely. House prices have gone up in this area and mine would already be worth a bit more now, think I got in just in the nick of time!

I’m not criticising pensioners. Far from it. If you can release capital and invest it in something that delivers a higher return, you’d be mad not too

My criticism is of a government policy that allows that to happen. To suddenly unleash all that capital on an already overheated market. It’s insane! Doubly so, coming as it does on the back of the equally bonkers Help to Buy scheme. It’s going to end like every other bubble. Maybe even worse this time, given the perilous state of the real economy

So our house is worth less than when we bought it, meaning it is difficult to move or remortgage and we’re stuck on a crappy standard rate mortgage.

It’s not that easy to move around here at the moment full stop. Lots of very ambitious pricing going on.

Around 5 years ago my parents had a new kitchen and bathroom and the lounge decorated and it cost more than the house did in 1977. The new appliances they bought for the kitchen cost more than their first house.
I couldn’t afford my house now which we bought in 2001 and I for one can only wonder at just how much housing is going to cost my children. It’s not as if renting offers any savings. God forbid they might have to move to the north or some other place beyond the reach of civilisation. 🙂

Yes through renting. Most of the nice houses are taken up with people who think property is an investment rather than something to live in

The rent around here is as much as a mortgage on a similar property.

We spent the last 5 years in a house that was waaaaay above our means, mainly due to the view.
Just buying a house for us again, and despite having owned houses before (but lost big style in 2008,as we found ourselves selling up three houses on same street as it all nosedived), we are buying the cheapest 4-bed house we can.
We do live in nice place / good schools etc, and could have chosen a cheaper place in the city.
We worked out that country area living meant we would spend as much on cars/fuel as the extra mortgage of being in Dunblane/Stirling/Bridge of Allan.
I do not know how first time buyer families do it these days.

We’re in agreement I think Binners, but the housing problem stems from the previous gvt too. The current shower don’t have an awful lot at their disposal. I would like to see HTB scrapped. It’s helping the north but not doing the south any favours. I think the cash would be better spent up north in industry, jobs and comms (like hs2)

Back on topic for the OP no.

Unless you need or want to downsize OP I’d wait until retirement and pick up a BTL 😉

Coke, and wing suit flying lessons are where I shall be investing mine

actually, mandatory coke and wingsuit lessons for the over 70s might be the solution to a lot of problems

scaredypants – Member
Coke, and wing suit flying lessons are where I shall be investing mine
actually, mandatory coke and wingsuit lessons for the over 70s might be the solution to a lot of problems
POSTED 4 MINUTES AGO # REPORT-POST

Remember you heard it here first 😉

Yep. And i live in a 1 bedroom flat 😯

Bought our first house (modern 3-bed semi) in 1999, just before the prices went skyward, for £55k. Joint income at the time was about £40k.

We moved to our current slightly bigger, more expensive house in 2009, right at the bottom of the collapse but before the rise again. Sold our old house for £135k and bought the new one for £155k. Joint income now is about £50k.

With hindsight, we should have bought two houses in 1999 🙂

I think the price of my flat has just about doubled in 13 years, I could only afford it then because I had worked as an expat in the States for the previous 3 years so had a large deposit saved up. I suspect it would still be more affordable for me to buy now than then, due to higher salary and lower interest rates etc. My bike spending would need to be reigned in 😆

Ours has doubled in value in ten years. I still own over half of it thankfully. However nowadays I don’t think we could even get the deposit together to buy it.

I must have picked all the exceptions but everywhere I have lived rent has been less than mortgage. You have to remember unless you actually sell the value is meaningless. It’s only worth something when you have cash in hand.

bought a repo in 2010 with a 20% deposit, sold 12 months later for +£17k

bought another in 2011, refurbed using the +£17k

bought another in 2013 while keeping the refubed one,

not done too bad, got about 10x wage of mortgage

I live in Twickenham and such is the bonkers state of the housing market we couldn’t afford to buy the house we bought 3 years ago now. I reckon 15-20% rise in prices in the last year alone.

Captain slow – the thing is that it’s a doubly stupid policy. The money those pension funds held was invested in British business. All that money that’s now going to flood into buy to let is money that now won’t be invested in the real economy

When Gidiot talked about rebalancing the economy, we should have known it was this kind of mindless stupidity he had lined up. It’s absolute insanity! And it’s a case of when, not if, it goes tits up!

There’s a lot of people presently buying houses, mortgaged up to the hilt, who best get used to the idea of negative equity. Because that’s ultimately where it’s headed!

The money those pension funds held was invested in British business.

Most of it was held in equities, which I don’t think counts as investing in British Business. Buying shares in a company doesn’t net the company itself anything. The whole stock market is about making money off other people rather than investing in the companies themselves….

I don’t think anyone sane could argue it’d be better spent inflating a housing bubble though

Ahhhh this thread is depressing….

IA – trying to buy a house :-/

We certainly couldn’t afford the house we live in now, just took early retirement and my wife works term time only. Eleven year wait for state pension so don’t think we would get much of a mortgage offer on age/current income.

Live in a modest three bed end of terrace 1890’s cottage, but its all ours so think we will stay put for now.

Not keen on all this BTL business, too many properties that should be for first time buyers are being snapped up by landlords. Also wonder what happens to people who are renting then retire, where do they live once they can no longer afford the rent?

What are we going to do? Well, I’m a realist. I’m in my early 40’s and I reckon the whole idea of retirement, as it’s presently experienced by the baby boomers will be a long distant memory. We’ll still be paying for their final salary winters in Tenerife until we drop.

We’ll still be paying for their final salary winters in Tenerife until we drop

Not quite sure how you have contributed to my private sector final salary pension, but cheers if you have. Sorry to disappoint, not keen on Tenerife or the like, so might just have to be a week or two in Austria

No. We have a mortgage.