I think we just need to ban foreigners buying property or make sure they have been resident for 10 odd years before they are allowed to buy. The amount of property being bought as an “investment” by rich Chinese/Arabs/Russians in London is stunning.

mikewsmith – Member
You have to remember unless you actually sell the value is meaningless. It’s only worth something when you have cash in hand.

Sale value is one thing but there are many other plus points to owning.

Once I reach 50 i’ll be mortgage free, so thats an extra £600-£700 a month i’ll be better off. I’d hate to be renting at that age.

The main thing I like about owning your own place is being able to do what you want to it decor and improvement wise, a real place to call home. I detested paying someone elses mortgage when renting, and of all the landlords i’ve had over the years all but one has been very shoddy.

I just got tired of moving every other year from house to house due to amateur land lords being unsecure in their btl positions and being pushed to flog the house on- leaving me to find another.

I ended up doing similar to gjp to get my house , 2 years as an expat on 6week trips to west african, eastern europe and the middle east- spending little on boozing it up like the other expats and sticking it all in my house fund.

Bought June 2012 gone up about 15k apparently?

Have no Mortgage all paid up
But answer to the question yes be OK

Not sure if I could buy my house today. In the 17 years since I bought it, it has gone up 5-6x in value!

I think we just need to ban foreigners buying property or make sure they have been resident for 10 odd years before they are allowed to buy. The amount of property being bought as an “investment” by rich Chinese/Arabs/Russians in London is stunning.”

perhaps that’s the plan to rebalance the defecit, sell London to a bunch of foreigners at overinflated prices and then crash, it’s 1987 all over again. Bottom falls out of market and they all clear off.

We could probably afford ours, if we both worked full time and had a mortgage till we are 65

Bought in 2001 having jacked it in after being made redundant in Sussex, which gave us a big deposit before prices went daft. Found the family house with a small mortgage that will be paid off this year, we have worked a variety of full and part time jobs around the kids, it’s been great.

Quite a lot of it needs replacing/renewing now though…..

I am very, very, very lucky. Moved 3 times, did loads of work to the house each time, but did it all myself and so not much cost. Now house was valued at 25 times my income. Bonkers.

Many STW-ers know the house

C

I live in a rented house that I could not afford to buy and according to zoopla its worth around £80000. 🙁

We’re moving in a few days so I’d like to think we can afford it. The level of over-inflation down here (Surrey Hills) is utterly bonkers though.

The level of over-inflation down here (Surrey Hills) is utterly bonkers though.

That’ll be down to all those middle aged,Audi driving IT managers on their carbon 29er wotnots 😉

Bought ours 4 years ago for £245K, have invested about £110k in it (big extension, loft conversion) it is probably worth £450k in the current crazy London market.
We couldn’t afford to buy it at its current value.

Given we’ve only been in for 5 years and I don’t believe it has gone up much if at all, then yes.

Yes, I suspect we’d struggle to buy this at its currect value. One 800 yards up the street is for sale at 3.6 Million. 😯 It wont sell for that, and ours is completely different and has half the number of bedrooms they have but it is nice to know the area is on the up.