Mummascribbles – First Time Buyers – How to be Happier With Your Lot – Mummascribbles

We became homeowners back in Aprl 2014 at the ripe old age of 31. It was a dream come true, something we thought was genuinely never going to happen. Growing up in London was always wonderful – that was until it came to moving out of the parental home.

Like many others, for a long time we were affected by the shortage of housing combined with the need to save ever-higher deposits and we soon discovered that it’s incredibly difficult for people to put down roots for the first time in their own home. An international survey found that UK first-time buyers are feeling even more downbeat than their European counterparts. In the UK, 89% of people surveyed said it is increasingly difficult to buy a home compared to 79% in Europe as a whole. For many, the first home has always been one of compromise, one that ticks just enough boxes to allow them on the ladder and now there are even more concessions to be made. We were definitely in a position where we couldn’t be hugely picky when we were looking for our house. We went to see a lot and were outbid on all but one which is the one we find ourselves living in now.

So if you’re searching for your first home and you’re finding things hard because of your budget, what can you do to be happier with your lot?

Know what you are buying

In some areas, houses are so scarce and buyers so keen to bag a home that they are making offers based on very quick viewings or worse still, no viewings at all. Consumer champions Which, recently released a warning urging potential home buyers to pay more attention to house maintenance issues that could add thousands to the cost of their home. Paying close attention to jobs that may need to be carried out to make your home liveable could help you haggle for a lower price and ensure you have spare funds to have the maintenance completed. It’s also pretty important to know what the house is made out of. We put an offer on a house that we soon discovered we couldn’t actually get a mortgage on because of the material that was used to build it. It can be incredibly hard in this competitive battle to get the offer in and accepted or to outbid others but make sure you know what you are bidding on to save not only your time but potential disappointment.

Be careful where you buy

Living in a desirable area with good local schools and transport links is what pushes up the price of a property, so are there any points you can compromise on? If you dream of a seaside home, does it need to be in the hippest area? Newbiggin by the Sea on the North East coast is officially the cheapest seaside spot in Britain with houses costing as little as £75,063. Also in the North, Middlesbrough has been named the cheapest town to buy a house in. While your job may dictate the areas where you’d like to live, your house criterion and budget will narrow your field further – enter your details into the BBCs calculator to find out where you can afford to live in the UK. We were really very limited to where we could live because of work and the fact that I need to be able to drive Zach to and from my mum’s three days a week. If you don’t have those limitations and can make that money stretch further by choosing a slightly different area, it’s definitely worth looking into what you can get and where.

Financial help

The government have announced a number of first buyer help schemes in recent years. Helptobuy is perhaps the most well known, it now allows you to buy new and existing homes with the help of an equity loan and mortgage guarantee. For council tenants with over 5 years residency in the same home, there’s the possibility of buying the property with a significant discount through Righttobuy. There are also various shared ownership schemes run by housing associations throughout the UK. These allow you to part-own your home, building equity instead of paying rent. Finally, to help savers, the government is also setting up special ISA’s for first time buyers, due to be launched this December. For every £200 savers put in, they’ll receive a £50 top up, to be put towards their purchase to a maximum of £3,000. If you’re buying as a couple, you can both open a home buyer ISA. Plus, if you’ve owned a home before but your partner hasn’t they will still be eligible for assistance, so you can still take advantage!

There are so many options out there now for first time buyers, and you know what, we got that help so it is absolutely possible to go through this means. We used the government Helptobuy scheme to buy our house and are forever thankful for this coming into place. We needed a 5% deposit (which was still thousands of pounds) but it made it so much more manageable to get to than a full on 20%. We would absolutely still be renting right now if we hadn’t had help.

Make your home your own

In reality, to get on the property ladder you may need to purchase a property that’s more of a doer-upper than you’d like. It may be that you have to budget for a new kitchen or don’t have as many rooms as you’d like. If you’re dealing with the latter, consider how you can best use the space that you have. You can separate rooms with bi-fold doors to allow free flow of light, take a look at the Vufold collection for some inspiration. This might mean being a little more creative with the areas you are left with but it should be a lot cheaper than adding additional rooms. Owing to the fact that we had no spare cash other than what we were using to actually buy the house, we had to make sure we bought somewhere that didn’t need major renovations. That said, the garden was a massive task in itself – the one thing that had been completely ignored by the previous owner!

From this…

…To this

If you’re not already a DIY enthusiast, as a first time buyer you may soon find yourself glued to YouTube finding out how you go about jobs like tiling and wallpapering. If this sounds like you, you may also want to check out your local college to see if they run any relevant DIY courses or book onto some of B&Qs handy courses for handyman wannabes. If there is one thing I have loved since we have moved in, it’s seeing the other half’s DIY skills growing. That and he now has enough tools to make goood use of the shed!

I feel incredibly lucky that the opportunity came our way to own our own home. We may have Mum’s old (very comfy) sofas, we may have the same wardrobe that we had in our old flat and we may have mismatched furniture throughout the house, but, what we also have is a wonderful little house that Zach knows is home. Somewhere he will grow up and go to school (we have the school playground at the bottom of the garden!), make friends and be happy.

Are you saving for your first home? Do you have any tips for those who are yet to climb onto the property ladder? How did you manage to save and are you a DIY god/goddess?

This is a collaborative post.