Welcome to Home Truths, the tell-all series where homeowners and renters spill the beans on what really goes on behind the scenes when buying, moving or renting a property.
Moving story at a glance:
Age: 36
Job: Marketing manager
Salary: £65,000
Combined household income: £110,000
House cost: £600,000
Deposit paid: £90,000
Money spent on renovations: £28,000
Mortgage payments: £2,000 per month
Mortgage interest rate: 3.5%
Other monthly outgoings: £1,600
Monthly savings: £90
What’s your home like?
It’s a three-bedroom Victorian terrace in Walthamstow, East London. The house is around 1,000 sq ft and we’ve invested in a new kitchen to make it open plan and more modern.
It has lots of original features and beautiful flooring. The bathroom’s a bit of a compromise and the third bedroom is small, but there’s always something, right?
When did you move in?
November 2019.
Why Walthamstow?
It’s funky and creative with lots of good coffee joints and family-friendly pubs. I always joke about being a millennial cliché, but like many people around here, we moved from Stoke Newington in search of a family house.
We were able to buy here because we bought a two-bedroom Stoke Newington flat in a modern block in 2016, thanks to Help to Buy, and it accidentally turned a large profit in just a few years.
We have a two-year-old daughter, so having easy access to parks is the most important thing right now. If I can get a decent flat white on the way, then bonus.
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How did Help to Buy work for you?
I feel very grateful for Help to Buy. We wouldn't have been able to get on the property ladder with the size of the deposit we had originally, so Help to Buy was our only option at the time.
When we came to sell our flat, the value had increased massively and we made a £100,000 profit (after paying back the government loan), which meant we were able to buy a good-sized family home.
How do you make your new home work financially?
We had to take out a large mortgage to make it work and, while a £2,000-a-month mortgage repayment isn’t as high as some people pay, I do think daily (and lose sleep over) how much it costs.
One day I would like to be in a position to reduce it. My wife and I both work full-time, which means we also pay £1,000 a month in nursery fees for our daughter. And during lockdown we got a car, so that’s another £250-a-month outlay. Plus, the house isn’t as efficient to heat and run as our flat, so the bills have gone up.
How easy was it to get a mortgage?
Pretty easy because we ported our existing mortgage and added a new product when we completed. Because we were selling a Help to Buy flat, we paid off our loan from the proceeds of the sale.
Essentially we’d saved a 5% deposit and the government had loaned us 20%, which meant we had a 75% loan to value mortgage. Selling up and disentangling the mortgage from the Help to Buy was pretty straightforward. We chose a conveyancer who had experience in that and they handled it all, basically.
Any regrets?
It’s a great house and we love it here. My only regret is the money it's costing me each month and how manageable that will be in the long-term.
In hindsight, I didn't understand what it would cost to have a new kitchen put in and I got carried away with the works on that to the tune of £20,000. Not that anything is majorly high spec, but we overspent on some things I could have pulled back on. It’s not our forever home, but it’s good for now.
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