First-time Buyers Need to Save Up for 12 Years
Want to buy in London? Sure – save £500 a month for more than a decade and you may be able to afford a 1-bed flat in Harrow or Croydon in 2029.
A new housing calculator created by GetAgent pours further misery on aspiring London home owners.
https://www.getagent.co.uk/find-home
It reveals that a couple working in London earning £50,000 – which is what the average London couple under 35-years-old earns – and with £20,000 of cash available to be used as a deposit – would not be able to afford to buy anything in the capital today.
They would need to save £539 for 12 years to buy a 1-bed flat in Zone 5 (Harrow, Ruislip, Bexley, Croydon).
If their combined salary went up to £70,000 and they could save £539 a month, it would take them 4 years to cobble together the remaining £80k they would need to buy anything anywhere in the capital – and that’s if the property market remains at today’s prices and does not rise.
Today, the nearest they could live to London with the £179k available to them to spend on a property including stamp duty costs would be Stevenage or Thurrock where they could get a 1-bed flat.
For a 2-bed flat, they would be looking to move to Rugby, Peterborough or Huntingdon and for a house, Peterborough, Kettering or, for something a bit roomier, Stafford in the west Midlands – 2 hours’ commute from London.
To afford a 3-bed within the M25, you’ll need to earn £58k and have a £70k deposit. This will get you a 3-bed in Dartford (£323k).
The GetAgent calculator uses affordability criteria similar to that which many mortgage brokers would use and uses GetAgent’s property data to suggest areas where property prices match budget.
One of the key constraints on the size of the mortgage is the size of the deposit.
Even high-earning City professionals (£100k and more) with a deposit of say, £30K, will need to be looking at the outskirts of London, like Potters Bar, Woking or High Wycombe and that would be for a 1-bed flat.
Alternatively, for the same money, they could get a 3-bed house in Bedford (£260,000), Ashford International (£248,000) or Rugby (£203,000).
QUOTE:
GetAgent CEO Colby Short says:
"Getting the keys to my first home was one of the proudest moments of my life. Unfortunately it is becoming an increasingly hard moment to achieve, especially in London where the average age of a first time buyer reaches 34. Unless there is a huge increase in supply of properties in the south east we could see more and more people moving to other major cities within the UK."
Data available here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/buaftrr8r4x9f4u/%5BGetAgent%5D%20Press%20release%20v1.doc?dl=0
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About GetAgent
GetAgent.co.uk is the estate agent comparison site. Launched in March 2015, we use property sales data to create a transparent and accurate indicator of estate agent performance and help homeowners maximise the resale value of their home by finding the best estate agent for them.
Owners provide a few basic details about their property which we then use to shortlist the top agents for them, based on their local experience and past performance selling similar properties. The homeowner can see how much the agent charges, and then arrange valuations with their chosen agents.
GetAgent in numbers:
7,000: homesellers have used GetAgent since launch in March 2015
£4.1bn: of property sold as a result of agent recommendations from GetAgent
5,000: estate agents signed up to GetAgent
About GetAgent founders:
Colby Short (CEO) previously worked in sports hospitality. Former country manager of SMG Worldwide in Sweden.
Peter Thum-Bonanno (CTO) previously ran property portal Find Properly, which he later sold to property search company Lokku.
Seb Powell (CPO), previously head of design at ad-tech startup Adbrain.