How the other half lives

I was down in London this weekend, visiting my sister, and being the curious sort, I booted up the Rightmove App on my phone to see what you get for your money around Euston Station -I came across this beauty, at just over a quarter of a million quid…

 

Studio flat, London, £275k

You don’t get the whole building for that though, you get a studio flat. Now, I’d like to draw your attention to the phrase “An ideal first purchase”. I suppose a blog post requires a bit more than a “LOL” in response to that, but really, even in London that’s insane isn’t it?

I appreciate that location is everything when it comes to property, but the most expensive studio flat I could find in Liverpool is ‘only’ £110,000 – and that one comes with 24hr concierge, communal roof terrace and view of the 3 graces and river.

Studio Flat, One Park West, £110k

Of course £275k seems almost reasonable when you compare it to this lovely house in Holland Park, a snip at £40million – now, either there’s a decimal point in the wrong place on that advert, or that’s £5million per bedroom. For that price, it had better come with hot and cold running Clooney!

8 bedrooms in Holland Park - yours for £40,000,000

Well that’s piqued my interest

Oh joy unconfined.

The one small crumb of comfort in this ‘buying a house’ lark was that, at the very least, interest rates were bottom-scrapingly low, so when we finally managed to get a mortgage, it wasn’t going to be too difficult to make the payments (assuming of course that we don’t overstretch ourselves or get ‘big societied’ out of work). But having just listened to MoneyBox (listen again on the iPlayer for a while at least), it looks like even that glimmer of hope may be about to blink out.

Apparently the markets are anticipating a rise in interest rates ‘sooner rather than later’ after this weeks increase in inflation. So the advisor on MoneyBox was suggesting popping down to the building society (or wherever) first thing on Monday morning to fix your mortgage rate, otherwise you may risk being left out in the cold (literally, if you can’t make your payments).

Of course super-cheapo variable rate mortgages aren’t available to first time buyers in the first place, but in my experience, when prices start to go up in one part of an industry, they start going up in other parts ‘sooner rather than later’.

The start of things

2011 may well be the worst possible year to be a first time buyer. Prices are historically high, but are starting to drop. Mortgages are hard to come by and saving for a deposit looks like it’s going to get more difficult as the year draws on. A recent Ipsos Mori poll revealed that 68% of people in the UK think that this is a bad time to buy property, and 75% say they would be less comfortable about buying a house than they were six months ago.

However, 2011 is the year in which M and I are hoping to buy our first house. We’re in our mid 30’s, and we want to start a family, so moving into his tiny rented one bedroom flat isn’t really an option – There’s barely space for all of his books, let alone mine as well.

As for M moving in with me? Well I’m part of what the media refer to as the boomerang generation – in other words, I live with my Dad. I love my dad, we have a great relationship, and he gets on well with M. And while I’m sure he likes to think that he’s gaining a son rather than losing a daughter, I’m also fairly sure that he’d prefer to think of that in a metaphorical, rather than residential sense.

So, we’re on the hunt for a little house on the Mersey, somewhere that we can call ‘ours’, where we can worry about leaky faucets, fight over what colour to paint the walls and complain about the draughts.

This year we’ve got the delights of house hunting to look forward to, as well as the entertainment of applying for a mortgage, and the stroll in the park that is raising a deposit of at least £10k. Being objective about these things, this is probably the wrong time to be thinking about buying a house, but I’m taking inspiration from an old Chinese proverb. “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago – the second best time is today.”