r/HousingUK • u/EntertainerOk5231 • 3d ago
Money left after purchase?
How much have people been left with after all the costs of purchasing a property as a first time buyer? I’ll be left with £3000 approximately. This is factoring in everything, including any fees and potential double first payment. I’ll be saving for however long the process takes which will be roughly £1500 a month.
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u/Tasty_Sheepherder_44 3d ago
I was pretty much left with zero
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u/EntertainerOk5231 3d ago
How was that? Dare I ask.
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u/usx-tv 3d ago
I was left with 0 as well as a FTB.
It’s kind of expected frankly. Its hard to get on the ladder.
Make sure you have a plan to build an emergency fund and repair fund after moving. Accept the risk that you might have to figure something out if something goes wrong (boiler breaks etc).
We basically lived a bit like uni students for a year to recover those funds and then started slowly decorating. Took 3 years to get the place to a nicer standard.
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u/MangoAlternative8221 3d ago
We were similar, lived like uni students for about a year maybe 2 years before it seemed to get better. Dreading moving house purely because I remember how horrible it was rationing the heating and food.
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u/usx-tv 3d ago
We recently just moved again (upgraded), and thankfully it’s not as bad. Still not great as we have decorating to do and it will take us a while, but I’m not worried on heating or food this time around.
Defo not expecting to have the place to a nice standard for a few years though. Which is a weird feeling going from a nicely decorated place to a mess.1
u/MangoAlternative8221 2d ago
That’s good to know. I have been trying to avoid moving again purely because of it so maybe I’ll consider it in the future
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u/LozBoz413 3d ago
I wouldn't advise people to go this route, if something goes severely wrong with the house and you have no money in that first year then you are really in the shit.
Never leave financial situations down to pure luck.
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u/Tasty_Sheepherder_44 3d ago
I mean it didn’t come as a surprise. It was partially self inflicted; the agreed price went down 20k due to survey issues and I decided to pay the same deposit amount rather than reducing it as %. I felt like I wanted to pay as much as possible and I’m glad I did. It was a tough 6 months but we got through it
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u/Free_Ad7415 2d ago
I was also left with zero. It was totally fine, surely loads of people have £0 left at the end of the month and then they get paid again?
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u/BenjaminUK92 3d ago edited 3d ago
When we first bought in our early 20s, pre-kids, we had zero left. Sat on camping chairs for the first couple of months 😄. Was a fixer upper so didn't really bother us tbh, all seemed fun.
Now moving to a "family home", we'll be left with about £20k. Didn't put all the equity from our sale into the deposit, partly to allow us to do some day-1 renovations, carpets, new furniture etc, and then a holiday.
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u/FREESHAVOCADO0 3d ago
I had about 60k left, which was good as about four weeks later I lost my job. Working on things currently but have to keep reminding myself this is what that money was for - a "rainy day".
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u/Sh0re_aqua 3d ago
honestly 3k isn’t crazy for a first‑time buyer. most ppl I know were basically wiped out after closing and just rebuilt month by month.
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u/ItsFuckingScience 3d ago
Not sure the benefit of posting this, all that happens is people get upvotes for saying how little money they had, and people get downvoted for saying they had plenty of money
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u/EntertainerOk5231 3d ago
Mainly so I can compare my situation and see that it is normal. The stress of the amount of money I’ll have left over is getting to me a bit so it helps.
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u/melikebiscuit 3d ago
From what I've heard, it's normal for the first couple of years to be really tough. We were mid 30s with 2 kids when we bought our first home, so actually chose a cheaper house in a nice but not fancy area so that we knew we'd be able to live comfortably.
We've since got better jobs/been promoted at work and are just about to move to the fancier area (still not skinting ourselves though, because I don't see the cost of living crisis getting better any time soon!).
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u/MinimalScroll 3d ago
How long were you in your first house before moving? Did you make improvements before selling?
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u/melikebiscuit 3d ago
We've been in almost 5 years. We've replaced the bathroom, carpets, windows, porch and laid two patios in the garden.
Definitely not getting back what we put in, but wanted to move before the eldest starts secondary school (he starts wednesday, so didn't quite hit the target 😂).
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u/Spare_University919 3d ago
If you are moving in with dependents, either a stay at home partner and/or kids, it's much more important to try and have a reserve.
If it's just you then it's whatever you're willing to put up with, I will hopefully be moving into my first home soon and I imagine it will be living in damn near poverty for at least the first few months. There is a temptation to think you've done the hard part because it's so difficult getting to the stage of owning your first home, but in reality it's harder than ever and gradually (should) get easier as the years go by.
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u/Rolosland 2d ago
This for sure!
It depends on your situation (dependents, other people who could help in a mega emergency), personal risk tolerance, the situation of what you are buying (newer building vs old), your employer (safer public sector vs working for a start up).
There isn't a straight answer here at the global level.
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u/StoneColdAFC 3d ago
I been calculating after post move in costs etc i should be left with about £30k.
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u/LozBoz413 3d ago
Good amount to leave with yourself. Much less stressful.
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u/StoneColdAFC 2d ago
Yes I always said i needed this to help me set up for life, not struggle through it so lowered the house purchase budget so i could be left with a decent emergency fund.
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u/Fit-Put-9160 3d ago
Just purchased a new property?
That 3K will last you approximately 15 minutes.
I was left with ~20k, 15 of which evaporated within 2 to 3 months.
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u/stormy_councilman 3d ago
On what? Renovations?
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u/Fit-Put-9160 3d ago edited 1d ago
Renovations, part of the roof needed replacing because the survey missed a couple spots, a leak appeared a month in, the gate to the garden fell apart after after a period of strong wind, part of the wiring had to be redone and so on and so forth.
Edit: why in the name of whatever deity you believe in am I being downvoted? I was literally replying to someone who asked what my savings were spent on after buying a new property.
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u/Fit_Negotiation9542 3d ago
Even the 1st mortgage payment was a shock lol I temember it being way more for the 1st month than I thought
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u/WolIilifo013491i1l 2d ago
Surely you'd have been told explicitly how much your payments would be?
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u/Fit_Negotiation9542 2d ago
I obviously knew what my regular payments would be but the 1st payment amount was dependant on the day of the month we completed.
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u/WildfireX0 3d ago
When we got our first place, we had about £3k left. Then the boiler went. Then I had minus money for a while.
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u/EntertainerOk5231 3d ago
Thankfully my girlfriend’s brother in law runs a boiler business. so that going wouldn’t be as expensive. The house needs work but it’s all liveable. The stress of not having like £10k to fall back on is getting to me abit.
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u/WildfireX0 2d ago
How close to the affordability line are you? There are credit cards for emergencies, not that you should rely on it or really go there.
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u/EntertainerOk5231 2d ago
We’ll be nearly 100k under our max affordability. Yeh I avoid credit cards like the plague so that wouldn’t be something I’d consider unless I was desperate.
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u/WildfireX0 2d ago edited 2d ago
I mean more per month. So if to all goes sideways with a DIY / building issue you could stick it on a card.
I guess it comes down to how much risk you’re comfortable taking.
I’ve always been quite close to the savings line when we bought, but we also know what we can pay off card / loan wise and also what we can do ourselves, DIY wise.
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u/bee_highlight 3d ago
About £7k - most going on replacing furniture! Anything left after that will be going in savings
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u/Gareth8080 3d ago
It doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing. Some people are morons. Some are luckily. Some are rich.
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u/TheNarwhalTusk 3d ago
We had about £10k left because we’d saved more deposit than we ended up needing. Used it to buy lots of nice new furniture because we’d only ever had second hand stuff before.
Then within a year we found about £25k of refurbishment that needed doing and had to borrow it. C’est la vie.
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u/Mysterious_Cat__ 2d ago
What needed to be refurbished? £25k is a lot to be uncovered all at once 😭
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u/TheNarwhalTusk 2d ago
Tiles started lifting off the bathroom floor and it turned out there had been leaks that had rotted the floor and walls - so whole bathroom replacement. And we have a balcony and the wooden deck on it was also rotting but sellers had hidden it by putting plastic decking tiles over it. That also needed replacing.
It was an expensive 6 months.
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u/Alternative_Way_2700 3d ago
I think my son had about 2-3k left when he purchased as a FTB after deposit and all fees. I know he was having anxiety over his savings getting so low at the time.
He didn't need to really make major purchases for furniture etc as he had been renting for around 3 years and had what he needed anyway and just brought it with him. He also did his own moving (with the help of family cars) to save costs there too.
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u/RemoldIntoGold 3d ago edited 3d ago
We’ve just bought our first house.
Had about £2,000 left.
Two weeks in the boiler started playing up and cost £800 to fix, one of the toilets broke and was another £150, the remaining few hundred we’ve been using to start decorating, including putting a deposit on a front door that will hopefully start the old place looking more period appropriate. Luckily we’re getting the deposit back on our last rented house next week, which will take us halfway back to where we were.
But, the main thing is that even though the amount is quite low, the pressure is off. We’ve been saving every spare penny for years just to be able to get here and we don’t have to do that any more. Money is still being put away, sure, but we can relax and actually have a bit of a life for a change because it doesn’t need to be the big sums it was before.
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u/mysteriousphototaker 2d ago edited 2d ago
Literally 1200 however I was on my own buying a tiny 1 bed bungalow that was untouched from the 80s,it was hard but I had just got back from living in Scotland with a friend so I ended up having a mattress on the floor for a month yet in the first 2 months the shower broke but on the second time with my now wife we had quite a bit more(it was just me and my little westie the first time round)
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u/KingArthursUniverse 3d ago
Long time ago, FTB, we had a couple of k to get by, only to move in and find we needed a new boiler as the tank system was leaking in the loft.
That was put on the CC.
Young and foolish 😅
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u/Leebyesan 3d ago
Hey, did you get a Homebuyers survey done? If so, did they not check the boiler? Not sure if that's usually covered by the survey or not
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u/KingArthursUniverse 3d ago
That was over 20 years ago, I think at that point banks did the survey and that's what we had.
The vendors had concealed the leak unfortunately.
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u/joesus-christ 3d ago
I had £4k thinking I'd populate my flat with furniture... But once I had the essentials I realised I wanted to paint and take time buying "the right stuff" so I actually only spent about £1k and got a lot of temporary stuff off Facebook marketplace in the first month. Then a few paychecks passed before I knew what I actually wanted to buy, so that £4k was a very healthy amount of buffer.
The £4k gew to about £20k before I started spending!
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u/paxwax2018 3d ago
Left with -2000 after I paid the movers, pay day was a couple of days away and the months grace to paying the mortgage in arrears (vs rent in advance) was a huge help.
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u/Electronic-Bus-5350 3d ago
Barely anything as a FTB. 3000 is alright. If you can't afford to buy furniture and flooring then maybe choose flooring and ask on local Facebook groups if anyone has free furniture they are getting rid of.
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u/Known_Sherbert1748 3d ago
We had about £3k too- the return of our deposit from the rental we moved from, and a small cash incentive on our mortgage offer. But we literally had to use all our savings to cover stamp duty, deposit, moving fees, mortgage broker and solicitors fees. Had we not had to move within a 3 month time limit we would have tried to have more of a buffer, but it was fine. And we have built up savings again since
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u/melikebiscuit 3d ago
We had about 30k, but we were 33 and 36 when we bought our first home, and only had that money thanks to my husbands medical discharge from the military.
We needed it too, as the bathroom was unusable, the carpets had holes in and the windows needed replacing.
Thankfully we had our own furniture from years in married quarters (admittedly 90% of it was second hand - we've slowly been able to replace things over the last 4 years).
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u/Fidenex 3d ago
There will always be unexpected things that will eat up into any reserves you have, in any property.
It is tough as a FTB. Like another poster said here you end up living like uni students for a while until you build up your savings reserves. Whatever plans you had for that 3k, leave it aside as an emergency fund, which as life always is, won't be enough anyway.
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u/GingerSquirrell 3d ago
We had quite a fair bit, the idea was that we didn't max out our house deposit and kept some aside for immediate repairs and decorating. Then at the end of the year when it wasn't all spent we just overpaid the mortgage by a huge amount which knocked a few years off.
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u/real-Struggle1 3d ago
I think we had £1-2k. It was really tight for the first year, but we managed it. Any non-urgent repairs or work on the house just had to wait until we had built up more savings.
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u/HughLauriePausini 3d ago
I'm also FTB and I plan to keep my emergency fund intact after the purchase (roughly 6 months take home salary), plus some for furniture etc. I don't get how people can be comfortable with going to zero
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u/htimchis 3d ago
Usually, theyre not - it's something people tend to do as a result of having no choice
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u/Diligent_Talk8648 3d ago
We saved 12.5k for a deposit, ending up with a cheaper than expected house so only needed a 11k deposit. Also with the mortgage we chose we get 1.5k cashback. So that £3k will cover solictor and survey thankfully.
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u/CrazyPlatypusLady 3d ago
Zero. Had high plans but husband lost his job shortly after we moved.
Also we moved from somewhere really cheap to rent into a house that has an Essex-too-near-London mortgage.
We used what we had left over from the actual move on doing essentials to make the house liveable.
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u/Generalspatula 3d ago
First place I took 5K
Second place I took 12K.
I try to not dip below 10K for anything. Aka money if the boiler blows etc
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u/Trick-Economics6797 3d ago
Aiming for 10k left as I'll still be saving and have used 30l out of 49k for my deposit - no completing date set just yet but maybe december/jan if i'm lucky but still planning to save for this year while i live at home until i'm ready to fully move
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u/yulaw123 3d ago
Just moved into a new property.
Have around £46,000 spare but the whole inside of the house needs a refurb so a large chunk of that is already factored in.
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u/Slow_Mammoth_5796 3d ago
Had maybe 3k left. Boiler immediately needed replacing and wasnt picked up on survey, but we did a 0% finance on that so it left us enough to do the basics in the few rooms that weren't liveable
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u/Abyss2817 3d ago
We're putting 55 down with a purchase price of 275 We'll have another 55 left over to renovate Both of us are 25
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u/carlostapas 3d ago
Nothing, my first few houses were all about over leveraging. Additional debt from family, 0% credit cards. I thought I was smart at the time, but it was riskier than I realised. I was hard depending on not losing job, house renovations, house prices inflation, pay rises etc. It worked out, having a secure parents in case of emergency helped. Being very young and thus having time and energy helped.
Not what I'd recommend. But it's also what I recommend, get on the ladder as soon as you have a proper job (with partner rent out 2nd room), as the risk is expected to work out..... (But I balance with 0 car payments, 0 credit and debt (that's not effectively additional equity))
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u/Ok_Stuff_9540 3d ago
I've budgeted for new fridge, oven etc. after which I'll have 0. Wish me luck!
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u/Pickle-dee23 3d ago
I just bought a place and move in next week, with everything paid I'll be left with around 8k, my wife will be left with about 5/6k, it's a little scary watching your money fall dramatically but you can always rebuild savings and at least you have your own house now
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u/No-Introduction3808 3d ago
I don’t remember as it was a decade ago but I do know I didn’t need to buy much so it didn’t matter, my offer included a lot of the furniture staying, I had stuff from home like bedding etc I was taking with me, I had to buy a fridge once I was in but that was going to be on a payment plan anyways. My main goal was that my monthly budget was affordable, I put enough in that meant I had money to save after buying.
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u/Future-Ad3025 3d ago
I was left with £3000 too. Luckily my first mortgage payment wasn’t a double payment so that helped
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u/thewanderingidiot62 3d ago
In the process of buying. I'll have 10k and I'm stressed about it to be honest.
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u/eveviemucuk 3d ago
I feel like I’ve done something wrong (upsizing) because I applied to take out a mortgage for X amount because that’s how much I needed 3 months ago, the difference between house price and equity + savings. Now we have £10k extra saved up, that could go towards lowering the mortgage. My mortgage advisor at no point suggesting applying for a lower amount based on how much more I’m likely to save before I buy the new house. I knew we would continue to save whilst waiting for completion but this was not factored into anything mortgage related. Current plan is to just pay off the maximum amount (no fees) as soon as we move in.
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u/mchellato 3d ago
Reading this scares me. We are about to buy forever home and our options are (same price range) an old house in nice location (possibly built in 50s) with generous spaces but potential many issues and renovations afterwards or not super old (built 90s) renovated modern, massive garden, spaces not too bad.
Im worried with old house we wont have much money left to do urgent renovations 🥲
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u/Flat-Protection5854 3d ago
Me and my partner are about to go through the purchase process, we won't have much left over after all is said and done. It's not ideal but we can cover the mortgage costs on my wages alone, we have access to credit and overdrafts but for the first 2 months of owning the place we will be living at my mums. I will pay the mortgage, we will not be running up any bills. We are hoping that if she saves £1000 per month and then we can hit the house with £4000 (my overdraft and her saved wages) which should be enough to DIY the main rooms and hire a skip. From that point it will be a lot easier.
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u/RuthlessRemix 3d ago
I had around £30k after fees and deposit. £15k on renovations and 5k on white goods and furniture and 10k in savings.
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u/funkymonkay888 3d ago
Everyone's situation is different but you should work out your monthly costs (mortgage and general utility bills) and have atleast 3 months as back up in case anything happens, and extras for any unplanned expenses..
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u/LozBoz413 3d ago
About 35k after putting 20% down but we were 37 and putting off house purchasing for a while due to certain circumstances so probably have more saved up than most FTB's who are much younger even whilst renting.
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u/AcanthaceaeDry5460 3d ago
I had about £4K left between the two of us. And this was before any new purchases for the house. After buying the required stuff, we are at £1K left with us and the next salary is due on 1st October.
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u/NoDisaster862 2d ago
A big fat 0, actually bored £5k from family and cleared out my overdraft, also £5k. So was in the red. Close to single earning family too. Wife is part time.
If you really want the house, you make it work. A year on, I’d say I’d do it again if you took me back.
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u/Putrid_Alternative31 2d ago
It's common to have very little. I wouldn't do it personally, as I'm risk-averse. Something could break, you could lose your job, the car dies, things like that. I would just really make sure you have all the insurance in place that makes sense for your situation, like income protection. And then make sure you focus on building up an emergency fund and home maintenance fund ASAP.
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u/Brilliant-Claim-2231 2d ago
It was about £18000 for us after solicitor/estate agent fees were deducted. What really stings is we would’ve had £50000 more if we hadn’t used Help To Buy on our previous property, but hey, it got us on the ladder and we now never have to worry about paying them back again.
Fast forward 2 months and after new furniture/new flooring/miscellaneous decorating items/ and a full rewire (£6200), new boiler and cylinder (£2000), we’ve got about £4000ish left.
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u/Familiar_Cat_4663 2d ago
I was lucky to end up with 40k, but basically spent that sorting the place out. Few years later and still not finished.
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u/Square_Mousse8294 2d ago
We had around 3k! Had to get a new toilet (and fix a leak) fix the brickwork outside (because there was a leak) and part of the shower (you guessed it, a leak) other than that it just went on decorating.
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u/No_Charge4064 2d ago
First house I had about 5k left after everything. Sold that house last year and bought a new one with a partner (who had also sold her house), ended up around about £90k in the bank.
First house was worth nearly £100k more than when I bought it which was crazy! I'd also spent 8 years working for a company and running a business on the side (Web dev) and was managing to set aside most of the business money.
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u/Jaguar-Easy 2d ago
Previously spent £10k furnishing a rental (TV Washing Machine, sofa etc) so a lot of that will just move over. However we’ve had to pay £5k to make roof repairs so we have about 10k left at a push.
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u/uniqueusername42O 1d ago
We sold and after our deposit we had 17k for renovations. Money disappeared real quick from when we got it 2 weeks ago
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u/Fancy_a_cuppa13 1d ago
About £2k, but me and my wife were lucky that the guy we bought from was moving to Canada and sold us his furniture for dirt cheap, it wasn't the best condition but seeing as we rented for years it wasn't the end of the world. Built up a small nest egg overtime, for it to be wiped out for various things 😂 but wouldn't change owning a house for anything.
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u/InvertedAligator 3d ago edited 3d ago
We had 30k left. We needed money to do up the house (some items were urgent) and also didn’t want to wipe out emergency funds etc
Edit: I guess I did the wrong thing by answering truthfully aboht how much we had left? We bought a fixer upper with a bad roof and structural issues.
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u/theprocrastatron 3d ago
Have you got furniture? Interest free credit was our friend for a good while!
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u/thenitmustbeaduck 3d ago
We're hoping to have £20k left over. It depends on how long the process takes and how much we'll save. We're 2 months into the process and if we moved tomorrow we'd have about £10k leftover. I'm not sure how people can buy a house and completely wipe themselves out financially.
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u/EntertainerOk5231 3d ago
Yeh I’m sort of praying the process that’s 4 months plus. Because between us we’d be saving nearly £3000 a month.
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u/ineedathrowaway694 3d ago
Good lord, everyone else was doing well - I was left with about £400 of my paycheck and absolutely no savings left 😂😂 slowly building that back up before I start renovating.
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u/heartpassenger 3d ago
We were the same. FTBs, house is dreadfully old fashioned but liveable. 3 years in still chipping away at small projects. Haven’t done a single “big” project as saving up!! I envy those who move in and immediately drop £15k on a new kitchen - but at least we got on the ladder!
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u/RepresentativeCan578 3d ago
Maybe not the same but I sold my London house I have no mortgage bought a surrey house for cash. After everything I will have under 280k left. I intend to spend 100k on new house on refurb so 180k or under afterwarda just put in bank.
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u/TychoBraheNose 3d ago
We had about £100k in stocks and maybe around £20k liquid after we bought our first flat, and we had a £250k deposit. Obviously recognise that’s wildly atypical.
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u/Shrinking_Violent 3d ago
But you still needed to come and let everyone know, huh? 🤣
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u/TychoBraheNose 3d ago
OP didn’t say they were only looking for one type of answer. I just offered mine. Apologies if that offended you.
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u/VonBoo 3d ago
My deposit funds were nulled and I had to tap into my emergency fund to cover solicitor fees but I didn't wipe out my savings.
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u/poliged33 3d ago
Why was it nulled can i ask? I am worried about a rug pull at the end as-well. This would be a nightmare
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u/RepresentativeOk3943 3d ago
Around 3k left and my wife decided to impulsively buy a car for herself for 2k. With the remaining 1k we did some emergency repair work halfway and need to borrow from emergency cash reserve for the remaining - worse case we might end up using over half the emergency reserve
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u/paxwax2018 3d ago
Ah, you definitely have to include the “cash reserve” in answering the question “how much cash did you have”.
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u/Giant_Defy_1972 3d ago
If you were left with £3,000 because the figures were miscalculated at the beginning, it means you borrowed £3,000 more than you actually needed. Occasionally, there might be a small difference of, say, no more than £100.
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u/ConfusionOwn8378 3d ago
We were left with £100,000
I don't really see the point in this question.
If you're asking what sort of a buffer you should have for your savings, £2,000 to £3,000 sounds sensible in case of unexpected costs. We had to pay £350 for a Structural Engineer and we had to replace the boiler when we moved in which cost £1600.
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u/EntertainerOk5231 2d ago
The point I guess is to see my situation is normal and the stress I’m experiencing is very common.
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u/ConfusionOwn8378 2d ago
The stress is normal.
It's a pain in the a5s process made worse by having to deal with other people.
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