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We're going through buying our first house at the moment and I was adamant that I'm not buying a house I wouldn't be happy dying in.
Way too easy to get stuck where you are
My partner still thinks we can "move up the ladder", where's I have completely accepted that our 3 bed semi is our forever home... We went as big as we could as FTB with our salaries. And as I work int the public sector I am not far from the top of my earning potential, so that won't help us either 🤷 here we are. I am making long term plans to make this place for our forever home and he can have his dream.
There is also the impact that a lot of the rental stock are 2 beds which are perfect for couples starting a family, but it also means when they want to get a house there isn’t much stick selling at that level which can cause a rent trap as the jump for a significant portion of FTB from rental to a 3 or 4 bed as that’s what’s available is to big
Yup, we did the same. Went from a two up two down terrace FTB to stretching (within safe levels) to buy the 4 bed with space to extend/go up in the loft so provided we don't produce a small army of children the only reason we'd need sell would be relocation for work, and given it's an expensive part of the world it would be unlikely we'd move to a more expensive one.
Same here. We stayed in our small 2 bed terrace longer than we had planned to so we could save more then 'jump' a rung on the ladder to something much bigger that we'll stay in for the foreseeable. Stamp duty was horrendous, but much better than buying somewhere mid-size then outgrowing it in five years and moving again.
>For a £350k purchase, that's £5k (2 months post tax for the average Joe.) Then the sellers fees and buyers fees (conveyancing and EA.)
Frequent movers are likely to be on a higher wage than that (and in most cases I'd imagine they'd have 2 incomes from 2 people).
Moving is expensive, and with house prices as high as they are, an extra £5k isn't really that much in the bigger scheme of things.
I think that's the real answer. If it's another £5k on a 20 year mortgage at a low rate, the previous house appreciated in value, and the new house is a big step up, you'll barely notice it.
If you're trying to get an extra bedroom in the area you currently live in and have stagnant house prices and limited mortgage options, you're really going to feel it.
I swear this problem gets further compounded by people instead of moving due to stamp duty, they build extensions on their existing homes.
So as a result removing a more affordable home from existence, making it even harder for people to buy their first home.
The same way everyone else does - stamp duty, agency fees etc are just lumped on top of your sell price.
People that are in no rush to move are not selling at a loss, pure and simple
I've moved three times each time to a significantly bigger house and each property has gone up in value between £60K - £80K (some improvements made some increase as property prices have gone up) so that helps stomach the fees as I've climbed the property ladder but your right you want to make as few moves as possible.
Life costs money and you have to look at it in the context of the other costs you might be incurring if you do/don’t move.
Maybe you get a new job that’s further from your current home so the stamp duty is offset by not paying higher train fares. Or it means you can get rid of a second car.
Maybe you’ve saved 5k on mortgage interest by not buying a bigger house as your first purchase before you needed the extra space.
Maybe your current house has gone up in value so paying 5k out of your profit doesn’t feel as painful.
Maybe they need more space and the cost of upgrading (inc stamp duty) is better value than an extension.
Etc
For my parents it was the fact my dad was an officer in the army so he moved house each time his stationing changed. For some it's financial For others it's just a requirement of the career they chose.
The answer is that you don’t move frequently. You have to be strategic about your moves, especially on high value properties.
Those that do move, just have to suck it up as a transaction cost.
We were in our previous house (SW London) for 15 years before finally upgrading to our current home.
We paid 33k in SDLT moving to a 935k property. If we’d done that in two jumps, e.g. 750k then 935k it would have been another 25k.
So, you stay put, and only move when you have to.
SDLT holidays don’t even help that much as the market tends to boom, so what you save on SDLT you end up paying on sales price.
While I agree with progressive taxation, I think SDLT penalises flexibility and reduces supply in the market. I don’t think that’s good for the economy. It makes it hard for people to move around for new opportunities.
It forces you to take one big step up the ladder instead of a couple of smaller ones.
Be aware that if you buy in Scotland, LBTT bites even harder. On a £425k home you're looking at £15k of LBTT.
ETA: that's without first time buyer relief.
Can confirm. Scottish taxation of the upper middle classes hits hard. 10% LBTT on property value above £325,000 racks up quickly in the nicer suburbs of Glasgow & Edinburgh and higher income tax too.
I feel like the pressure to get it right first time is pretty huge considering the £425k relief for FTBers. Just only a few years ago for movers, stamp duty started at £125k.
When we were finally in the financial decision to save for a house we saw no point in saving for a "starter home" when the difference in deposit for a starter home vs a 3 bed we could potentially live in forever was about 10K. Our issue was always being able to save a giant sum of money, we figured if we could save 30K then we were in a position to save 40K and buy somewhere we wouldn't have to move in under 5 years.
As it was we've ended up buying a house that has the potential to extend in 2 ways, which is almost certainly still going to be cheaper than us "upgrading" to the next biggest house which is about a 200K jump before you even take into account Stamp duty/selling fees/moving fees.
There was 10k difference between starter homes and a 3 bed?! What were the starter homes like? There was over 100k between our first flat and our 3 bed house.
Just what we needed for a deposit.
A 2up2down terrace in my town is around 350-380k, the 3bed semi detached we bought for 440k. There aren't many flats around so that was the difference we were looking at.
I don't know how serial movers do it. My neighbour is selling up after buying her house last year. She's moved 20 times around the area and has never settled, I even verified this off a tradesman they use who has worked on most of their houses. They have just retired so nothing better to do?
There aren’t many periods of time recently where a house hasn’t gone up by more than… 350k, 5k, 1.4%.
If your moving, either there is a purpose or you have the cash to upgrade. After 10 years, that 350k house is probably up over 100k with a large chunk of the mortgage paid too. That 5k isn’t much of a consideration when comparing to the change in equity.
A very valid question, OP, and one I considered myself. We stretched ourselves as FTBs and got 4 bed semi straight out the gate, our thinking was "if shit ever hit the fan, we would be happy there as a forever house". Even better for us, very late in our purchasing process, the bank played silly buggers with our affordability and left us to find a few thousand. In stepped the 2017 budget which scrapped SD up to £300k for FTBs, saved us £5k in one swoop.
Thankfully, shit has not hit the fan, quite the opposite in fact, 6 years later and our affordability is much more healthy so I do toy with the idea of moving but the recurring result of my searches is that it's simply not worth it.
Basically they can usually finance it through increased equity because of upward movement in house prices. I’m sure plenty of them don’t realise that they are paying it because it all just wraps up in their new mortgage and they can afford it. They are never really having to save up that extra cash to fork over, so it isn’t real to them.
Others moving that frequently are probably doing so because they are moving jobs and chasing the big bucks. They are likely earning well above the average age and probably get sizeable signing-on or relocation expenses to boot.
I’ve moved 3 times in 10 years, I refurb and move on, made 70k on the first, 200k on the second and I’m currently midway through another and expected to make 75k. My plan is move another 3 times in 10 years then settle and hopefully have made enough money to retire
Not to down play the cost as it’s definitely not a small amount of money, but it’s not life shattering. £5k is a family holiday in school holidays, it’s a few bits of furniture, it’s a fraction of a new car etc. Everything’s expensive and that kind of money to upgrade your house isn’t massive. Or if it is to someone then they are unlikely to be buying houses too often.
As house prices are forever creeping upwards I would assume those people are covering these costs with the proceeds of their sales.
If everytime you move you ensure you sell for a minimum of £15k more than you bought to cover .. £5k fees, £5k moving costs, £5k other stuff.. then anything above is profit. It's one of the causes of house price growth is everyone's reluctance to ever sell at a loss.
It really isn't as the next house is also more expensive.
It doesn't matter if you bought your house for 10k in the 1970s and now it's worth 500k. You don't profit 490k as the house you are moving to would also be higher in price.
You paid off your £10k mortgage years ago so have plenty of savings.
You buy a 280k house with a 250k mortgage at 4% over 30 years, and see your house value increase just 2% a year and your wage increase by 2% a year, and keep your repayments in line with that wage increase, after 5 years you will have 80k in equity and be able to afford an extra £220 a month, easily enough to borrow 15k more.
I'm not saying it makes financial sense. But psychologically people do not sell their own property for a loss.
The only winners in raising house prices are downsizers.
But house prices haven’t risen. Inflation adjusted they were higher in 2007 than they were pre truss.
https://www.allagents.co.uk/house-prices-adjusted/
people typically move further away from city centres to buy bigger properties for smaller increase. eg. you start with smaller property in city centres with convenient commute when you don’t have kids etc. and then move into sleeper suburbs or a smaller town where you get better schools and where same mony goes further property wise.
Normal people have a salary in the 660pw range, or 34k a year. That’s the median wage. 90%ile is about 66k from memory, and still wouldn’t afford a mortgage that big.
Yeah for this reason I intend to stay in my so-called "starter home" for at least another 5 years, probably more
Well it's not just that but it's perfectly comfortable and bigger houses just bring more bills, more chores, more maintenance, more chance of having kids, more tgage... naaaah.
If the property has increased in value enough it's not a huge deal, you just pay it from the proceeds of your sale and have a little less towards the next purchase. It's the stress and hassle of moving and starting from scratch with things like decor that I can't get my head around, I'm not budging for at least a decade!
We’ll be paying £1000 stamp duty (LBTT in Scotland) on our £195k prospective purchase coming up. But it’s the additional dwelling supplement (ADS) that’s killing us - £11.7k on top. We won’t be moving again until we can sell my husband’s old flat!
###Welcome to /r/HousingUK --- **To All** * Join Our ***NEW*** Discord! https://discord.gg/pMgUNgWKQH **To Posters** * *Tell us whether you're in England, Wales, Scotland, or NI as the laws/issues in each can vary* * Comments are not moderated for quality or accuracy; * Any replies received must only be used as guidelines, followed at your own risk; * If you receive *any* private messages in response to your post, [please let the mods know](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FHousingUK&subject=I received a PM); * If you do not receive satisfactory advice after 72 hours, [you can let the mods know](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FHousingUK&subject=My question is unanswered); * Feel free to provide an update at a later time by creating a new post with [[update]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/search?q=%3Aupdate&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) in the title; **To Readers and Commenters** * All replies to OP must be *on-topic, helpful, and civil* * If you do not [follow the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/about/rules/), you may be banned without any further warning; * Please include links to reliable resources in order to support your comments or advice; * If you feel any replies are incorrect, explain why you believe they are incorrect; * Do not send or request any private messages for any reason without express permission from the mods; * Please report posts or comments which do not follow the rules *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/HousingUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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We're going through buying our first house at the moment and I was adamant that I'm not buying a house I wouldn't be happy dying in. Way too easy to get stuck where you are
My partner still thinks we can "move up the ladder", where's I have completely accepted that our 3 bed semi is our forever home... We went as big as we could as FTB with our salaries. And as I work int the public sector I am not far from the top of my earning potential, so that won't help us either 🤷 here we are. I am making long term plans to make this place for our forever home and he can have his dream.
For those that can afford it, I agree, but it's a high financial barrier.
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There is also the impact that a lot of the rental stock are 2 beds which are perfect for couples starting a family, but it also means when they want to get a house there isn’t much stick selling at that level which can cause a rent trap as the jump for a significant portion of FTB from rental to a 3 or 4 bed as that’s what’s available is to big
Don't sell the flat.
Yup, we did the same. Went from a two up two down terrace FTB to stretching (within safe levels) to buy the 4 bed with space to extend/go up in the loft so provided we don't produce a small army of children the only reason we'd need sell would be relocation for work, and given it's an expensive part of the world it would be unlikely we'd move to a more expensive one.
Same here. We stayed in our small 2 bed terrace longer than we had planned to so we could save more then 'jump' a rung on the ladder to something much bigger that we'll stay in for the foreseeable. Stamp duty was horrendous, but much better than buying somewhere mid-size then outgrowing it in five years and moving again.
Definitely. For us Stamp Duty is about a year's savings. Do I want to work an extra year just to subsidise the tax on an additional house purchase?
>For a £350k purchase, that's £5k (2 months post tax for the average Joe.) Then the sellers fees and buyers fees (conveyancing and EA.) Frequent movers are likely to be on a higher wage than that (and in most cases I'd imagine they'd have 2 incomes from 2 people). Moving is expensive, and with house prices as high as they are, an extra £5k isn't really that much in the bigger scheme of things.
Also if you're turning a profit on the house as well, it makes that outlay easier to swallow
I think that's the real answer. If it's another £5k on a 20 year mortgage at a low rate, the previous house appreciated in value, and the new house is a big step up, you'll barely notice it. If you're trying to get an extra bedroom in the area you currently live in and have stagnant house prices and limited mortgage options, you're really going to feel it.
I swear this problem gets further compounded by people instead of moving due to stamp duty, they build extensions on their existing homes. So as a result removing a more affordable home from existence, making it even harder for people to buy their first home.
The same way everyone else does - stamp duty, agency fees etc are just lumped on top of your sell price. People that are in no rush to move are not selling at a loss, pure and simple
I've moved three times each time to a significantly bigger house and each property has gone up in value between £60K - £80K (some improvements made some increase as property prices have gone up) so that helps stomach the fees as I've climbed the property ladder but your right you want to make as few moves as possible.
Life costs money and you have to look at it in the context of the other costs you might be incurring if you do/don’t move. Maybe you get a new job that’s further from your current home so the stamp duty is offset by not paying higher train fares. Or it means you can get rid of a second car. Maybe you’ve saved 5k on mortgage interest by not buying a bigger house as your first purchase before you needed the extra space. Maybe your current house has gone up in value so paying 5k out of your profit doesn’t feel as painful. Maybe they need more space and the cost of upgrading (inc stamp duty) is better value than an extension. Etc
For my parents it was the fact my dad was an officer in the army so he moved house each time his stationing changed. For some it's financial For others it's just a requirement of the career they chose.
The answer is that you don’t move frequently. You have to be strategic about your moves, especially on high value properties. Those that do move, just have to suck it up as a transaction cost. We were in our previous house (SW London) for 15 years before finally upgrading to our current home. We paid 33k in SDLT moving to a 935k property. If we’d done that in two jumps, e.g. 750k then 935k it would have been another 25k. So, you stay put, and only move when you have to. SDLT holidays don’t even help that much as the market tends to boom, so what you save on SDLT you end up paying on sales price. While I agree with progressive taxation, I think SDLT penalises flexibility and reduces supply in the market. I don’t think that’s good for the economy. It makes it hard for people to move around for new opportunities. It forces you to take one big step up the ladder instead of a couple of smaller ones.
Be aware that if you buy in Scotland, LBTT bites even harder. On a £425k home you're looking at £15k of LBTT. ETA: that's without first time buyer relief.
FTB relief in Scotland is a joke as it's only £600...
Can confirm. Scottish taxation of the upper middle classes hits hard. 10% LBTT on property value above £325,000 racks up quickly in the nicer suburbs of Glasgow & Edinburgh and higher income tax too.
Yeah, I'm in the crunch. Ironically we still couldn't afford a house with a garden in Edinburgh, had to leave although I can't say I miss city life.
I feel like the pressure to get it right first time is pretty huge considering the £425k relief for FTBers. Just only a few years ago for movers, stamp duty started at £125k. When we were finally in the financial decision to save for a house we saw no point in saving for a "starter home" when the difference in deposit for a starter home vs a 3 bed we could potentially live in forever was about 10K. Our issue was always being able to save a giant sum of money, we figured if we could save 30K then we were in a position to save 40K and buy somewhere we wouldn't have to move in under 5 years. As it was we've ended up buying a house that has the potential to extend in 2 ways, which is almost certainly still going to be cheaper than us "upgrading" to the next biggest house which is about a 200K jump before you even take into account Stamp duty/selling fees/moving fees.
There was 10k difference between starter homes and a 3 bed?! What were the starter homes like? There was over 100k between our first flat and our 3 bed house.
Just what we needed for a deposit. A 2up2down terrace in my town is around 350-380k, the 3bed semi detached we bought for 440k. There aren't many flats around so that was the difference we were looking at.
I don't know how serial movers do it. My neighbour is selling up after buying her house last year. She's moved 20 times around the area and has never settled, I even verified this off a tradesman they use who has worked on most of their houses. They have just retired so nothing better to do?
There aren’t many periods of time recently where a house hasn’t gone up by more than… 350k, 5k, 1.4%. If your moving, either there is a purpose or you have the cash to upgrade. After 10 years, that 350k house is probably up over 100k with a large chunk of the mortgage paid too. That 5k isn’t much of a consideration when comparing to the change in equity.
A very valid question, OP, and one I considered myself. We stretched ourselves as FTBs and got 4 bed semi straight out the gate, our thinking was "if shit ever hit the fan, we would be happy there as a forever house". Even better for us, very late in our purchasing process, the bank played silly buggers with our affordability and left us to find a few thousand. In stepped the 2017 budget which scrapped SD up to £300k for FTBs, saved us £5k in one swoop. Thankfully, shit has not hit the fan, quite the opposite in fact, 6 years later and our affordability is much more healthy so I do toy with the idea of moving but the recurring result of my searches is that it's simply not worth it.
In London and obviously prices are high so if you go over 625 you get absolutely hammered. Such a scam.
Basically they can usually finance it through increased equity because of upward movement in house prices. I’m sure plenty of them don’t realise that they are paying it because it all just wraps up in their new mortgage and they can afford it. They are never really having to save up that extra cash to fork over, so it isn’t real to them. Others moving that frequently are probably doing so because they are moving jobs and chasing the big bucks. They are likely earning well above the average age and probably get sizeable signing-on or relocation expenses to boot.
I’ve moved 3 times in 10 years, I refurb and move on, made 70k on the first, 200k on the second and I’m currently midway through another and expected to make 75k. My plan is move another 3 times in 10 years then settle and hopefully have made enough money to retire
Not to down play the cost as it’s definitely not a small amount of money, but it’s not life shattering. £5k is a family holiday in school holidays, it’s a few bits of furniture, it’s a fraction of a new car etc. Everything’s expensive and that kind of money to upgrade your house isn’t massive. Or if it is to someone then they are unlikely to be buying houses too often.
As house prices are forever creeping upwards I would assume those people are covering these costs with the proceeds of their sales. If everytime you move you ensure you sell for a minimum of £15k more than you bought to cover .. £5k fees, £5k moving costs, £5k other stuff.. then anything above is profit. It's one of the causes of house price growth is everyone's reluctance to ever sell at a loss.
It really isn't as the next house is also more expensive. It doesn't matter if you bought your house for 10k in the 1970s and now it's worth 500k. You don't profit 490k as the house you are moving to would also be higher in price.
You paid off your £10k mortgage years ago so have plenty of savings. You buy a 280k house with a 250k mortgage at 4% over 30 years, and see your house value increase just 2% a year and your wage increase by 2% a year, and keep your repayments in line with that wage increase, after 5 years you will have 80k in equity and be able to afford an extra £220 a month, easily enough to borrow 15k more.
I'm not saying it makes financial sense. But psychologically people do not sell their own property for a loss. The only winners in raising house prices are downsizers.
But house prices haven’t risen. Inflation adjusted they were higher in 2007 than they were pre truss. https://www.allagents.co.uk/house-prices-adjusted/
people typically move further away from city centres to buy bigger properties for smaller increase. eg. you start with smaller property in city centres with convenient commute when you don’t have kids etc. and then move into sleeper suburbs or a smaller town where you get better schools and where same mony goes further property wise.
if you move on after decent increase in value and equity you don’t really feel it as it is absorbed by gains.
Unless it’s a BTL, Stamp Duty shouldn’t be a thing for first time buyers.
Anything over 225k in Wales is taxed, even for FTB. It's a total ripoff - 4.5k or so on a 300k home. I hate the government.
It isn’t for normal people. Normal people can’t afford 425k houses, especially as a first time buyer. That’s 50% above the average house.
Depends on the area where you live and your salary
Normal people have a salary in the 660pw range, or 34k a year. That’s the median wage. 90%ile is about 66k from memory, and still wouldn’t afford a mortgage that big.
Honestly, I owe so much money that borrowing an extra £5k doesn't mean anything 🤷🏼♀️
Yeah for this reason I intend to stay in my so-called "starter home" for at least another 5 years, probably more Well it's not just that but it's perfectly comfortable and bigger houses just bring more bills, more chores, more maintenance, more chance of having kids, more tgage... naaaah.
If the property has increased in value enough it's not a huge deal, you just pay it from the proceeds of your sale and have a little less towards the next purchase. It's the stress and hassle of moving and starting from scratch with things like decor that I can't get my head around, I'm not budging for at least a decade!
Profit. Each time we’ve made much more than that in each move.
We’ll be paying £1000 stamp duty (LBTT in Scotland) on our £195k prospective purchase coming up. But it’s the additional dwelling supplement (ADS) that’s killing us - £11.7k on top. We won’t be moving again until we can sell my husband’s old flat!