We bought £243,000 three-bed first home by giving up dreams of backpacking and selling old furniture on Facebook
A YOUNG couple gave up their dreams of going travelling and used their £20,000 savings to buy a £242,500 three-bed house in Colchester, Essex.
Lucy Henning, 24, and Denny Wright, 27, had both been saving since they were 16 to fund travelling adventures - Lucy wanted to go to Canada, while Denny hoped to live in Australia.
They continued to save even after they met in September 2017 but soon decided that getting on the property ladder was a better use of their money.
"Denny got a new job around August 2019, which enabled us to be able to borrow more and afford something suitable," Lucy, who works in social media marketing, told The Sun.
"By this point, we were both in good positions in our jobs, both happy and we’d got a dog, and it didn’t make sense to leave it all behind to go travelling."
They combined their £5,000 travel fund with Lucy’s £15,000 savings - a 21st birthday gift from her parents - to use as a deposit on a house.
But the couple took a gamble to secure their ideal home, having found it just weeks after moving out - on the advice of their mortgage adviser, they made an offer on a house, even though they were around £5,000 short of the 10 per cent deposit.
It meant that they needed to save hard for the next three months to make up the £4,250 shortfall or risk losing out on the property altogether.
They moved out of their £1,000 a month rental property and in with Denny’s parents, who charged just £150 each, to help them save.
The pair sold all of their old furniture, such as a sofa and wardrobe, on Facebook Marketplace, to boost their savings by £1,000, leaving them with just a bed and mattress.
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The couple stopped going out with friends in the final few months and they asked their family to count them out of Christmas so they didn’t have to buy presents.
By December, they’d saved the extra funds needed for the deposit but had to push back the sale by another month so they could pay the solicitor's fees with their January wage.
Luckily, the sellers agreed and Lucy and Denny, a photographer, moved into their new home in January this year, four months after making the offer.
The house, which was bought on probate, is dated and in need of updating, a process the couple are taking on themselves to save on costs.
"We don’t regret buying a house over going travelling as we’d had some of those experiences separately before we met," said Lucy.
"Besides, the places left on our bucket list we can do on holidays over our lifetime."
The Sun caught up with Lucy, who'd blogging the house transformation on , for this week’s instalment in our My First Home series.
Tell us about your property. What is it like?
We live in a three-bed semi-detached ex-council house which was built in 1969.
There's a really big garden with a willow tree at the back, which is really nice. It’s also got a random outdoor loo - quite a lot of the houses on our road have them!
The bathroom is upstairs along with the bedroom, then a kitchen, dining room and living room downstairs. It’s got loads of storage too, which is great.
It’s also got a really big front garden, which we are going to turn into a driveway at some point.
How much did you pay for your house?
It was on the market for £250,000 but we had an offer accepted of £242,500.
Our deposit was 10 per cent, so £24,250 - and then we had additional fees on top of that of around £2,103.
Our solicitors fees were £1,114, our survey was £150, valuation fee was £250 and then we had to pay £110 for an asbestos test and £50 for an electrics test.
We also got a mortgage broker, who charged a flat fee of £399. I can’t recommend getting one enough - he helped us so much with the process so it was really worth the money.
We got a mortgage through Halifax, which is fixed at 2.55 per cent for five years. We pay back £717 per month - which is less than we were paying in rent before.
How long did the process take - and how did you save the deposit?
It all happened really quickly - we had moved out of our rental property, had the offer accepted and got the keys all within the space of four months.
My parents gave me £15,000 when I was 21 to either go towards a deposit on a house or a wedding, so that was really helpful in getting us started.
Denny and I had also been saving independently since we started working, so we had put away about £5,000 on top of that.
We both put all of the money in premium bonds instead of a savings account, and we pretty much won a little something every month of around £50 or so - so it was much better than interest rates.
What help is out there for first-time buyers?
GETTING on the property ladder can feel like a daunting task but there are schemes out there to help first-time buyers have their own home.
Help to Buy Isa - It's a tax-free savings account where for every £200 you save, the Government will add an extra £50. But there's a maximum limit of £3,000 which is paid to your solicitor when you move. These accounts have now closed to new applicants but those who already hold one have until November 2029 to use it.
Help to Buy equity loan - The Government will lend you up to 20 per cent of the home's value - or 40 per cent in London - after you've put down a five per cent deposit. The loan is on top of a normal mortgage but it can only be used to buy a new build property.
Lifetime Isa - This is another Government scheme that gives anyone aged 18 to 39 the chance to save tax-free and get a bonus of up to £32,000 towards their first home. You can save up to £4,000 a year and the Government will add 25 per cent on top.
Shared ownership - Co-owning with a housing association means you can buy a part of the property and pay rent on the remaining amount. You can buy anything from 25 to 75 per cent of the property but you're restricted to specific ones.
"First dibs" in London - London Mayor Sadiq Khan is working on a scheme that will restrict sales of all new-build homes in the capital up to £350,000 to UK buyers for three months before any overseas marketing can take place.
Starter Home Initiative - A Government scheme that will see 200,000 new-build homes in England sold to first-time buyers with a 20 per cent discount by 2020. To receive updates on the progress of these homes you can register your interest on the website.
Neither of us opened Help to Buy Isas because we didn’t think buying a place was what we were going to use that money for, and by the time we did, it was too late to benefit from the bonus.
It all happened really quickly for us.
We decided we wanted to buy at the beginning of September 2019, found the property and had an offer accepted by September 19, and moved in with Denny’s mum to save as much money as possible on October 1.
Our offer was accepted even though we only had £20,000 of the £24,250 deposit as our mortgage broker said we were able to prove our income and that we would be able to save the rest before the point of sale.
Denny’s mum was really kind and only asked us for £150 each to cover our rent and food, so we were able to put away almost all of our wages each month.
Our only outgoings for these months were our cars - which we finance - and phones.
Both of use stopped going out so that we could save almost everything that we earned - and even asked our family to count us out of Christmas for the year so we didn’t have to spend money on presents.
Our rental deposit, which was about £800, went straight into savings when we got it back, and we also sold all our furniture on Facebook Marketplace for around £1,000 all in.
We managed to save the extra £4,250 by December but we had to delay completion as we didn’t have enough to pay the solicitors’ fees - we were literally down to our last pound.
Thankfully, they agreed to push the sale back until the start of the new year, so almost all of our January wages went on those extra costs.
When we moved in, we literally had no money left so we had to ask family to bring us food over.
Have you had to do any work on the house?
The house is really old, and almost everything needs doing - if you imagine your nan and grandads’ house, it’s like that.
There was wallpaper everywhere, really colourful carpets - we’ve got a mustard yellow bathroom with wallpaper in the shower and carpet on the floors. We definitely need that redone soon.
We got the keys on January 10 but didn’t move in for three weeks as we wanted to get the floors done first.
These were bought on finance from SCS and costs us £30 a month - and that’s the only bit of work we have paid for on the house so far.
Stripping the wallpaper and repainting the walls took us about a month.
Denny’s uncle is a plasterer so he kindly filled in a few holes for us and helped us out with the ceilings free of charge.
The whole family have been round mucking in and helping out - even my 86-year-old gran was round stripping wallpaper.
We’d like to get the kitchen and the bathroom done next and we have a back boiler that needs replacing, but we need to save up some cash before we can tackle a big job like that.
We’ve also started our own online clothing store, , to help finance some of the essentials - so we’ll use the cash from that to pay for whichever emergency comes first.
Were there any unexpected costs?
I think the whole process of buying a house costs a lot more than you first expect it to.
You think "oh great, I’ve got my deposit", but then there’s solicitors fees, valuation charges - and all the costs once you’re actually in.
Even things like paint - it’s £20 for a pot, and that’s the cheapest one.
Our solicitors’ fees also ended up being £500 more than we were expecting them to be, as our house was a probate sale - meaning the previous owner had died - so there was a lot more paperwork than there would be otherwise.
That was obviously a big shock when we were already so tight for cash - and it’s meant we’ve had to delay buying things like furniture.
My First Home
We already had a dining table, which Denny made, a bed and a mattress - then we got a sofa on finance and bought some bedside tables and drawers in Ikea the other day. Other than that, the house is empty.
What is your main advice to other first-time buyers?
Don’t rush in like we did. We put ourselves under so much unnecessary stress by not having all the money saved and ready to go before we put an offer in.
And it means that now, we are still having to save as much of our wages as possible to pay for the essentials.
It feels like we're starting the savings game all over again.
If I could do it again, I'd advise saving up all of the money for the deposit, the fees, and even any work you want doing when you are in, before you buy.