EMMA Swan and Dean Bridgewater couldn’t believe it when their landlord slapped them with a £7,200 a year rent rate hike in April this year.
They couldn’t afford such an eye-watering increase during a cost of living crisis – which is what spurred them on to buy their £475,000 first home.
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Handing in their notice, Emma and Dean had just two months to find a place of their own to buy.
But luckily, they managed to seal a deal and get the keys for their two-bed flat in Woolwich, London, in June.
Using the government’s Help to Buy scheme meant they could get on the ladder quicker, as they only had to put down a 5% deposit instead of the usual 10%.
Esther, 28, who works in banking, and software developer Dale, 27, pay £1,200 a month in mortgage repayments.
That’s £800 cheaper than the £2,000 a month rent rate they were told they needed to pay for their previous flat in Canary Wharf.
The Sun spoke to the couple to see how they managed to buy a home of their own in just a matter of months for our My First Home series.
Tell me about the flat
It’s a two-bed flat in Woolwich.
The flat is located in Lovell Homes’ Trinity Walk development.
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We’re on the ground floor of a six-floor block of flats.
We have two bathrooms, and an open plan kitchen, living and dining room area.
There’s lots of storage space, and we have an L-shaped terrace area, perfect for our dog, Yoshi.
How did you decide on location.
Initially, we were looking in areas closer to central London for our flat.
We soon discovered that a lot of the flats we wanted were out of our budget.
We looked further afield for cheaper flats in areas where we could still catch the tube.
Woolwich was a great find for us – its near a DLR station, we can catch the new Elizabeth Line too.
How much was it?
The flat was £475,000.
We used the Help to Buy scheme to get a £95,000 equity loan and put down a 5% deposit at £23,750 – otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to afford it.
The government will lend you up to 20% of the value of your property – or 40% if you live in London – and the loan is interest-free for the first five years.
We took out a £356,500 mortgage over a 30-year term on a five-year fixed interest rate of 2.3%.
Our monthly repayments are £1,200.
That doesn’t include service charge, which is £150 a month.
We decided to use the Help to Buy scheme because we were in a rush to buy, and using it meant we didn’t have to put down as big a deposit.
The scheme is also ending in October, so we wanted to apply before time ran out.
How did you save for it?
We really ramped up our savings during the Covid crisis.
We knew we wanted to buy – and that was a good opportunity for us to save our money.
Ditching our holiday plans this year meant we saved around £2,000.
We also sold a few of our items to raise money – we sold our rowing machine for £250, for example.
One of our biggest expenses was meals out and takeaways.
We were spending around £300 a month on this, but managed to cut our spending to £50.
Instead, we cooked meals out home and stayed in.
Lovell Homes also gave us £8,500 to put towards stamp duty costs for free.
Developers often offer incentives to budding buyers to get a deal over the line.
What freebies you can get varies on a case by case basis – it all depends on who you are buying from and how much they are willing to give to you.
But in some cases, you can get free cash to put towards buying your house worth up to five per-cent of the purchase price of the house, according to the Mortgage Advice Bureau.
The £8,500 we were gifted meant we could move in sooner than we thought, instead of saving up more and waiting longer to buy.
How did you afford to furnish it?
As we were renting a part-furnished flat before we moved, we didn’t have to spend a lot on furniture.
What we had already was mostly second-hand from charity shops.
We got a sofa from our local British Heart Foundation store for £200 – it would have been £2,000 originally.
And we also got a full length mirror for £10, which would have been £75 originally.
What’s your advice for other first time buyers?
Start looking at help on offer for first-time buyers.
Help to Buy was the right route for us to go down – but Shared Ownership schemes can help you too.
Schemes like this mean you don’t have to put down as big a deposit.
Look for places to buy at the end of train lines, they are often more affordable than those locations closer to city centres.
Walk around the neighbourhood and really get a feel of it before you buy.
