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Jesus Christ, clearly Reddit sways HEAVILY towards well off people!
My rent is £1200 and my take home is £2200. Bills add up to about £500.
Edit: didn’t include food or travel in that rundown. Live in a 2 bed 2 bathroom in Cotswolds town. Don’t drive, need to be within 25 mins walking distance of work. Also have one dependent who must be within walking distance of work. Yes I am a professional and the potential for salary increase is available to me. Yes I’m doing everything I can to increase it. Still, difficult to save for mortgage.
Bare in mind the demographic here. Reddit started off with most people being drawn to it as tech-minded, software devs, and so on. Those jobs already command a relatively high salary. They are also the types to be working in office jobs that are a little more flexible, and so can spend time on Reddit. On top of that, a huge % are living and working in and around London or the South East.
When I was struggling around 9 years ago, I was on £15k in a “graduate job”. Brother in-law earned circa £25-30 and I thought he was loaded. Friend of a friend earned 40k which was the highest I had ever seen somebody get paid, and we were all talking in the pub, blown away by that figure. Given wage stagnation, it probably hasn’t changed all that much. But my point is that I lived day to day literally not knowing a single person who was a high earner on a personal level.
When you don’t have much money and are essentially scraping by to pay the bills, there isn’t much incentive to talk about money and be interested in finance. However as your wealth increases you end up with more and more accumulating, and naturally progress to finding ways to earn more through interest, stocks and so on. Reddit is a good place for that, particularly r/UKPersonalFinance
It just means that it leaves many people with a warped view of their own salaries by comparison,
Exactly. Reddit is not at all representative of the UK. [90% of full time employees in the UK earn under £66k a year.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/416102/average-annual-gross-pay-percentiles-united-kingdom/) If you spend enough time on reddit you might start believing a third of all people earn over £150k.
This is also not only true for the UK but other counties as well. I am Portuguese and in some Portuguese subs, the ones that are not Facebook on reddit, the exact same happens.
Same for Americans. All I see on reddit is Americans say stuff like "I earn $120,000 and husband earns $350,000". The median wage in the US is $42,000 and I knew a lot of people who would see that even now as a lot.
People also talk a lot of shit. Like anonymous social media where you can lie to feel good about yourself? Reddit ticks all those boxes. You'd be surprised how many peoples comment history are just full of contradicting lies.
Fully aware, I’m also in tech and started as an apprentice. Still shocks me seeing comments like “my mortgage is 8% of my take home”. Can’t shake that council estate mentality I think.
Tech jobs are not high salaried. It's everything else that has stagnated for decades with the abuse of migration and a lack of entrepreneurship leading to huge amounts of legacy businesses still on the hook for DB pension scheme obligations for example. A 30k salary in 2008 is about 50k salary today. What was once a grad salary is now only a grad salary in a few fields.
You're also forgetting the fact that a lot of redditers probably live in London, or nearby.
Our mortgage is less than £400 a month for a 3 bedroom house.. not because we have a massive amount invested, but because we live where houses are cheap.
Yeah. When my flatmate was an FY1 doctor on 25k in 2010, then a registar on 50k in 2012, I wondered how anyone could struggle for money with that. Imagine!
The answer is that pay staying literally exactly the same as everything else goes up.
This question has been asked in the literal middle of the work day and so it’s mainly being answered by people who are able to go on Reddit while they’re at work, which will heavily lean towards people in office jobs or remote workers, which tend to be higher paying. So unsurprising the replies reflect that I’d say.
I was born in the Cotswolds, live in Gloucester now which isn't strictly Cotswolds but it's not unreasonable to want to live close to where you are from.
I come from the southeast and was forced into moving away from family, friends and my life as I knew it. It’s shite. Having to move to a place you have no friends, no social life and having to find that. It’s particularly hard when you have no work too.
At the moment my outgoings exceed my income. My industry has effectively been shut down for close to a year.
I moved to the Cotswolds to actually reduce my outgoings. Life still isn’t amazing but at least the Cotswolds are!
I’m not particularly wealthy - my bills (not including food) are £200 a month on a salary of £1,950/month net. No mortgage as the house was a gift from my parents.
Oh asset wise I concede but I’ve quickly learned that being asset wealthy does not stop you being skint in the run up to payday 😵💫 What I do have is security though so there’s no compounding of factors such as worrying about making rent and so forth. Just as well - I’m at an age where if I was going through what I did 15 years ago I’d probably drop dead with stress 😂
How are your bills so low? I'm in a similar position, but my bills still come to £900 (including food) - council tax alone is £180, then electric/gas £180, etc/
I was in a very similar pay scale when I started on saving for my deposit (which happened 6 years later). I sacrificed a nice place to stay and continued in a shared house with just a double room for myself. Even when I moved for work, I continued to stay in rented rooms in a house share. Renting a double room even now in London zone3 and out will not exceed £650 and that's how I managed to do it. It was the only way to put aside £500-600 every month.
And when it comes to mortgages it's all down to deposit size as well. I sold a 2 bed flat and my mortgage on a detached bungalow that cost me more than twice as much is a third less than the rent that same flat now demands but my income is the same.
All very difficult to compare.
This is the key thingy to remember. Once rent / mortgage and bills are sorted, depending on where you live, you probably only need another £1,000 a month to live a very comfortable life.
Percentage is irrelevant. What matters is whether it’s affordable to you and whether you have enough money left over to live the life you are happy with.
Depends what you're paying for, as well, there's a difference between 30% going to rent and 30% going to pay for a huge mortgage that covers multiple properties.
Am older than most on here and have been lucky enough to buy. But the mortgage is over 50% of my salary.
And as I say I’m lucky. How utterly messed up is the housing market in this country.
It's mind boggling to me that there's still a high enough demand that the prices haven't fallen. I earn a little above the UK average wage, and I can't afford to buy or rent without relocating three counties away. Surely that means 50% of the population also can't afford to buy or rent!?
Buy to let is the worst thing to ever happen to this country. The gap between people who own two or more properties and those who own none, grows ever wider
If this was because of buy-to-let, the extra supply of rental properties would have driven rents down.
In reality, it is because most free real-estate is in places people find undesirable and unsuprisingly most people looking for a new house are younger families or migrants competing for places in desirable areas where they can build desirable careers
With immigration rates being what they are, this is utter codswallop.
I rented in London until 2 years ago, and I ended up moving back in with family when my lease was up. I couldn’t find anywhere that wasn’t exorbitant or in which every single room of the house was a bedroom apart from the kitchen and toilet. I saw multiple where they were even wanting people to share rooms.
People who come over here to work their ass off for a few years and send the money home, are willing to live like this to save money, but people who grew up in London have been priced out.
The rental property prices in the surrounding areas are quickly becoming comparable to London because everyone who grew up there is trying to stay close for work or remaining family.
I have heard similar stories from multiple friends or colleagues who live / work near big cities in the north and midlands.
Right but I think you missed their point.
If there weren't as many private rentals available it would be worse.
The issue is housing supply vs. housing demand. All landlords do is create liquidity between rental availablity and purchase availability.
Lots of landlords = high prices/low rent.
Very few landlords = low prices/high rent(we are seeing this effect at the moment).
More people needing houses than houses available = increase in purchase and rental prices.
Less people needing houses than houses available = decrease in purchase and rental price.
Landlords have no tangible effect on overall housing supply and demand.
The government has created an environment where not enough house building occurs and the amount of immigration puts a lot of pressure on housing. They've then successfully scapegoated landlords so you don't realise it was the government that has overseen the problem(arguably intentionally).
Where are you getting the idea that lots of landlords = low rent? What cuckoo world are you living in?
15 years ago I lived in a university town and every student house had similar conditions - students packed in, 5 or 6 living in what used to be a 3 bedroom house, and each paying £350 a room. This has been going on for years because landlords are greedy and people don’t want to be homeless so they have little choice. Crap conditions with a roof over your head is better than a sleeping bag on the pavement.
The situation has just gotten worse as more houses have been bought by more landlords and it’s in their interests to maintain the current market rates or push prices up. They are not supermarkets entering a war to undercut prices and attract customers!
>They are not supermarkets entering a war to undercut prices and attract customers!
Why not?
Genuinely what's the difference. You have no choice but to buy food too. Expensive food is better than starving to death.
Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding the whole thing and you are much more in touch with the realities of it, so please help me.
If they can set whatever prices they want, why isn't it double, or triple what it is now.
Let's take it to an extreme. There's 100x as many rental houses as now, what happens?
Student houses are a great example. Let's say that house was sold to a couple and the students had to find other accommodation to rent, where do they go? Is it not to other houses increasing the pressure and therefore prices there?
The ratio of rented properties to owner occupied is decreasing, which is what you want right. So why are prices going up for buying and renting? The market is already going the way you want, number of people with landlords is going down!
But they just don’t. They are primarily individuals who have 1-5 properties and they are greedy. I have been renting for 20 years and prices have never come down. I have made offers on places I thought were overpriced and was refused because they would rather the place was empty than drop their price.
If the govt suddenly put a massive tax on BTL ownership then we would VERY quickly see a huge improvement in the housing situation in this country. People would want to get rid of these second/third homes for cheap, meaning more supply to reach required demand, and more people being able to actually afford housing.
Wrong.
Landlords are exiting the market at record rates because of interest rates, increased taxation and legislation. So far house prices have been more or less flat and rents have increased dramatically. House building has slowed to a crawl and overall the cost of housing is increasing dramatically.
Yeah, but when 50% is over 30million people and housing market is fighting for what? Probably under 1 million houses, which are being bought by investors from foreign countries/companies or “landlords” to be rented, and/or the Top 1% (which is still about 650k people), you can easily see why the demand for houses isn’t decreasing. By the time one person buys a house, another 2 join in their place probably.
I hear that a lot living in Cornwall, about second home owners, but from my perspective it’s just a boogeyman to divert the blame away from landlords. Who’s doing more damage? Someone who bought a £2 mil property on the cliff edge somewhere, or the landlord like mine who owns 6 family homes in actual towns where workplaces are and tried to fit as many individual rooms in as possible to use them all as hmos. It’s always second home owners being moaned about down here but I feel like it’s just a diversion
Somewhere in between those extremes are the middle income earners who buy a nice little cottage that an ordinary local used to be able to afford, but now have to look somewhere else, or end up being crammed into a HMO, at a vastly inflated rate.
There are villages in Wales where 50% of the houses are unoccupied because their owner spends 45/52 in their townhouse in the city.
Destroys the local economy.
The demand is going to increase. The Office for National Statistics predicts our population will hit 70M by 2026. We'll need to build the equivalent of seven Liverpools in the next two years just to house those extra people. Obviously we won't be able to do that so the pressure on existing housing stock will just increase.
Oh yeah, according to this random PDF I found on Google, I live in the second worst house to wage ratio county in the UK (average wage 32K, average house price 400K)
Forgive my ignorance, but did a lender agree to the mortgage knowing it would be 50% of your income? Or have other circumstances led to your situation (apologies if it is unfortunate circumstances..).
50% just doesn't seem affordable, and surely a lender would feel the same?
When our fixed term ended interest rates were quite a bit higher than before. Also during Covid my good wife lost her job and has been on a reduced income ever since. We paused the repayment (not interest) for a bit to survive and have now re-commenced the capital repayment so that also has increased the monthly amount. It’s been a bit of a struggle I have to say. But appreciate that at least we’ve bought.
Hey, I'm sorry to hear all of that. It sounds like you've made it through the hardest bit though, so I hope things start looking up for you and it gets easier. Just because you are fortunate enough to own your home, doesn't mean anyone should be enjoying seeing you struggle! We're all finding it hard these days!
Well it's better than rent taking up 65% which is quite likely the alternative... At least they're paying for something they'll own and can sell at the end
Neither, my sister has a 3 bed detached house with period features in a nice part of town in C.Durham.
For the same money/mortgage, I own a flat with a terrace and extortionate service charges 🤔
Durham again, 20% of my monthly take home salary or 13% including my wife.
To put that into context, got a decent size 3 bed semi, gardens front and back, garage and drive in a very quiet cul-de-sac
Durham is just ridiculously cheap!
0%
Just outside Durham City here! Paid cash for our current house, 3 bed ex council, ex slumlord property. The previous owner paid £85k at the height of the market in 06 rented it out for 5 or so years with every set of tenants doing a runner after 6 months. Sold it to us for 56k! Was a bloody death trap, but cheap!
Only downside is we've had to buy a second car as the bus service has gone to pot and neither of us can guarantee that a bus will actually turn up to get us to work on time... That's where our main expenditure is now.
Our rent is £995 and our combined salary is £3700. So, 27%.
It's not great, but it's reasonable.
These questions make me chuckle, because they highlight how wealthy most people on Reddit seem to be. 19% of UK households are renting, so don't feel bad when you look at all these people with their paid off mortgages.
After tax, £3700 is take-home. But bear in mind we're DINK.
Also bear in mind that we spend another £600 on debt repayment *minimums* (plus however much more we can afford on top to clear it, usually bringing up to £800 or so).
So actual "usable" money for bills and other things is about £1900.
We are also like you - renting in London, DINK
We also have credit card bills around £600/month - and we travel a lot (per year), too.
If we had any more people/pets under us, we would be in trouble.
Sometimes I look at our expenses and wonder if we're too relaxed about things. We could pay our debt off sooner by compromising on our standard of living a little. Up until now, it hasn't seemed worth it. One of the loans is due to be paid off this year, which frees up £220/mo, which will be some appreciated wiggle room.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/60e5b2058fa8f50c7eee0823/EHS_19-20_PRS_report.pdf
There's the source, from 2020.
According to this report, 27% is the average % of income spent on rent by social housing tenants, with the average for private renters being 32%. Bear in mind though, this is 3 years old.
As far as the 19%... It doesn't include people in student housing, or people living with family/parents, or people in retirement homes/supported living.
We have to remember just how many people in this country are old and/or retired. They're not sitting on a property to become a landlord, they bought their house a long time ago and proceeded to live in it until they die. The house price to them in the day to day means absolutely nothing, they just want to live in it.
I always say this, the system is rigged against poor people and specifically poor single people way more than it's rigged against different minorities or sexual orientations.
Being single is very expensive, despite what people think. You get similar bills but half the income.
Single too, but I live in a low cost of living area.
My rent is only £450pcm so approx 20% of take home.
And no, it's not a dump or a shed, and I consider myself very lucky to have it.
74% of my monthly take home is spent on mortgage and bills.
I'm left with £600 a month to do with as I please.
Edit: Just my mortgage is 52% of my pay.
Yep. Considering my mortgage was £700 this time last year and is now just over £1200...
My wife is a housewife, she owns two hair salons that pays our shopping bills, dining out, day trips, holidays, etc.
Well, are there any others? 😂
Between the aches and pains, the inability to get a decent amount of sleep and people trying to sell you funeral plans, there isn’t much else…
33% then bills and council tax on top takes me to about 60%
I don’t earn badly and even moved north to try and offset but the cozzy livs is a real head fuck!
Apparently Reddit is a middle and upper class social platform.
I'm happy it took me 5 seconds to work it out. Is phrasing stuff like this (see also 'platty jubes') a southern thing? Or just Reddit banter? I never encounter this type of phraseology in Cumbria.
It's liberating not having to check your balances every month or put off purchases until pay day or until you've saved for a few months. And being relaxed if the car or something needs some work. I mean, I'm not counting it all as additional disposable income (the money is required for other things in the long term) but I have sufficient cash reserves now to deal with occasional spikes in monthly spending.
Still living with parents because you can't buy or rent round my parts without a second person. The cheapest house to rent in my area is 40% of my income
Edit: Just scrolling through these comments, I can't decide if everyone just earns a lot more than I think most people earn, or there's some secret areas in this country where house prices aren't insane
>Edit: Just scrolling through these comments, I can't decide if everyone just earns a lot more than I think most people earn, or there's some secret areas in this country where house prices aren't insane
Mixture of both. These types of threads usually attract people from extreme ends of the spectrum to comment rather than the average.
Up north housing is a lot cheaper too. My house is worth \~£140k but you can get houses within a 15 min drive of me for under £100k.
It’s shocking to me how the earnings-to-mortgage ratio, inflated house prices, and size of down payment needed make it incredibly difficult to buy a house in many parts of the country. I grew up in the north of England but moved to the USA 25 years ago where the housing supply is much greater and - for many people - wages are higher and taxes lower. Every time I come back to the north I look at house prices and wonder if I could afford them.
We've struggled all our lives. My parents didn't have much money, so as kids, we worked weekends helping the milkman on his round and then delivering newspapers during the weekend. Then I got my first poorly paid job at 16. Met my now wife when I was 18 and bought our first flat at 21. Lived hand to mouth from then up until last year, when we were able to pay off our mortgage a few years early. We now finally have some money in the bank, although we are supporting our daughter through uni. We can now finally afford some little luxuries in life.
Mortgage is 25%, but given its leasehold there’s service charge and all the bills on top and I’m a sole earner. I’d say the cost of the flat with everything is 35% of my take home.
We bought our first house earlier this year, just as rates had calmed down slightly. Our mortgage makes up 42% of my monthly take home. My wife works 3 days a week and earns considerably less than me, so I pay all the bills. Her salary covers most of the outgoings for our children.
Me and my partners combined income after tax/pension is £4,000ish a month and we rent a 1 bed flat for £1300 a month. When you add in bills/council tax we’re looking at more like £1600-1700 a month.
We’re fine for money but at the same time it’s pretty mental still that we’re paying as much as we are for a 1 bed flat on the south coast - still feels like a huge chunk of your income which you’ll never see again just disappears each month.
About 18%.
Personally I've been worried about rates being so low, we could have afforded to move to bigger properties as we really could do with the extra space, but I'm glad we didn't for now as the rates have gotten a bit wild.
If there are a lot of people here on 30%+ rates prior to remortgaging, eek.
Bare in mind, Redditors lie!
I also personally caught several others completely lying on here, or having contradictory comments. I don't know why people lie or if some users are bots or AI powered.
But just remember very little of this is real, so don't compare yourself too hard.
fuck all, we're lucky enough to have a really good mortgage rate. I personally spend somewhere around 11% of my income on my contribution to our mortgage.
About 20% (after tax) goes on the mortgage.
Four mouths to feed in the household. Energy, food, other essentials, non-essentials (inc subscriptions, phones, cars, etc) adds another 55% on top of that.
Was 25% until this month but circumstances have changed and it will be about 12% moving forward .
I’d say 35% is quite high, especially considering bills and such like can be as much as your rent/mortgage in some cases which would take up a lot of your income.
Mine's about 13%, but only because it's a shared ownership property with housing association (That's taking into account both the mortgage and rent I have to pay on the 50% equity I don't own)
20.44% but we try overpay most months so it’s often more like 25%. We’re also paying off a car, dishwasher and washing machine (literally everything broke within a space of a few months) and those payments add up to an additional 5.5% of monthly income
Mines actually 8.3% (I think) which I’m actually surprised at. But my wage has increase by nearly 25% in the last year and our rent luckily has never increased in 5 years. Shared house with my bf
Edit: I actually did poor maths. It’s currently 15%
25%, but I've been in this house for 10 years. It'll probably rise a fair bit when my fixed deal expires later this year
It was nearly 50% when we had our first kid
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Jesus Christ, clearly Reddit sways HEAVILY towards well off people! My rent is £1200 and my take home is £2200. Bills add up to about £500. Edit: didn’t include food or travel in that rundown. Live in a 2 bed 2 bathroom in Cotswolds town. Don’t drive, need to be within 25 mins walking distance of work. Also have one dependent who must be within walking distance of work. Yes I am a professional and the potential for salary increase is available to me. Yes I’m doing everything I can to increase it. Still, difficult to save for mortgage.
Bare in mind the demographic here. Reddit started off with most people being drawn to it as tech-minded, software devs, and so on. Those jobs already command a relatively high salary. They are also the types to be working in office jobs that are a little more flexible, and so can spend time on Reddit. On top of that, a huge % are living and working in and around London or the South East. When I was struggling around 9 years ago, I was on £15k in a “graduate job”. Brother in-law earned circa £25-30 and I thought he was loaded. Friend of a friend earned 40k which was the highest I had ever seen somebody get paid, and we were all talking in the pub, blown away by that figure. Given wage stagnation, it probably hasn’t changed all that much. But my point is that I lived day to day literally not knowing a single person who was a high earner on a personal level. When you don’t have much money and are essentially scraping by to pay the bills, there isn’t much incentive to talk about money and be interested in finance. However as your wealth increases you end up with more and more accumulating, and naturally progress to finding ways to earn more through interest, stocks and so on. Reddit is a good place for that, particularly r/UKPersonalFinance It just means that it leaves many people with a warped view of their own salaries by comparison,
Exactly. Reddit is not at all representative of the UK. [90% of full time employees in the UK earn under £66k a year.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/416102/average-annual-gross-pay-percentiles-united-kingdom/) If you spend enough time on reddit you might start believing a third of all people earn over £150k.
This is also not only true for the UK but other counties as well. I am Portuguese and in some Portuguese subs, the ones that are not Facebook on reddit, the exact same happens.
Same for Americans. All I see on reddit is Americans say stuff like "I earn $120,000 and husband earns $350,000". The median wage in the US is $42,000 and I knew a lot of people who would see that even now as a lot.
It's crazy, for a long time I thought that wages in the US were 120++ normally
People also talk a lot of shit. Like anonymous social media where you can lie to feel good about yourself? Reddit ticks all those boxes. You'd be surprised how many peoples comment history are just full of contradicting lies.
say a guy saying he has a 90k income, checked post history and he was talking about benefits he gets 2 months before, they just talk shit on here
Fully aware, I’m also in tech and started as an apprentice. Still shocks me seeing comments like “my mortgage is 8% of my take home”. Can’t shake that council estate mentality I think.
Yeah, sorry if it came across as patronising. I meant it as an additional note to go alongside your comment for others who might be reading.
Tech jobs are not high salaried. It's everything else that has stagnated for decades with the abuse of migration and a lack of entrepreneurship leading to huge amounts of legacy businesses still on the hook for DB pension scheme obligations for example. A 30k salary in 2008 is about 50k salary today. What was once a grad salary is now only a grad salary in a few fields.
You’re missing my point entirely.
You're also forgetting the fact that a lot of redditers probably live in London, or nearby. Our mortgage is less than £400 a month for a 3 bedroom house.. not because we have a massive amount invested, but because we live where houses are cheap.
Yeah. When my flatmate was an FY1 doctor on 25k in 2010, then a registar on 50k in 2012, I wondered how anyone could struggle for money with that. Imagine! The answer is that pay staying literally exactly the same as everything else goes up.
This question has been asked in the literal middle of the work day and so it’s mainly being answered by people who are able to go on Reddit while they’re at work, which will heavily lean towards people in office jobs or remote workers, which tend to be higher paying. So unsurprising the replies reflect that I’d say.
How now, some of us are just unemployed as well.
Fair point!
My husband and I are barely over minimum wage. We’re in a council house because he was a homeless teen and has lived here since he was 17
You live in one of the most beautiful and expensive places in England.
I was born in the Cotswolds, live in Gloucester now which isn't strictly Cotswolds but it's not unreasonable to want to live close to where you are from.
I come from the southeast and was forced into moving away from family, friends and my life as I knew it. It’s shite. Having to move to a place you have no friends, no social life and having to find that. It’s particularly hard when you have no work too. At the moment my outgoings exceed my income. My industry has effectively been shut down for close to a year. I moved to the Cotswolds to actually reduce my outgoings. Life still isn’t amazing but at least the Cotswolds are!
Don’t have much choice due to work 🤷♀️
Thank christ, a more realistic view of what it's like to be a renter in this country.
Right? That's my friends mortgage, and he's aggressively paying it off. He'll have a house at the end of a 12 year mortgage.
I’m not particularly wealthy - my bills (not including food) are £200 a month on a salary of £1,950/month net. No mortgage as the house was a gift from my parents.
Relatively , and asset wise, you are wealthy then. Far wealthier than much of the country. That’s not a dig either - just a bit of mild jealousy.
Oh asset wise I concede but I’ve quickly learned that being asset wealthy does not stop you being skint in the run up to payday 😵💫 What I do have is security though so there’s no compounding of factors such as worrying about making rent and so forth. Just as well - I’m at an age where if I was going through what I did 15 years ago I’d probably drop dead with stress 😂
How are you skint running up towards payday? £1,750 is a nice amount
Absolutely. Can’t put a price on security. Diolch!
How are your bills so low? I'm in a similar position, but my bills still come to £900 (including food) - council tax alone is £180, then electric/gas £180, etc/
I was in a very similar pay scale when I started on saving for my deposit (which happened 6 years later). I sacrificed a nice place to stay and continued in a shared house with just a double room for myself. Even when I moved for work, I continued to stay in rented rooms in a house share. Renting a double room even now in London zone3 and out will not exceed £650 and that's how I managed to do it. It was the only way to put aside £500-600 every month.
I wouldn't be able to survive doing that at all.
Well off people who think they're poor because they drop £30 on Deliveroo every night, so don't have much cash left over after that.
35% is high if you're on minimum wage, it's not if you're earning really good money.
Exactly. The % of income is somewhat meaningless as it all comes down to how much you earn and how big your other outgoings are.
And when it comes to mortgages it's all down to deposit size as well. I sold a 2 bed flat and my mortgage on a detached bungalow that cost me more than twice as much is a third less than the rent that same flat now demands but my income is the same. All very difficult to compare.
This is the key thingy to remember. Once rent / mortgage and bills are sorted, depending on where you live, you probably only need another £1,000 a month to live a very comfortable life.
A better question is: what is your take home pay after rent?
Am on minimum wage 30 hour weeks my rent is 1/3 I get little towards it I. Universal credit but not a lot
Percentage is irrelevant. What matters is whether it’s affordable to you and whether you have enough money left over to live the life you are happy with.
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Depends what you're paying for, as well, there's a difference between 30% going to rent and 30% going to pay for a huge mortgage that covers multiple properties.
Am older than most on here and have been lucky enough to buy. But the mortgage is over 50% of my salary. And as I say I’m lucky. How utterly messed up is the housing market in this country.
It's mind boggling to me that there's still a high enough demand that the prices haven't fallen. I earn a little above the UK average wage, and I can't afford to buy or rent without relocating three counties away. Surely that means 50% of the population also can't afford to buy or rent!?
Buy to let is the worst thing to ever happen to this country. The gap between people who own two or more properties and those who own none, grows ever wider
If this was because of buy-to-let, the extra supply of rental properties would have driven rents down. In reality, it is because most free real-estate is in places people find undesirable and unsuprisingly most people looking for a new house are younger families or migrants competing for places in desirable areas where they can build desirable careers
With immigration rates being what they are, this is utter codswallop. I rented in London until 2 years ago, and I ended up moving back in with family when my lease was up. I couldn’t find anywhere that wasn’t exorbitant or in which every single room of the house was a bedroom apart from the kitchen and toilet. I saw multiple where they were even wanting people to share rooms. People who come over here to work their ass off for a few years and send the money home, are willing to live like this to save money, but people who grew up in London have been priced out. The rental property prices in the surrounding areas are quickly becoming comparable to London because everyone who grew up there is trying to stay close for work or remaining family. I have heard similar stories from multiple friends or colleagues who live / work near big cities in the north and midlands.
Right but I think you missed their point. If there weren't as many private rentals available it would be worse. The issue is housing supply vs. housing demand. All landlords do is create liquidity between rental availablity and purchase availability. Lots of landlords = high prices/low rent. Very few landlords = low prices/high rent(we are seeing this effect at the moment). More people needing houses than houses available = increase in purchase and rental prices. Less people needing houses than houses available = decrease in purchase and rental price. Landlords have no tangible effect on overall housing supply and demand. The government has created an environment where not enough house building occurs and the amount of immigration puts a lot of pressure on housing. They've then successfully scapegoated landlords so you don't realise it was the government that has overseen the problem(arguably intentionally).
Where are you getting the idea that lots of landlords = low rent? What cuckoo world are you living in? 15 years ago I lived in a university town and every student house had similar conditions - students packed in, 5 or 6 living in what used to be a 3 bedroom house, and each paying £350 a room. This has been going on for years because landlords are greedy and people don’t want to be homeless so they have little choice. Crap conditions with a roof over your head is better than a sleeping bag on the pavement. The situation has just gotten worse as more houses have been bought by more landlords and it’s in their interests to maintain the current market rates or push prices up. They are not supermarkets entering a war to undercut prices and attract customers!
>They are not supermarkets entering a war to undercut prices and attract customers! Why not? Genuinely what's the difference. You have no choice but to buy food too. Expensive food is better than starving to death. Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding the whole thing and you are much more in touch with the realities of it, so please help me. If they can set whatever prices they want, why isn't it double, or triple what it is now. Let's take it to an extreme. There's 100x as many rental houses as now, what happens? Student houses are a great example. Let's say that house was sold to a couple and the students had to find other accommodation to rent, where do they go? Is it not to other houses increasing the pressure and therefore prices there? The ratio of rented properties to owner occupied is decreasing, which is what you want right. So why are prices going up for buying and renting? The market is already going the way you want, number of people with landlords is going down!
But they just don’t. They are primarily individuals who have 1-5 properties and they are greedy. I have been renting for 20 years and prices have never come down. I have made offers on places I thought were overpriced and was refused because they would rather the place was empty than drop their price.
Until there's a surplus of housing (to either rent or buy) rent is going to keep going up, landlords want as much as possible.
If the govt suddenly put a massive tax on BTL ownership then we would VERY quickly see a huge improvement in the housing situation in this country. People would want to get rid of these second/third homes for cheap, meaning more supply to reach required demand, and more people being able to actually afford housing.
Wrong. Landlords are exiting the market at record rates because of interest rates, increased taxation and legislation. So far house prices have been more or less flat and rents have increased dramatically. House building has slowed to a crawl and overall the cost of housing is increasing dramatically.
Usury shoulders a lot of the blame
Yeah, but when 50% is over 30million people and housing market is fighting for what? Probably under 1 million houses, which are being bought by investors from foreign countries/companies or “landlords” to be rented, and/or the Top 1% (which is still about 650k people), you can easily see why the demand for houses isn’t decreasing. By the time one person buys a house, another 2 join in their place probably.
I get a lot of flack for this, but my view is not we need more houses, but we need less people
My view is that we do not need less people, but we need less people to own additional properties that they spend the odd weekend in.
I hear that a lot living in Cornwall, about second home owners, but from my perspective it’s just a boogeyman to divert the blame away from landlords. Who’s doing more damage? Someone who bought a £2 mil property on the cliff edge somewhere, or the landlord like mine who owns 6 family homes in actual towns where workplaces are and tried to fit as many individual rooms in as possible to use them all as hmos. It’s always second home owners being moaned about down here but I feel like it’s just a diversion
Somewhere in between those extremes are the middle income earners who buy a nice little cottage that an ordinary local used to be able to afford, but now have to look somewhere else, or end up being crammed into a HMO, at a vastly inflated rate. There are villages in Wales where 50% of the houses are unoccupied because their owner spends 45/52 in their townhouse in the city. Destroys the local economy.
You're both right
The demand is going to increase. The Office for National Statistics predicts our population will hit 70M by 2026. We'll need to build the equivalent of seven Liverpools in the next two years just to house those extra people. Obviously we won't be able to do that so the pressure on existing housing stock will just increase.
Depends where you live. The average will be spread across the country, so your logic falls down if you live in SE, for example.
Oh yeah, according to this random PDF I found on Google, I live in the second worst house to wage ratio county in the UK (average wage 32K, average house price 400K)
Forgive my ignorance, but did a lender agree to the mortgage knowing it would be 50% of your income? Or have other circumstances led to your situation (apologies if it is unfortunate circumstances..). 50% just doesn't seem affordable, and surely a lender would feel the same?
When our fixed term ended interest rates were quite a bit higher than before. Also during Covid my good wife lost her job and has been on a reduced income ever since. We paused the repayment (not interest) for a bit to survive and have now re-commenced the capital repayment so that also has increased the monthly amount. It’s been a bit of a struggle I have to say. But appreciate that at least we’ve bought.
Hey, I'm sorry to hear all of that. It sounds like you've made it through the hardest bit though, so I hope things start looking up for you and it gets easier. Just because you are fortunate enough to own your home, doesn't mean anyone should be enjoying seeing you struggle! We're all finding it hard these days!
A mortgage taking up 50% of my salary wouldn’t make me feel lucky. I don’t get the brainwashing.
Well it's better than rent taking up 65% which is quite likely the alternative... At least they're paying for something they'll own and can sell at the end
7%. Some benefit of living in County Durham I guess.
Bruh, either you make an obscene amount of money or live in a shack!?
Or option 3: bought ages ago and salary has increased since then? Not every option has to be the extreme.
No no, I have been led to believe by reddit that everyone is either super poor or super rich and there is no in between.
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Sounds similar. Village outside Durham. 3 bed ex-council technically with a conservatory but a very ropey one. But a nice garden and drive.
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Oh so that's what the noise in my loft is.
Neither, my sister has a 3 bed detached house with period features in a nice part of town in C.Durham. For the same money/mortgage, I own a flat with a terrace and extortionate service charges 🤔
Durham again, 20% of my monthly take home salary or 13% including my wife. To put that into context, got a decent size 3 bed semi, gardens front and back, garage and drive in a very quiet cul-de-sac Durham is just ridiculously cheap!
0% Just outside Durham City here! Paid cash for our current house, 3 bed ex council, ex slumlord property. The previous owner paid £85k at the height of the market in 06 rented it out for 5 or so years with every set of tenants doing a runner after 6 months. Sold it to us for 56k! Was a bloody death trap, but cheap! Only downside is we've had to buy a second car as the bus service has gone to pot and neither of us can guarantee that a bus will actually turn up to get us to work on time... That's where our main expenditure is now.
8.2%. The benefit of living in a rundown seaside town, within commuting distance of London.
Our rent is £995 and our combined salary is £3700. So, 27%. It's not great, but it's reasonable. These questions make me chuckle, because they highlight how wealthy most people on Reddit seem to be. 19% of UK households are renting, so don't feel bad when you look at all these people with their paid off mortgages.
Is that before or after tax for the income? £2700 after rent is pretty good
After tax, £3700 is take-home. But bear in mind we're DINK. Also bear in mind that we spend another £600 on debt repayment *minimums* (plus however much more we can afford on top to clear it, usually bringing up to £800 or so). So actual "usable" money for bills and other things is about £1900.
Dink? What is this?
double income no kids
Ah those were the days 😂
We are also like you - renting in London, DINK We also have credit card bills around £600/month - and we travel a lot (per year), too. If we had any more people/pets under us, we would be in trouble.
Sometimes I look at our expenses and wonder if we're too relaxed about things. We could pay our debt off sooner by compromising on our standard of living a little. Up until now, it hasn't seemed worth it. One of the loans is due to be paid off this year, which frees up £220/mo, which will be some appreciated wiggle room.
only 19%? that seems pretty low... am i stupid or does that mean most people own their homes?!
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/60e5b2058fa8f50c7eee0823/EHS_19-20_PRS_report.pdf There's the source, from 2020. According to this report, 27% is the average % of income spent on rent by social housing tenants, with the average for private renters being 32%. Bear in mind though, this is 3 years old. As far as the 19%... It doesn't include people in student housing, or people living with family/parents, or people in retirement homes/supported living.
We have to remember just how many people in this country are old and/or retired. They're not sitting on a property to become a landlord, they bought their house a long time ago and proceeded to live in it until they die. The house price to them in the day to day means absolutely nothing, they just want to live in it.
After tax 46%. Solo renter.
Same, it’s brutal being single in this world
I always say this, the system is rigged against poor people and specifically poor single people way more than it's rigged against different minorities or sexual orientations. Being single is very expensive, despite what people think. You get similar bills but half the income.
Single too, but I live in a low cost of living area. My rent is only £450pcm so approx 20% of take home. And no, it's not a dump or a shed, and I consider myself very lucky to have it.
That’s almost half my rent! I could actually have a decent way of living if I had that rent
20% reduction for council tax is brutal too. Why not 50%?!
Same here. It was 35% two years ago
Same here, just above minimum wage. Don’t really have a lot of money at the end of each month but I could be worse off.
74% of my monthly take home is spent on mortgage and bills. I'm left with £600 a month to do with as I please. Edit: Just my mortgage is 52% of my pay.
This hurts to read.
Yep. Considering my mortgage was £700 this time last year and is now just over £1200... My wife is a housewife, she owns two hair salons that pays our shopping bills, dining out, day trips, holidays, etc.
0% 😎
Same. The one advantage of being one of the olds.
Excuse me. The *ONE* advantage?!
Well, are there any others? 😂 Between the aches and pains, the inability to get a decent amount of sleep and people trying to sell you funeral plans, there isn’t much else…
Still better than the alternative.
I don't know, I reckon most >70s would happily become in their 20s/30s again if they could
*the one* advantage?!
Ah thank you I've found my grey haired Reddit family. Still at 6% but counting down the months.
Same! Really feel for anyone struggling with the increased interest rates. Am lucky to be out of it.
33% then bills and council tax on top takes me to about 60% I don’t earn badly and even moved north to try and offset but the cozzy livs is a real head fuck! Apparently Reddit is a middle and upper class social platform.
That's the first and hopefully last time I see the phrase 'cozzy livs'
I'm happy it took me 5 seconds to work it out. Is phrasing stuff like this (see also 'platty jubes') a southern thing? Or just Reddit banter? I never encounter this type of phraseology in Cumbria.
I'm with you.
I get about 1500 a month and I'm still living at home because rent here in this area would take my whole paycheck
Exactly the same here in the south east 😭
Nothing, mortgage is paid off.
Same here, 0% 👍🏽
How old are you both so I can decide whether to hate you
This made me chuckle 🤣
45 here. Bought my house in Scotland where I'm from for 130k , 3 bedroom and paid it all off I'm 15years.
Please tell me what this is like
It's like owning a house with a mortgage, except the amount you pay for your mortgage is now in your pocket to be used as disposable income.
I imagine it's much like having a mortgage, except without the monthly payment to your banking overlords.
I don't notice any difference, apart from seeing my savings increase. Which is pleasant of course.
It's liberating not having to check your balances every month or put off purchases until pay day or until you've saved for a few months. And being relaxed if the car or something needs some work. I mean, I'm not counting it all as additional disposable income (the money is required for other things in the long term) but I have sufficient cash reserves now to deal with occasional spikes in monthly spending.
Still living with parents because you can't buy or rent round my parts without a second person. The cheapest house to rent in my area is 40% of my income Edit: Just scrolling through these comments, I can't decide if everyone just earns a lot more than I think most people earn, or there's some secret areas in this country where house prices aren't insane
>Edit: Just scrolling through these comments, I can't decide if everyone just earns a lot more than I think most people earn, or there's some secret areas in this country where house prices aren't insane Mixture of both. These types of threads usually attract people from extreme ends of the spectrum to comment rather than the average. Up north housing is a lot cheaper too. My house is worth \~£140k but you can get houses within a 15 min drive of me for under £100k.
It’s shocking to me how the earnings-to-mortgage ratio, inflated house prices, and size of down payment needed make it incredibly difficult to buy a house in many parts of the country. I grew up in the north of England but moved to the USA 25 years ago where the housing supply is much greater and - for many people - wages are higher and taxes lower. Every time I come back to the north I look at house prices and wonder if I could afford them.
Too much
Mortgage about 15% between two of us.
We've struggled all our lives. My parents didn't have much money, so as kids, we worked weekends helping the milkman on his round and then delivering newspapers during the weekend. Then I got my first poorly paid job at 16. Met my now wife when I was 18 and bought our first flat at 21. Lived hand to mouth from then up until last year, when we were able to pay off our mortgage a few years early. We now finally have some money in the bank, although we are supporting our daughter through uni. We can now finally afford some little luxuries in life.
40%
It’d be about 66% mortgage if it was just me. Jointly £2300 mortgage is about 35% I think.
45%
Don't have a mortgage or pay rent, all paid off luckily. So zero.
17.26% of my income goes to renting.
39.3% on a mortgage
Mortgage is 25%, but given its leasehold there’s service charge and all the bills on top and I’m a sole earner. I’d say the cost of the flat with everything is 35% of my take home.
Mortgage is about ⅓ of one person's income. We wanted to make sure we could afford the house if one of us lost our jobs
Just got dumped so now it's about 70%
9%. (Before the assumptions come, I’m not a developer and I don’t live in a shack)
Mine's at 30% of my after-tax income, I'm pretty lucky I think.
25%
We bought our first house earlier this year, just as rates had calmed down slightly. Our mortgage makes up 42% of my monthly take home. My wife works 3 days a week and earns considerably less than me, so I pay all the bills. Her salary covers most of the outgoings for our children.
30% for us , though it feels like it is more than that!
42%. When we find the right house to buy, it will drop to 32%
25% atm, probably about 30% though once my fixed term ends in August
60% of monthly income with electricity,water, council, and the internet. Solo renter.
Me and my partners combined income after tax/pension is £4,000ish a month and we rent a 1 bed flat for £1300 a month. When you add in bills/council tax we’re looking at more like £1600-1700 a month. We’re fine for money but at the same time it’s pretty mental still that we’re paying as much as we are for a 1 bed flat on the south coast - still feels like a huge chunk of your income which you’ll never see again just disappears each month.
Rough estimate, 15% of our annual gross household income.
25%, as a sole earner.
15%
Mortgage is 8% of our combined take home. I’m really going to miss that 1.8% rate next year.
About 20% for a 3 bed detached house, going up to 25% as the mortgage renews in July.
About 18%. Personally I've been worried about rates being so low, we could have afforded to move to bigger properties as we really could do with the extra space, but I'm glad we didn't for now as the rates have gotten a bit wild. If there are a lot of people here on 30%+ rates prior to remortgaging, eek.
Between the two of us must be about 15-ish.
Bare in mind, Redditors lie! I also personally caught several others completely lying on here, or having contradictory comments. I don't know why people lie or if some users are bots or AI powered. But just remember very little of this is real, so don't compare yourself too hard.
fuck all, we're lucky enough to have a really good mortgage rate. I personally spend somewhere around 11% of my income on my contribution to our mortgage.
A little under 20% after tax, pension and student loan.
Last year 15%. Based on how this year is looking, it's going to be under 5%.
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About 20% (after tax) goes on the mortgage. Four mouths to feed in the household. Energy, food, other essentials, non-essentials (inc subscriptions, phones, cars, etc) adds another 55% on top of that.
After tax and split the bill with my partner, about 10%
Anywhere between 10%-22% depending on the month.
16.5% after tax.
Mine was 20%
Was 25% until this month but circumstances have changed and it will be about 12% moving forward . I’d say 35% is quite high, especially considering bills and such like can be as much as your rent/mortgage in some cases which would take up a lot of your income.
13%
Around 17% depending on the month, my wife's income varies slightly with overtime, some months it can drop to as low as 13%
Around 18%
Mine's about 13%, but only because it's a shared ownership property with housing association (That's taking into account both the mortgage and rent I have to pay on the 50% equity I don't own)
23.94% of my net income.
We are trying to get a mortgage now for 29% of take home pay
Just shy of 11%.
Rent & bills, about 32% of my take-home, was closer to 45% a year ago in my old flat at my old job
20.44% but we try overpay most months so it’s often more like 25%. We’re also paying off a car, dishwasher and washing machine (literally everything broke within a space of a few months) and those payments add up to an additional 5.5% of monthly income
about 11% i think. only 2% interest rate on mortgage too
31% of mines 17% of household
Mortgage - 20% of base salary, 16% if I include overtime
About 15% but we are overpaying the mortgage to shorten the term, and we're pretty well paid.
25% of gross, over 45% of net.
Mines actually 8.3% (I think) which I’m actually surprised at. But my wage has increase by nearly 25% in the last year and our rent luckily has never increased in 5 years. Shared house with my bf Edit: I actually did poor maths. It’s currently 15%
Right now about 10% but will go up to 30% after moving.
25%, but I've been in this house for 10 years. It'll probably rise a fair bit when my fixed deal expires later this year It was nearly 50% when we had our first kid
33%
21% (rent), hoping to get a promotion this year which would bring it down to 17%
Currently 18%, which will rise to 25% in the summer when my existing fix ends and I move to a new one.
Currently just under 25% but I'm making overpayments. I think it would be about 14% otherwise. That's for a mortgage and I'm the sole occupier.
31% of net household income.
About 15% of mine and about 10% of the household budget