‘I bought my first home in London at 30 after saving up for almost half my life’

Location, Location, Location star Kirstie Allsopp made headlines recently when she claimed that young people can afford to buy a home – ‘just move somewhere cheaper’. For Londoners, whether you’re born and bred or fell in love with the city later, that’s not really something we would consider.

However, with the average London property price sitting at £671,649 over the last year according to Rightmove – thus requiring a 10 per cent mortgage deposit of over £67,000 – many are left feeling like we need to look much further afield for a home of our own. But, as 31-year-old Jordon Thompson and his partner Cormac O’Donnell, 30, discovered, you might not have to venture any further than Zone 4.

Jordon and Cormac became homeowners in 2020 when they bought a brand new flat in Hounslow. They had to pull together £22,500 between them for their 5 per cent deposit, and used the government’s Help to Buy scheme to take the edge off the amount of cash they needed.

“It started when I was 16,” Jordon said of his saving to buy a home. “My father had a financial adviser who would come over to help with finances and accounts, and after their meeting I asked: ‘Who was he? What was that about? Should I open up one of those savings accounts?'”

READ MORE: The West London streets just 300 metres apart where there’s £1.5 million difference in house prices

Jordon has been saving since he was 16, putting aside 10 per cent of his earnings from after-school jobs, summer work and his salary over the years

Jordon grew up in Canada, where they have a type of savings account called a Registered Retirement Savings Plan designed to be used for saving for retirement or for large purchases.

“I started that, and my parents were contributing a small amount to it while I was in school, then when I was 16 or 17 I got my first job,” Jordon said.

“I started to put about 10 per cent of my weekly earnings into that, and I put on an auto-enrolment so it just took a certain amount out of my account every month.

“I just carried on contributing into that throughout the years – with my summer jobs, when I started full time work, and things like that.

“When I moved to the UK in 2016 I opened a Help to Buy ISA, and began contributing to that, so I had my savings in Canada and the ISA over here.”

'It's nice to have our own space, to do what we want with it - we just started painting the walls, and it was nice to not have to think about painting it back to white when we hand it over,' Jordon said

‘It’s nice to have our own space, to do what we want with it – we just started painting the walls, and it was nice to not have to think about painting it back to white when we hand it over,’ Jordon said

The Help to Buy ISA is a scheme in which the government will top up any savings in your ISA by 25 per cent (up to £3,000) when you buy your first home. It’s valid on homes with a purchase price of up to £250,000, or £450,000 in London. Applications for the scheme are now closed, but those who already have the ISA open can claim the 25 per cent bonus until November 2030.

There is also a new Help to Buy equity loan, for which first-time buyers need at least 5 per cent of the sale price of their new-build flat or house as a deposit, and then the government lends you up to 20 per cent – or 40 per cent if you live in London – of the sale price, up to the regional limits. In London, the regional limit is £600,000. You then borrow the rest from a mortgage lender, and the equity loan from the government is interest-free for five years.

Jordon says the Help to Buy scheme was a huge help to him and Cormac, but the main bulk of his deposit came from savings he’d been building on since he was a teenager.

15 years of saving certainly takes some dedication, but Jordon says he wasn’t ever really tempted to dip into his savings for things like holidays or luxuries.

31-year-old Jordon Thompson (L) and his partner Cormac O'Donnell, 30, bought their first home in London in 2020

31-year-old Jordon Thompson (L) and his partner Cormac O’Donnell, 30, bought their first home in London in 2020

“I couldn’t withdraw from my savings account without substantial penalties,” he said. “So that was an incentive not to do that.

“But also I was largely in school up until I moved to the UK, so there was never really a temptation to use it for a large holiday because I was always spending summers working to afford my tuition and pay rent and stuff.”

By October 2020, Jordon and Cormac had saved enough to put a deposit down on their first home. Jordon says he was stung a little by the exchange rate from Canadian Dollars to GBP, but he was pleased to discover that he’d saved enough so that the deposit didn’t use up all of his savings.

He was really pleased to have that buffer – helped, too, by the £3,000 he got from the Help to Buy ISA scheme – because he needed to buy furniture and decor for his new flat.

Jordon and Cormac now pay around £800 a month for their mortgage repayments on their new two-bedroom flat in Barratt London ‘s Hounslow development, High Street Quarter, which is just over half of what they were paying on rent for their previous one-bedroom home. Two-bedroom homes in the development start at £459,000, and one- and three-bedroom properties are also available.

Barratt London's High Street Quarter in Hounslow, where Jordon and Cormac bought their flat

Barratt London’s High Street Quarter in Hounslow, where Jordon and Cormac bought their flat

While houses are certainly cheaper outside of London, leaving the city wasn’t something Jordon and Cormac wanted to consider. Jordon works as a clinical audiologist in Harley Street, while Cormac works as a SEND teacher in a school that’s a 20-minute walk from where they live, and the time and money it would take for them to travel into London every day wasn’t worth the property savings for the couple.

“Things may be cheaper, but not that much cheaper, outside of London,” Jordon said. “And the cost of public transportation in the UK is astronomical. You guys pay a fortune for public transport. So any savings are offset by that, and even if you save, I don’t know, 15 per cent [buying outside of London], you pay for that in the time cost of travelling too.”

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Jordon says he is loving having a home to call their own, with extra space for family and friends to visit from Canada or Ireland, where Cormac is from, and also knowing he’s got an asset that he’s invested in.

“A home should be, first and foremost, a home to live in, but it’s nice to have the investment,” he said. “It’s also nice to have our own space, to do what we want with it – we just started painting the walls, and it was nice to not have to think about painting it back to white when we hand it over.

“The area in Hounslow is undergoing regeneration, which is quite nice – there’s a different calibre of restaurants and things coming in, but it doesn’t seem like it’s taking away from the culture and stuff that was in the area.”

'The area in Hounslow is undergoing regeneration, which is quite nice,' Jordon said

‘The area in Hounslow is undergoing regeneration, which is quite nice,’ Jordon said

To others looking to get on the housing ladder, Jordon has some advice. First of all, “ignore the baby boomers who are like: ‘Stop having your avocado toast’. Avocado toast isn’t breaking the bank. It isn’t the defining factor,” he said.

“But trying to be more money conscious where you can, really asking if certain habits are conducive to or helping you to attain the money goals and milestones that you want to meet,” is important, too, he added.

Jordon also said that having a financial adviser is “very helpful” for making big financial decisions, and shopping around for the best financial products in terms of interest rates and promotional rates is crucial. He made sure to pay off his high interest debts first, making sure to use balance transfers for credit cards to pay as little interest as possible, and also ensured that he ‘paid himself first’ on payday – putting aside savings that can’t be touched the moment he got his paycheck to ensure he doesn’t overspend.

“Don’t be remiss to moving a little bit further afield, too – there are some lovely places within Zone 4 and 5 in London that people can take advantage off,” he added.

Have you bought your first home in London under the age of 30? We’d love to hear from you – get in touch at [email protected]

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https://www.mylondon.news/news/property/i-bought-first-home-london-23139508

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