A MARRIED couple from Heathrow managed to save £6,000 towards a deposit for their first property by working from home and giving up nights out.
Adil, 28, and Areeba Ahmed, 27, bought their two-bed apartment in Slough in August last year for £335,000.
Adli, who works in central London for a construction company, used to spend £15 a day commuting into the city until he managed to negotiate working at least three days a week from home, saving him £45 a week.
Sky marketing manager Areeba, who drives into central London every day, also managed to blag a similar agreement with her boss saving her £150 a month in petrol.
Over the year, they put aside around £3,600 from cutting commuting costs which they put towards buying their first home.
They boosted their savings by living with Areeba’s parents, cutting back on nights out and going on dates saving them another £200 a month.
Adil’s parents also loaned the newlyweds £10,000 which helped them get on the property ladder a year sooner than they had planned – a sum of money that they’re paying back on top of their mortgage every month.
We spoke to Adil and Areeba for this week’s instalment of My First Home.
Tell us, what’s your house like?
We bought a two-bed apartment on the third floor in a block of flats on a new Trinity development in Slough.
It’s open plan and really spacious, with big windows that let in loads of light. We’ve got our own parking space, a balcony and an en suit in the main bedroom.
It’s finished really nicely so all we’ve had to do is spend time making it our own with our own furniture and things.
Let’s talk finances. How much did you pay for it?
We bought it for £335,000 in August last year and we used a Help To Buy loan too.
We put down £16,750 deposit which worked out at 5 per cent. We also took out a £60,000 Help to Buy loan.
Are you a first-time buyer who want to share tips on how you did it? Email us at money@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 78 24516. Don’t forget to join the Sun Money’s first-time buyer Facebook group for the latest tips on buying your first home.
The remaining £264,000 is our mortgage which we took out over 35 years. That makes our monthly payments £850.
A few months after we bought it, the Government announced that it was scrapping Stamp Duty for first-time buyers.
Even though we’d already paid it, we thought we’d talk to the developers anyway to see if there was anything they could do about it.
In the end, they refunded us the £3,000 which was a great help when it came to buying furniture after moving in.
How did you manage to save so much?
We moved in with Areeba’s parents after we got married in 2016 while we saved for our own place.
We put aside around £500 a month give or take between us, which came to more than £6,000 over a year.
We cut back on going out for meals and things which probably saved us around £200 but we soon realised it wasn’t going to be enough.
Together, we looked at our finances to work out how we could save as much as we could.
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.
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 Starter Homes website.
We realised that we were spending about £15 a day each commuting into London to work from Heathrow every day.
I work for a construction company and they were already quite flexible about working from home but my boss agreed to letting me work from home at least three days a week so save on travel.
Areeba managed to do the same with her work, only commuting two days a week.
Overall, that saved us about £300 a month, depending on how often we had to go in to the office.
In the end, our parents gave us a £10,000 loan to help us with the deposit which we are paying back every month now.
We were lucky because without the cash we probably would have been saving for another year.
How do you plan to pay back the Help to Buy loan?
To be honest, we’ll probably hold off paying back the loan until we sell the property.
We’ll either stick it on the mortgage for a new place or we’ll pay it off with some of the equity.
How did you decide on location?
Slough wasn’t our first choice – initially wanted somewhere in Uxbridge or Slade but it was just all too expensive.
We’d looked around a few developments and preferred the Shanly Homes ones so in the end we went for the cheapest one that was in closest proximity to our parents.
MY FIRST HOME
It also had to be commutable to London, but but if we fancy a change we can get to Windsor, Reading or London all within half an hour.
Ever though it’s not our preferred location, we haven’t felt like we’ve had to sacrifice much by moving here.
There’s a massive rejuvenation going on in Slough too so we’re anticipating that the value of the flat will go up, especially when Crossrail opens.
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News Photo Couple save £6k towards the deposit for their first home by ditching nights out and working from home
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