Buying your first home can be daunting when considering the financial decisions you’ll be making. Among these decisions are mortgage options.
Ahead of buying a property, it’s important to get to grips with how mortgage deposits work, including how much you’ll need to save and the rules around gifted deposits. The experts at Which? have shared how much money you’ll need for a deposit.
According to Which?, mortgages are generally available at up to 95% loan-to-value (LTV), which means it’s possible to get on the property ladder with a deposit of 5% of the purchase price and a mortgage covering the remaining 95%.
Here’s how much cash you’d need to put down on a £200,000 property, based on different deposit sizes:
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5% deposit: £10,000
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10% deposit: £20,000
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15% deposit: £30,000
To calculate how much you might need to save for your mortgage deposit, you should consider typical property prices and monthly repayment costs. You should also think about the property prices in your area – you can get a rough idea of local house prices from property portals such as Rightmove and Zoopla, and by speaking to local estate agents.
However, the figures listed on portals and agent websites are asking prices, so they might be a little higher than what the properties are really worth. For more concrete information, you can check how much homes in the area have sold for using the Land Registry’s price paid tool.
Each monthly mortgage payment will include interest as well as some of the loan itself – and the bigger the deposit, the smaller the loan and the less interest you’ll pay.
You should also think about factors such as mortgage fees, early repayment charges, and how many years you want to pay back the loan over (the mortgage term). To work out how much a mortgage could cost you each month, you can use the Which? mortgage repayment calculator here.
