Mechanic saved £28k deposit by pimping up old sports cars and taking on extra work
MECHANIC Luke Everest saved enough cash from fixing-up second hand sport cars in his spare time to buy a home.
The 26-year-old from Essex, who works full time repairing HGVs, managed to save £28,000 in three years.
As well as pimping up sports cars, Luke took on overtime at work and stashed away as much as he could.
Now, he owns a two-bed house in Rochester for £185,000 with girlfriend Kayleigh Hilbert, 24.
Luke also benefited by living with his parents, so he paid just £200 in rent and bills. It meant he could put as much as £1,500 a month into savings.
He also made money from nights out by being the designated driver and charging "mates taxi rates" to give his pals a lift home.
We chatted to Luke and Kayleigh for My First Home to find out how they bagged the home of their dreams - and how it ended up being an hit.
What’s your new home like?
Luke: It’s a two-bed terrace in Rochester and if we're honest, it didn’t wow us when we saw it online.
But it was in the right sort of area for the right price, so we thought we would take a look. Luckily for us it was much better in real life.
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We had been looking to buy in nearby Gravesend but we quickly realised that for the price of a one bedroom flat there we could have our three bed house elsewhere instead.
Kayleigh: We really liked the layout and all the rooms are well-proportioned.
It was a real project with so much work needed in all corners of the house but that’s exactly what we wanted so that we could put our own stamp on it - and to learn some new skills along the way.
How much did you pay for it?
Luke: We paid £185,000 which was actually £15,000 over the asking price of £170,000.
The property market in 2016 was quite different to now - viewings were complete chaos with queues of people looking around each property.
There was a lot of competition for the good properties so we had to bid higher than the asking price - and luckily it was our offer that got accepted.
How did you afford to buy the place?
Luke: I’ve always been really good at saving. Once I got my job and bought a car, the next goal was to buy my own place.
I was determined to save a 10 per cent deposit, and with Kayleigh at university, we weren’t splashing out anyway.
I had a couple of thousand pounds in a savings account to start me off that I had leftover from when I was buying my car.
My parents only charged me £200 a month to live at home, which I am so grateful for. They paid all the bills and all my food.
It meant I just had to pay for petrol and then I could pile all my spare cash into savings each month. Some months I managed £1,500 as I cut out any other spending.
I also decided to use my professional skills to make some money.
I bought and sold three Audi TTs - one at a time - that I knew I could repair and sell on for a profit.
I made one mistake in buying one that was a bit new so I only broke even on it, but I made up for it with another that I made £1,600 on by rebuilding the engine.
With the others I made about £500 on each.
I was using my savings to buy the cars that cost anything between £400 and £4,200, which I suppose was a gamble, but I was confident I could do a good job and make a decent profit.
I also made a bit of cash from driving friends home from nights out, charging £5 per person which added up over the months.
In total, over three years I was saving I ended up with £28,000.
Kayleigh: The deposit and mortgage was all Luke.
I was studying and had a part-time job working in catering so I saved for when we moved in and needed to buy furniture and pay for renovations. We’ve gone halves on most stuff.
What size deposit did you pay and what mortgage did you get?
Luke: I put down £22,000 and borrowed £163,000 on a two-year fixed-rate mortgage at 2.79 per cent over 25 years.
I have since remortgaged, again with Halifax, this time on a five-year deal at 2.49 per cent and reduced the term from 25 years to 16 years as my ultimate goal is to be mortgage-free.
This has taken my monthly repayments from just over £800 to £930, but now the place is finished I can afford it.
The terms of our mortgage allow us to overpay up to 10 per cent too, and so I’m keen to plough in as much as possible to get the mortgage paid off sooner than 16
years.
Were there any issues getting the mortgage?
Luke: Thankfully, no. I made sure I checked my credit report when I was still saving.
My credit rating was average but I wanted to boost it, so I took out a credit card and used it to buy my petrol, which was usually around £300 a month.
I paid it off in full each month and it worked as I saw my score go up by quite a bit.
I went to my bank - Halifax - where I have banked since 2011 and was offered a mortgage really quickly, and the application process was pretty straightforward.
How did you feel when you got the keys?
Luke: We were really excited but we planned from the outset not to move in for a while.
The place needed so much work that we decided to do it little by little and I needed time to save up more money to pay for stuff.
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 website.
The first thing we did was get the windows replaced and a new boiler fitted - that cost £4,000 and wiped me out of all savings as the remaining £2,000 of my savings had been spent on solicitors and moving.
So I had to start saving all over again and Kayleigh starting saving hard too.
What exactly have you done, renovation wise?
Luke: Pretty much everything from floor to ceiling and beyond.
We put in a new kitchen, bathroom, replastered and painted all the walls, new skirting boards, new electrics.
We built a walk-in wardrobe and added a downstairs toilet. We even dug up the floor in one part of the kitchen to lay pipes to make a little separate laundry room.
Kayleigh and I did most of the work ourselves, staying there on and off, so mostly still living with my parents.
We finally moved in properly a year later, in August 2017.
There were some things we couldn’t quite manage though and needed professional help with the plastering and with things like the electrics.
We needed lots of rewiring and that’s definitely not one for me. We paid for the windows to be refitted too.
Kayleigh: We took our time with everything and hunted for the best prices on everything.
The best deal was on our new bathroom. I saved us a few hundred pounds on some ex-display bathroom taps that had been reduced to £112.
The last thing we did was the garden which we’ve made look amazing. It’s been great to have it all nice in time for the summer.
How did you furnish the place?
Kayleigh: To start with we just bought the essentials with the little money that we had left - our bed and bedding, curtains, lights, cushions, towels and some appliances.
We then bought furniture as we saved enough money to renovate each of the rooms, which we did one by one.
We managed to find quite a few bargains along the way, such as our bedside tables that we bought off eBay for £290.
We started posting on Instagram to document our progress as it was something we were quite proud of.
We were amazed that we built up quite a following and reached about 40,000 followers after about three months.
It was around then that we started being approached by companies offering us products in exchange for posting the details.
We have been gifted some amazing things including a gorgeous sofa and footstool for the living room worth £2,300 and a £1,600 garden sofa.
We’ve also been given smaller items like prints for the walls and nice candles.
We know we’ve been really lucky to get freebies, but we have spent a lot of our own money on the house - we’ve kept spreadsheets of everything we’ve spent.
The running total is £33,000, which includes renovations and furniture.
The best thing we’ve bought ourselves is our mattress that we paid £1,100 for but it’s been worth every penny.
What was the hardest part about buying a home?
Luke: Finding your way around the whole process is tricky.
Neither of us had ever had any experience with buying a home or getting a mortgage.
I actually had an offer accepted on a house in Gravesend six months before we found this one and spend £2,000 on searches and surveys, only for the sellers to change their mind and take the house off the market.
Mr First Home
It was a bit of a blow but you have to move on and keep going. No matter how you look at it, buying a house is a really expensive business.
Have you got any advice for first-time buyers?
Luke: Be realistic about saving and set yourself realistic goals that you would be able to stick to.
Take into account all the forgotten costs involved with purchasing a property and do lots of research about which lenders can lend you the most at the best rate.
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