Buying a house and the games industry.

These days the answer is really dependent on the history of the property market moreso than before. It used to be pretty much a no-brainer to buy property but now it's shown that other types of investments can be more profitable and/or more secure.

I would never buy in Vancouver, I personally believe it's a little volatile. Of course here houses start at 1000000$ so it's not like that will be a decision for me to make anyways

So definitely do a little research, it might show that there are other investments that might be more compatible for you. I havent been to Wales in about 8 years (I have a lot of family in Wales and spread across the UK), is there a large demand for property?

Dude i don't know how you managed to stay in wales and do maps for a living, but you did for a very long time. If that continues, i would totally buy a house, especially if you have family and friends around who can get a look up over it in case you have to move anywhere. Plus you can rent it and pay a rent elsewhere if you need to

I guess if you're sick of renting it makes sense. I couldn't ever even think of buying a house myself though, it seems like a bad investment: I also think that you (we) are still young, and it might be too early to get tied down for buying a house just yet. The world is huge, and should be explored. Be that through jobs or travels, it's all the same.

My personal advice would be to think it through and don't paint yourself into a corner with a huge investment. There's plenty of time to be old later.

You should probably start off by buying a flat, and not a house. Both things requires a level of commitment that is a bit above what is required of you when you rent something and its better to go in easy. Because a house requires a lot more of you because you now you also have to take care of the outside of your building and the property. And you'd be surprised at how much time is spent keeping your property in a good shape once its yours.

I cant speak for how it is in England, but given that we're still in Europe you probably have a lot of the same expenditures as we do:

Morgage

Garbage and disposal (you'd be surprised at how much this costs)

Water

Power+heating

Internet+tv+phone

Insurance (furnitures, house, yourself, all separate here and very important)

And when buying a house you also have to consider the property and what the house is built upon. No one is going to help you if your house is built on cursed land (lol). If your house gets flooded, you're fucked, if your house starts moving because its built on mud, you're fucked. If your ceiling is leaking, you're fucked and so on.

Its a lot easier when dealing with an apartment because someone else has to care of everything regarding the exterior.

So yeah, if you think you can cover all the expenditures (and have enough saved up so that you can last at least 1 month without a job, preferably 3 months), then you should go for it.

Only real reason I can see for getting a house with a yard is if you have kids. Or a wife that absolutely requires a lawn she can plant stuff on. BBQ's and sun bathing can be done on a terrace. Plants can be planted in pots.

edit; sorry I started ranting about not getting a house when all you said was that you wanted a "home". I misread

edit2: Oh I see the thread title specifies a house, so I guess my rant is good after all

Houses in the UK - just make sure you keep in mind that you will need to put isolation and new windows on that thing at some points...

I don't want to rain on your parade but buying a house, for me, was one of the dumbest things I ever did. I bought my home just before the crisis started (I didn't know it was coming of course). As you know, there's a baby on the way and I own a spacious apartment but with only one bedroom. This will become a problem in the future. We've been trying to sell it for 4 years now. Nobody is interested because almost nobody is buying. At the moment I've put it up with a 20.000 euro loss and still nothing. While not taking into account the money I invested in the house. If I ever get rid of it it will probably have cost around 30.0000 to do so (ex morgage over a 8 year period).

That's not calculating what Skalg mentioned. I don't know England but stuff like garbage disposal + water is around 500 a year here. Also, I pay 150 euro per month for the maintenancr of the building. This was much cheaper when I got here and there's nothing I can do about it. It's just really a bottomless money sucking pit I don't get rid of. The same goes for my friends who bought houses. They all have similar problems. I will not buy another house in this economy again. In comparison renting is way cheaper.

I would only reconsider if the economy returns to normal. So again, sorry for being negative, but I wouldn't buy even with a gun against my head. Especially in you're industry. Keep renting dude, seriously. But hey, that's just my opinion (since you asked).

One thing about the first buy scheme is you're not allowed to rent it out (legally) until you've paid it all off and the house is yours. One thing you might want to consider.

I'm torn on what to do myself. If I do buy a house I'd probably not go with the first buy scheme so I could legally rent it out should I move studios or whatever.

I'd love to buy my own house. Decorating and all that shit would be kinda fun if it was on your place. Kind of like level design in real life

With such a volatile industry, there is no way I'm gonna be buying a house any time soon. I don't mind renting for the time being until I want to settle down, but I definitely don't want to do that in my 20s. If I buy a house, I'm tied down to that place for a long time, and I want to keep my options open.

Wales is definitely not the place for games, it's awesome that you've managed to keep up your contract at UWE for so long but I wonder how much longer they're gonna need LDs for? SN seems to be going the way of procedural generation, so I'd keep an eye out on that front dude.

Are you single ? If yes don't do it ! Such a pain in the ass to moving then...

Why, you can always rent the house and have an income ?

Quote from knj

Why, you can always rent the house and have an income ?

There's a lot more to renting out a place than just collecting money man. You're looking at endless costs for insurance, maintenance, letting agents (unless you seek out and background check tenants yourself which probably isn't wise), and ultimately if they fuck up the property it's your ass on the line. I wouldn't do it unless I had more than enough cash to cover, for example, three months of no tenants because someone decided to damage the whole property with water and disappear abroad because they thought their landlord was a bit shit (true story).

Like Liam, I wouldn't consider buying a house until at least my 30s. Lifestyle and prospects can change completely at our age, and even though you might be happy now you could find yourself feeling very different if you're made redundant when you've barely settled into your house. Don't make the mistake that I made, and think that after being with a company for years they'll think twice about dropping you the moment you're financially inconvenient for them, no matter how well you get on with them.

And then what, back to renting and barely covering the mortgage payments on a house you don't need? That's assuming you get tenants in all the time, which often isn't the case. And if you're no longer living in the area, what about the practicalities of handling viewings, repairs, etc?

I'm perfectly happy to rent for the indefinite future, because while it means there are limitations on how much I can customise my home and I'm not going to make anything from it, I'm not losing an awful lot either. I have a lovely home to live in, and if I decide that my neighbours suck or I want a fresh start in another city or country, I can make the move fairly painlessly.

If you still want to do it with all this in mind, perhaps it's the right choice. I would seriously consider some of these possibilities, though. Take it from someone who's seen good friends get into some serious shit with unwise property decisions at too young an age, it's not something you want to get wrong.

If I were you, I'd just assume that you're going to lose your job in two years. Not that I'm trying to bring you bad fortune, but you need to consider things with that kind of mentality to figure out whether or not this is really a good idea. In any other industry it wouldn't be such a big deal, but it's not like the UK is oozing with games industry jobs at any given moment in time.

Also, the whole renting thing, we've looked into that. Maybe it's different in England but here, if they don't pay, you can't simply evict them. They have a lot of rights. So even if you find someone to rent it to, you never have the guarantee you'll see you money. So there's a chance that somebody is living for free in your house until all the arrangements are made to get rid of them.

Secondly and this is a big problem here, somebody rents the place and uses it to grow weed. Lots of problems coming from that with the power company, legal stuff, damages, etc.

Last but not least, what Beck said. Depending on your mortgage you can't simply rent it out. I had to first put it up for sale and after it had been on sale for 2 years only then was I allowed to rent it to someone.

Quote from SpronyvanJohnson

Also, the whole renting thing, we've looked into that. Maybe it's different in England but here, if they don't pay, you can't simply evict them. They have a lot of rights. So even if you find someone to rent it to, you never have the guarantee you'll see you money. So there's a chance that somebody is living for free in your house until all the arrangements are made to get rid of them.

Secondly and this is a big problem here, somebody rents the place and uses it to grow weed. Lots of problems coming from that with the power company, legal stuff, damages, etc.

Last but not least, what Beck said. Depending on your mortgage you can't simply rent it out. I had to first put it up for sale and after it had been on sale for 2 years only then was I allowed to rent it to someone.

Yeah, it's similar here. The law is almost hilariously biased towards tenants, meaning that at best it takes like two or three months for a landlord to get someone evicted even if the tenant has absolutely no right to still be there. This is why renting should be left to professional investors with the money to absorb such costs IMO, otherwise both tenants and landlords end up fucked.

I actively avoid private landlords as opposed to portfolio investors because more often than not they simply don't have the funds to take care of the property to a high standard — they just want to get the most out of the place with minimum expenditure to cover their mortgage payments. You soon find out how important this kind of thing is when something like your washing machine or water boiler breaks down.

i want to buy real-estate too

but having lived in my grandpas house for half a year (dealing with all the up keep and costs bullshit... also retarded neighbors) a house is not an attractive prospect anymore for me.

start small buy a flat !

I bought my apartment back in early 2008 (yes, not the best timing ever, but I needed it), and back then it seemed like a pretty good decision, mainly because I didn't even consider the idea of leaving my job at the time, plus like you said then renting ends up feeling like you're pissing your money away in the long run.

However since then I've pretty drastically changed my perspective on this, and if it was today I'd never have bought it. In this industry, unless you live in an extremely active game dev community, renting seems like the way to go. Right now I feel very bound by it, if I didn't have the apartment I'd probably be long gone by now. With the prices slowly going up then I'm definitely considering selling it, even if it's at a loss, just to get out of this so I can get a job somewhere else.

I know that I could rent it out, but I honestly don't wanna get into that kinda shit. I'd rather sell it a perhaps lose some a bunch of money on it, but then be free.

It might be a stance that'll change later on, I'm pretty sure it will, but right now I'd rather be free to take jobs anywhere in the world rather than being limited to Denmark.

What is a flat exactly?

Quote from AlexM

What is a flat exactly?

An apartment?

I second what everyone else said, this industry is like quick sand, one need to thread carefully. I'd love to buy a house here too, LA outskirts is actually a relativily safe place to buy because there's so many studios around if something were to go bad, but even then there's risk envolved.

In this fucked up economy, caused mainly by real estate I think it's wiser to hold of on buying, specially for us.

ohhh ok, I thought it was a one floor house

Also, if you have a lot of money in your savings, invest it. Just not necessarily in property.

Invest in what, stocks? Shit is like gambling.

That reminds me I need to set up my 401k. Fuck getting old sucks... I'm about to turn 29 in a couple months, sigh.