After selling their home and moving into a rental property, Annabelle and Simon Baugh are now worried that they will be unable to buy again.
The couple believed that selling their home 15 years ago would be a good financial move to help them get out of debt but have since worked out they are now around £150,000 out of pocket as a result.
They planned to rent temporarily but have been living in rental properties ever since as high house prices and mortgage rates scuppered their plans to buy again.
Annabelle, 45, said: “Looking back, I wish I’d never sold the house. If I’d kept it I would have still had some equity in it and it would have been something to fall back on.”
She hoped that property prices would fall while they were renting but house prices and mortgage rates didn’t move in the direction she expected.
Annabelle owned two properties in the west Midlands by the age of 25: a four-bedroom townhouse in Sutton Coldfield which she lived in with her husband Simon and their son Byron, as well as a three-bedroom terraced house in Erdington which she rented to students.
She had bought the rental as her first home for £40,000 when she was 20, taking out a £38,000 mortgage.
House prices had gone up five years later so she was able to remortgage and release some equity to use as a deposit to buy the £150,000 townhouse with a £110,000 mortgage.
She rented out the Erdington property for a few years, but when more landlords started offering student accommodation in the area, she found it harder to find tenants. So at 27, she sold that house, paid off some debt and used the remaining money to renovate her home.
But it was around that time things started to