RAF Coningsby Food Bank
JO Aircrew are now Flt Lts after just 2.5 years of finishing IOT. The bottom rung is £44.5k. So affordable in Sleaford. For an OR then really you’ll need to get your tapes as an OR4 to get £34-£35k. 5 times £35k is £175k plus a 10% deposit is £192.5k, which is just about affordable. Add in a other half, and you could find that affordable even if they have a part time minimum wage job of £10k per year.
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Agreed. Just about affordable if you live in service accommodation to save your deposit. At least a bit less hopeless than the average civilian on a bit less pay and with much higher rent, where saving enough deposit is just impossible.
I don't envy people trying to get on the ladder these days.
I don't envy people trying to get on the ladder these days.
LJ
I know you have a job to do and I appreciate and respect that. However you do sometimes run the risk of appearing to be something akin to a Soviet era political officer with your ‘these are not the droids you’re looking for’ approach to service life in 2023.
I know you are always trying to point out the positives and show ways to make things work but there are a couple of things I would take issue with.
Firstly, your buy a property to rent it out scheme will come up against a few issues. I am not aware of any decent UK lender who will allow a buy to let mortgage at anything better than a 75% LTV. That’s a hefty deposit for anyone to find.
Secondly, you quote an average married quarter charge of £350/month. I think that’s a little disingenuous. I last lived in an RAF married quarter in 2012 (I’ve lived in other derivatives much more recently though) and I was paying way more than £350/month even then. Quoting an average so low and then discussing RAF aircrew in the same breath suggests that they could get a house at such a rate when you know that’s not true. Unless an awful lot has changed in the ten months since I left the RAF.
Anyway, as I said, I know you have a job to do but might I suggest that just occasionally, instead of quoting chapter and verse and telling everyone ‘there are no American tanks in Baghdad’ you could step back and listen to the complaints and accept that maybe there is some substance to them even if you don’t feel the pinch yourself?
BV
I know you are always trying to point out the positives and show ways to make things work but there are a couple of things I would take issue with.
Firstly, your buy a property to rent it out scheme will come up against a few issues. I am not aware of any decent UK lender who will allow a buy to let mortgage at anything better than a 75% LTV. That’s a hefty deposit for anyone to find.
Secondly, you quote an average married quarter charge of £350/month. I think that’s a little disingenuous. I last lived in an RAF married quarter in 2012 (I’ve lived in other derivatives much more recently though) and I was paying way more than £350/month even then. Quoting an average so low and then discussing RAF aircrew in the same breath suggests that they could get a house at such a rate when you know that’s not true. Unless an awful lot has changed in the ten months since I left the RAF.
Anyway, as I said, I know you have a job to do but might I suggest that just occasionally, instead of quoting chapter and verse and telling everyone ‘there are no American tanks in Baghdad’ you could step back and listen to the complaints and accept that maybe there is some substance to them even if you don’t feel the pinch yourself?
BV
JO Aircrew are now Flt Lts after just 2.5 years of finishing IOT. The bottom rung is £44.5k. So affordable in Sleaford. For an OR then really you’ll need to get your tapes as an OR4 to get £34-£35k. 5 times £35k is £175k plus a 10% deposit is £192.5k, which is just about affordable. Add in a other half, and you could find that affordable even if they have a part time minimum wage job of £10k per year.
Stuff
If you go and talk to the lender (or use a clued up mortgage broker) you will find that there are a few lenders out there that will allow you, because of the special Armed Forces circumstances, to take out a residential mortgage with "permission to let". Santander and Halifax being the two that I have used myself.
BV
Hope you are well too Bob.
Mrs F and I were out in Akrotiri when we realised that if we didn't get on the property ladder back home we would get left behind. We bought a new-build off plan (the last on the estate that the builder was desperate to sell for a great price) and arranged a residential mortgage with permission to let. We did have to make a declaration that this would be the property that we would be living in had we not been Serving but, some 15 years later, it's still rented and we have never even set foot inside it. We have remortgaged several times flipping between lenders who continue to offer this option to this day. I think the declaration that it would have been your main residence other than for the needs of the Service also lets you treat it as your "home" in terms of avoiding capital gains tax when you sell it - I've yet to test that with the tax man but that's what I was advised at the time.
I will accept that we did this back in 2008 and may be benefiting from some sort of grandfather rights to continue this arrangement.
Mrs F and I were out in Akrotiri when we realised that if we didn't get on the property ladder back home we would get left behind. We bought a new-build off plan (the last on the estate that the builder was desperate to sell for a great price) and arranged a residential mortgage with permission to let. We did have to make a declaration that this would be the property that we would be living in had we not been Serving but, some 15 years later, it's still rented and we have never even set foot inside it. We have remortgaged several times flipping between lenders who continue to offer this option to this day. I think the declaration that it would have been your main residence other than for the needs of the Service also lets you treat it as your "home" in terms of avoiding capital gains tax when you sell it - I've yet to test that with the tax man but that's what I was advised at the time.
I will accept that we did this back in 2008 and may be benefiting from some sort of grandfather rights to continue this arrangement.
If you go and talk to the lender (or use a clued up mortgage broker) you will find that there are a few lenders out there that will allow you, because of the special Armed Forces circumstances, to take out a residential mortgage with "permission to let". Santander and Halifax being the two that I have used myself.
