Ask HN: If you had £500k in the bank and no home would you buy a home in the UK?

No. There are far better places, where sun shines more than once a month. Your keratinocyte will thanks you.

Anyway I think you can buy a better house (less expensive on buying price, less expensive to heat/isolate/etc) in other countries.

You'd have to look into unrecoverable costs of owning a house (property taxes, maintenance costs, and cost of capital) vs unrecoverable costs or renting (rent). You should be able to make an intelligent decision based on this data.

Absolutely not.

It seems like real estate all over the world is overpriced at the moment. All the good stuff has been bought. Lots of investors do it for prestige than money. There's also been a rise in people wanting 'passive income' and somehow thinking that houses are the easiest way for it.

Not saying you can't make money off it, but it feels like the odds are you'd lose money if you don't know what you're doing, and you'll put it into something that's not liquid.

Very unlikely. I'd be more likely to buy a house in Western Europe, in one of Spain, France or Italy.

The UK will go though 10-20 years of Brexit transition where things won't be so rosy. And that's apart from the cold damp greyness of the UK.

Yes. Contrary to the other comments, the UK is a great place to live and there are plenty of places beyond London where house prices are sensible and £500k can go a long way. Depends what you want the house for though.

- I would buy a house only for non-monetary reasons

- Even when buying, look at P/R ration [1]

- For investments in real estate, usually land could be better option but do your homework as always

[1] https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Europe/United-Kingdom/pr...

Just throwing it out there but there's a few Scottish stately homes in that budget...

No. You want to keep your investment portfolio diversified. Putting even 20% of it in a single piece of real estate is a huge risk.