House prices

It's probably because first time buyers are now much older. Trying to fit two adults and a teenager into a pokey studio flat when you are in your 40s is quite an undertaking.

Single occupation households are fuelling the housing crisis. Around 10% of houses were occupied by a single person in the early 1970’s. This has risen to 30% due to longevity and the rise of single parent households and people just choosing to remain single. It’s a huge societal shift. I mean a few of my friends live in family homes alone now mainly due to marriage breakdowns and children that have now left home. This isn’t a they shouldn’t or any debate about should it be allowed it’s just an example of a massive change. I mean in my row of big three bed semi detached houses with drives half are occupied by a single person.

thats where we fundamentally disagree as I don’t think a home should be a reward to be “worked” for (in quotes because some of the hardest workers don’t earn enough to buy a property in some locations, hard work doesn’t equate to wealth).

A secure home is just a basic need in a fair society. It would be a nicer world as well if people had the freedom to pursue passions and arts and creative pursuits rather than feeling pressured to “work hard” for a home, if affordable accommodation was a fact of life.

An unemployed person being able to access a home as easily as a lawyer or a surgeon takes nothing away from people who choose to pursue those jobs. If you feel you need to be motivated by a cut-throat society that penalises people for being poor and takes away their access to basic living standards, I find that depressing tbh. We don’t live in a meritocracy now, it’s all predicated on familial wealth, so levelling the playing field for those at the bottom would take nothing away from those at the top.

What would that look like, though?
I live in a house worth far more now than when I bought it. I actually earn less now than I did then and my monthly salary covers my expenses but nothing extra.
My house is the right size for my family, no spare rooms.
What would I pay any extra expected of me?

https://thelondonweekly.net/uk-news/7337-london-house-prices-lag-behind-rest-of-uk-for-past-eight-years

I certainly know of flats in London that sold for the same price or less as 5 yrs prior.

I think labour or any other future government are going to come after some of that housing wealth. It’s inevitable as we need money, the costs of an ageing population are ££££

The best outcome is a steady increase in new housing supply which should result in slower property price growth, such that values relative to wages reduce as wages rise at a faster rate.

This is exactly what the current government are trying to do with various programs to increase housebuilding. We just need to give them a solid couple of terms in power for the impacts to start to really be felt.

Whilst most people will empathise with the sentiment, all that can happen now is a cooling down at best. It won’t/can’t take a big hit for all the obvious economic reasons.

I certainly never claimed Hackney or z3 were outer London 😆

@Tiredalwaystired my initial response said the below

*Sorry OP but houses in outer London in the mid 80's were not £50k !!

Parent and in-laws houses were 60-80k in early 80s in z3.

I thought it was obvious that if a house was 70k in z3 then you could easily get one in outer zones for 50k. My later comment about Hackney was just illustrating how much price growth there has been in some areas, that Hackney house is like 1.5m now.

We defo need more social housing & better rental options. It’s much harder to build wealth here unless you own which isn’t right. If your parents own & can help you onto the ladder is more important that your job/salary.

Citing a 100k house in the nineties somewhere not in outer London when the initial comment was about 80s house prices in outer London. I wasnt sure why that was relevant.

@Tiredalwaystired what part wasn’t clear?

Yes I completely agree. But they also deserve to own their own homes and not have to rely on the council. I’m sure they don’t want to live in council housing and would prefer their own home. Therefore we need more affordable homes.

What was your point?

What we miss out on in this country is good quality long term rental accommodation. They do this well on the continent (in Austria it is done particularly well by the state). A company wants to invest in an asset that has a long term good return so builds some nice flat, lets it to nice people, they know they aren’t going to get turfed out at the drop of a hat, the landlord gets a consistent return on investment.

This doesn’t happen in the UK. The private rental martlet is a hodge-podge of buy to let investors, stopping people from decorating their flat, never doing repairs, kicking people out at 3 months notice to try to find alternative accommodation in their child’s school catchment. The stress of our poor private rental options is why we want to buy in this country, not for some sort of ‘social aspiration’ fgs.

@Tiredalwaystired which was my point…

Hackney and zone 3 are not especially outer London though. Harrow for example is two zones further out and is still outer London. It would have been even cheaper there.

And I’m sure a colleague bought a 100k house in the late 90s in Hackney.

The property ladder can easily end at step one and stuck.

yep

Sorry OP but houses in outer London in the mid 80's were not £50k !!

Parent and in-laws houses were 60-80k in early 80s in z3.

Not true. One bed flats near me are £350k. There’s not a load of wiggle room upwards as the next step up is about £500k. On an average age that’s not easy to achieve. The property ladder can easily end at step one and stuck.

But if first time buyers can’t afford anything in the nice area they would like, it just means they might have to make do with a small one bed in a not as nice area. Then in a few years, they see another house in a nicer area, sell and buy that one, and so on.

The idea of a property ladder doesn’t really exist when you have high entry prices and older FTBs, plus stamp duty costs. A 35 yr old has different needs to a 25 yr old.

My parents bought a three bed house in Zone 2, in 1987 for 78k. It was a doer upper but even if it were in that condition now it would still be pushing a million.