Telegraph article - ‘We gave our son £325k to buy a flat – or he would have been stuck renting forever’

I agree with you OP. There was a thread about a month ago where similar was discussed

I absolutely understand the desire to help younger generations and anyone with the means will of course do so and I will top if I am in that position.

But as a society its a complete disaster of a situation and will only get worse. House prices will continue to be pushed up by those receiving help to keep up and the cycle will continue. We've seen it happen in London but it's also becoming apparent in other places too.

The baby boomers are set to leave ££££ to their off spring. Anyone who doesn't receive inheritance will get left behind - no amount of working hard at school and earning a relatively decent wage is going to make much difference if the next person has a 250k deposit.

I understand we all want the best for our own families but we've essentially created a world where life style comes down to whether your parents bought a house at the right time. Not a criticism, like I say, I'll no doubt do it too to ensure mine aren't left behind so the cycle will go on

My DC will get help. 2 from their father - maybe to the tune of 325k each from inheritance - but his mother is still very much alive and well and could be for 20 odd more years. No care home fee’s (the family would never due to cultural reasons). They are very lucky.

I am 47 and haven’t even started my mortgage yet due to living in the South east until my DC are all at Uni (2yrs). I have an older son who is already 30. He lives with his grandma still (my mum). He doesn’t know it yet but I am going to give him my share of that house (assuming care home costs don’t eat it up) as although he lives in a cheap area, he hasn’t got anyone to give him a large deposit. So I won’t benefit from any inheritance but I do have a decent salary (68k) which whilst not great for the South east, will be for the north west. I’m also fortunate to have a civil service pension so if I make it to retirement age, any mortgage I have remaining I’ll pay off with that.

I don’t think my parents generation really buy into bank of mum & dad. My dad has passed now and my mum has some savings, but isn’t wanting to pass on right now, which is absolutely fine. It’s certainly nothing to the tune of 325, but would help her two DC who live in flats to buy a house. But we would never ask for it. My mum always offers to loan us money for housing, but with high rates neither my brother or I are willing to do that. Again, perfectly fine. It’s her money. But I will be sharing with my DC.

I suspect a lot of people with adult children have made that kind of wealth through property values increasing.

The issue isn't parents helping the DC on to the property market. Nor does doing so inflate property prices.

The issue is that property prices have risen to such an extreme that young people haven't got a hope without help.
The fact that a high percentage of young people have help is a symptom not a cause of grossly inflated property prices and stagnating wages.

The only way to resolve it is for property prices to fall significantly and for wages to increase. We need more housing built and a cap on foreign ownership of residential properties and second home ownership.

Irrelevant tho

But it's not comparing apples with apples..
This couple likely have millions and are doing some estate/tax planning.
That's not applicable to 99% of families..
We scrapped together about £8k to help one of daughters get into a shared ownership property as she had rented
for 8 years and getting an ordinary mortgage to cover something suitable just wasn't going to happen.

I suspect most people do not have this type of deposit, however, most people I know who have bought in London received support from their family including myself. I would be doing the same for my children.

We will be helping ours as part of inheritance tex planing. Cant afford to do it yet but that's the plan, and to put it in trust should they divorce. Everyone I know has helped their kids as sadly it's the only way, but I appreciate many can't.

We bought DC a flat at Uni. Eldest used this as a deposit for her next home.
Youngest, is about to rent out his student flat as he has a two year contract overseas.

Our friends sent their children to private schools. Our children went to the local primary and Secondary. Both went to Russell Group Unis.

We saved the equivalent of school fees (a rather basic prep and High school) into a fund. We also, added child benefit to the fund.

They are really appreciated that they were given help.

Yes, they have been given a start in life.
Many others are given a helping hand private schools or inheritance. Both had part time jobs at school and Uni.
They like their parents aren't extravagant or money orientated. They do work that helps people and society. I suppose the helping hand has meant they can work in NHS and Education.

I had no financial help and bought my first house alone ( mortgage) at 26yo. Got married and DH parents are penniless.
I and DH worked hard in the forces/ nursing to buy our house together with deposit from my first house.
We may inherit from my parents but I intend to gift house deposits to both DD and DS ( 18 and 16yo)
By the time my parents pass we will hopefully be mortgage free, both have various additional pension as well so financially ok.

I don't think it's particularly a problem though. Rich people can afford to buy things that poorer people can't. There will always be someone richer than you and someone poorer than you.

These gifts/purchases will be subject to the usual IHT, CGT and stamp duty rules so as long as they are meeting their taxes I don't see why they shouldn't spend their money as they like. It's a free market.

Wow! Do people stay living at home, or do they rent?

Me neither, but my friends and I were all buying around the millenium when you easily buy a London flat for less than £100k.

I'm 48 and most of my friends and I were given money for a house deposit - about 10K but some more. Of course parents will help if they can, presumably if they see their DC are working hard and able to pay the mortgage.

I wouldn't be in a position to give that much at all and I agree it's unfair - but quite normal for parents to do this.

Personally, I married a man on an equal financial footing to me.

Financial disparities can be problematic in relationships, yes, but this is true whether it’s family money or the money you have earned yourself.

Families taking steps to protect their family money has been standard for a long, long time, incidentally.

my worry is that the high earners without bank of mum and dad would be priced out of the expensive areas i.e. London/SE and they will flock to those areas where it is still possible for 2 civil servants to buy a starter home and then it would not be possible for people on more modest incomes to buy or even rent.

Your right op and I know this because I did this.

No help from bank of mum and dad but me and DH (fiancé at the time) put a deposit down that we had managed to save on a house worth £270k.

Me and DH joint income is just shy of £230k so we're eligible to borrow around the 900k mark but couldn't raise a big enough deposit to get a more expensive house. We could have pushed for 300k home but would not have had anything to decorate the house how we liked.

We couldn't raise a bigger deposit because of expensive rent we were both already paying and paying back student loans and debts we had occurred while trying to get through university and PHDS with no family financial support.

Now we have had children I haven't worked for years and don't need to because our house doesn't cost majority of our salary. The children get lovely holidays and we drive lovely cars. So technically we have stopped two hardworking civil servants getting a lovely and reasonably priced home.

When my children are all school age I will return to work and we may move on to a more expensive home but then that would make it more difficult for us to fund our children's future home deposits and then the cycle will continue

I’d say getting that amount of money is highly unusual though. Most people who get help don’t get anywhere near £300k!

My parents helped us buy a house 10 years ago as we were renting and saving but house prices were rocketing up. Mind you we were getting a 95% mortgage due to saving our deposit with nationwide in a special account they did back then. So we didn’t need that much from them to get us over the line. We’d still saved ourselves and still had to earn enough to pay a mortgage etc.

My MIL always goes on about the help we had, then admits she had help buying get first house too. And with inflation and house price increases we probably got lent similar amounts really.

I don’t think people should be ashamed their parents helped them as long as it was the parents choice and didn’t leave them
short.

The comment made in the article about £350k not being a free ride is just plain ridiculous. Of course that's a free ride. That's an incredible amount to be gifted. I cannot stand it when wealthy people gift their children hundreds of thousands, but then say stupid things like that. I would have much more respect for them if they were just honest. I will never be able to help my children buy a property but I absolutely would if I had the means, however, I would at least be honest about how privileged they were.

My parents did this for my brother and I.

It’s their money to spend as they wish, I take no issue with it. Not my money, not my business 🤷🏻‍♀️ I also don’t subscribe to the notion that struggling for the sake of struggling is a virtue.

I helped my ACs to buy their houses. I had the money, and it was no one else’s business. 🤷‍♀️

You think it's bad here you should see Switzerland, the average first time buyer is in their 50s because the average first time buyer house price is £1m. The "average" range also goes up to £12m!

Both our DC earn well, so don't need bank of mum and dad to get on the property ladder. Also in London.