To think it’s unfair that some people get inheritance while others start with nothing?

My parents had modest jobs (my mum was a dinner lady) but the inheritance I got (nothing like £1m btw) was as much to do with the boom of house prices, as their hard work.

How easy would it be now, for a cleaner and warehouse worker to buy a million pound house? Even if they work really hard?

YABU. Most people who've built up enough wealth to pass it on have done so through hard work, determination and good financial planning, or from being an entrepreneur, not from being landed gentry. They've already paid tax on the wealth they've built up and so supported this country. Why on earth should their beneficiaries pay tax again through inheritance? To abolish inheritance is an awful idea. Young people need as much help as they can get. I agree it doesn't seem fair if you don't get any inheritance but to enforce restrictions on those that do is a no-no to me.

Fair comparisons with the past are difficult but interesting My parents in NE England after WWII put off babies for about 10 years as they needed two full time wages (teacher and NHS doctor) to afford their first house where they lived for over 50 years. I also had to buy with our two full time salaries before we had children in the 1980s as did my children who are married with children. To buy my current house in 1997 we had to use every single penny of savings, didn't even have £1 left, nor any ISA and even used the children's savings but it was worth it and the children's savings were paid back.

My father used almost the last of his life savings other than some NE house equity fro at home dementia care which cost him £130,000 in his last year of life. He died just as the last of the savings were exhausted and as he died quite soon after our mother we had IHT to pay after the fact on our mother's estate on the bit of money we got from her (allowances etc have changed since then). Some older people will be using their house equity and savings for their care in old age.

The biggest IHT issue for people in SE England is that a lot of their life long wealth is in the house. My equity has been taxed at 40%+ already due to my divorce and having had a £1.3m mortgage at one point so it feels a bit unfair that when I die anything over my £325,000 IHT allowance will be taxed again at 40%. So people are sitting there having to work out when they are likely to die. if we abolished IHT things would be easier.

Balham wasn't really anything much until the 90s when it started changing.

Was he just a constable, or was he a more senior policeman?

I think constable when they bought but did become a detective at one point. I don't know if police were better paid vs other jobs back then but a policeman isn't buying a 1m property today without significant help.

House prices collapsed in 1945 for a brief period.

You said it quickly doubled to £2k

Not me...

It's over 1m today

You said it quickly doubled to £2k

Yes it was after the war

It cost 1k not 2k

And in 1954 the average house price on London was £1884. So a house costing £2000 in the forties was a more expensive house even then.

Sorry 40s not 30s. Surely after the war though?
Was he just a constable, or was he a more senior policeman?

@JoyousGreyOrca bought it in the 40s on a policeman's salary.

No, my mum was a cleaner and my dad was a warehouse man and I'll inherit close to a million when I eventually do because they worked bloody hard and invested right.

Nothing to do with house price increases then?

In early 1930, the average wage in Britain was £1 11s 8d for a week of just over 50 hours, or roughly a shilling an hour.

So that flat cost just under 20 times the average annual wage.

The average annual wage in London is £44,000. So 20 times that is £880,000. That flat in Balham has increased in real terms since early 1930s, but perhaps by not as much as OP thinks.
And if you looked at the average wage for a 50 hour week, the flat probably costs the same now as early 30s in terms of the average wage.

A friend of ours (now probably late 70s) was an art student in London in the 60s. Her mother (so she told me) urged her to buy one of the terraced Georgian or Queen Anne houses in Peckham, which were then going for a thousand pounds.

She didn’t want to be bothered with buying a house - but within a year prices had doubled to £2k, and she did buy one.
She still has it, probably now worth £1m+.

No, my mum was a cleaner and my dad was a warehouse man and I'll inherit close to a million when I eventually do because they worked bloody hard and invested right.

Why should I not have it because you're upset about it?

This generation will never be able to buy a property unless they get help from the previous generation.

You don't think that might be a problem?

@JoyousGreyOrca Yes. Absolutely: but the Victorians via the London Council and charities started slum clearance and there was the “homes for heros” movement after 1918. They just didn’t meet need and, after ww2, lots of what had been acceptable Victorian houses were deemed slums. It evolved. People moved out to Milton Keynes and other new cities.

Inheritance is not a huge driver of house prices. Many people are quite old before they inherit. The big drivers are lack of building, and land availability. If we built more, prices would be less. However in already very built up areas, there’s a finite supply. It’s easy enough for two people to buy a decent property with both working 1 hour from London. 2 nurses definitely could. Buying alone is a bigger issue regarding affordability and we won’t get back to the 1960s.

Me and my DH worked our socks off to be able to buy our property many years ago. Why should we then give it p to the government after we die, we paid our taxes already. Everything we have will going to our DC to make life a little bit easier for them. I'm sorry that some people don't have that leg up but just because they haven't had parents who can help why then deny my DC the help from their parents. Myself and my DH started with nothing, we didn't have the help from parents, but back then it was easier to buy a property. This generation will never be able to buy a property unless they get help from the previous generation.
The idea that everyone starts on the same footing is ridiculous, we are not living in a communist country.

This is very similar to my story. It's all very depressing.

The rich keep getting richer, the divide keeps getting bigger, and the masses keep voting in populist strongmen on lies.

There are countries with zero IHT and comparable income tax rates to the UK where housing is more affordable

Are salaries higher or lower? Rent controls? childcare costs?

I think it would be difficult to make the case that inheritance is the driving force behind housing unaffordable in the UK - there are so many other factors.

The issue is ever increasing house prices became a key part of our economic growth. We never recovered from the 08 crash and low interest rates boosted assets. It's very hard to get on the ladder without a significant deposit because again after 08 mortgage lending tightened up. Wages have stagnated and rents are high which makes it hard to save for a deposit.

50k today is the equivalent to 40k 5 yrs ago & 26k in the early 00s.

@JoyousGreyOrca I was referring to when I was born.

The depressing thing about this thread is that it shows lots of ordinary people with modest amounts to pass on genuinely don't understand that their children are actually being harmed by inheritance, not benefitting from it!

Thank you. It would be far better if dc earned enough to afford housing security themselves!