Most people do not take equity form their home to buy rental..in fact private small scale landlords are selling due to the increase in tenants rights which means they can’t sell up at a whim by serving tenants notice. Nor do most people move to cheaper areas…generally they want to move to areas with better schools when kids are young if they can possibly afford to do so,or “nicer “ areas. You’re highlighting a small group of people in the minority. Most landlords either inherited money to buy property, or set themselves up on old buy to let, or are property developing as a living.
butni suspect you do know this with your “yes, buts…”
miras was limited to a 30k mortgage, targeting those that had low mortgage and wages. We, as a newly married couple in late twenties never qualified. I have never benefitted from any tax relief or benefits on mortgage or housing costs. My parents never benefitted form it either. Nor my siblings or anyone I knew. Yes it did peak to £ 9million relief being paid out in 1990-1991, and it was realised it was an unaffordable tax scheme and rates of tax relief were pulled back very quickly.
i say it’s trite to say older people benefitted form house price gains, becuase the reality is most will never benefit form the accumulated value of their property , in terms of cash in pocket, forum those gains. The money is tied into the very bricks and mortar they live in. If they don’t end up in care and paying for that with house equity, then it’s younger generation that will see the benefit from inheritence. And equally value of property could fall, as it did in 1990s. That is the reality. I’m not denying on paper older peoples property value make them seem wealthy, never said that.
It’s the same as people valuing themselves or a company based on the value of their investments today..it’s paper wealth..it is meaningless until assets are crystallised. As people are finding out with trumps games just now. Or the reason I get so bloody angry with personal pension policy that everyone is pretty much pushed into these days…rather than state pension contributions and benefits being raised- your very pensions these days are based on nominal paper value of investment on a day- at any time the value of your personal pension could crash meaning you can’t retire when you thought, or meaning you have less pension income. NI didn’t work like that- it was a gunarenteed income.
so if you want to pop at how much easier the older generation have it, I’ll give you that one..state of pension for anyone under 45 is outrageous..and no one complained or petioles at time to stop it happening. Now that does make me insanely angry on behalf of future generations.
older people, as you put it, didn’t have a lot of luck around other things that impacted their wealth…unemployment was massive (my own exh was made redundant 7 times in 10 years hence our own poverty at times), we paid more on fuel, food up to mid 1990s , then people even pay now as proportion of income (a fact a lot of folks fail to actually look at historical statistic for). Form 2008 to 2017 ish we have never had such a sustained period of low interest rates, many people think that’s the norm. It isn’t. The average interest rates over last 100 years is actually 8%, high than now when people are struggling with cost of living crisis.
The issue here is not costs, the issue is wages. Wages are stagnant, lower, and wealth inequality is frankly a moral outrage. As is the zero hour gig economy impacting many poorer people. The waelthy folks like to say how “flexible” it is…the poorer people know how uncertain it is. We’re back to 1920s, the difference is the political apathy of those impacted …the 1920s saw the rise of unions to battle this inequality…most youngsters don’t want to join unions and fight for their rights. Or voting for reform and blaming immigrants.
Everyone will experience hard times and easier times over their life times. Right now current 20-30 year old are struggling getting on housing market. That isn’t down to older generation, or luck, that’s down to political decisions around wage inequality, social housing etc. but they will, over their lifetime, experience more prosperous times, every generation does. Things change. That’s the certainty. And as I say those kids that can’t get on the housing market, like my own 30 year olds living in south in good professional jobs, will eventually get there…just from what left of mine and exh estates and house prices when we die. I suspect, with luck of one of us at least not getting dementia, they’ll be a lot wealthier than me eventually.