If you bought your house since 1979 I have attached a list of the relevant interest rates....

[EllenWaiteourkid]

Bank of England base rate 1979-2017

Bank rate at year end (%)*
1979 17

1980 14

1981 14.375

1982 10

1983 9.0625

1984 9.5

1985 11.375

1986 10.875

1987 8.375

1988 12.875

1989 14.875

1990 13.875

1991 10.375

1992 6.875

1993 5.375

1994 6.125

1995 6.375

1996 5.9375

1997 7.25

1998 6.25

1999 5.5

2000 6

2001 4

2002 4

2003 3.75

2004 4.75

2005 4.5

2006 5

2007 5.5

2008 2

2009 0.5

2010 0.5

2011 0.5
2012 0.5
2013 0.5
2014 0.5
2015 0.5
2016 0.25
2017 0.5
2018 0.75
2020 0.25
2020 0.10
2021 0.25
2022 0.5
2022 0.75

We purchased in 1991 and then years later moved north/south never a good idea financially 🙄and quadrupled our mortgage, the baby that it looked like we were never going to have came along after ten years, so that was us down to one salary.

They were ummmmmmmm interesting times, so that is why when some people in our social circle think we are on the pigs back I make no apologies for being finally financially secure.

And wage growth in 1979 was 17.3% (i.e. equivalent to interest rates, and keeping pace with inflation). Source: ONS.

Wage growth in 2022 has been negative, having seen a fall of 4.5% in the year to April. At the same time, inflation is pushing 10% and is forecast to go up even more next year. This is while we are seeing house prices at record levels and unprecedented salary multiples, as PP have pointed out. Source: the Guardian, reporting ONS data.

So, no, I don't think we're comparing like with like here!

@eurochick @MineIsBetterThanYours

life has never been ‘easy’ and I know that, but if OP thinks she’s going to rustle up some sympathy for the boomers she needs to have a long look at the graph.

I had to look it up!

Again, not true.
We’d be able to borrow 4 x joint salaries. With interest rates so low, we’d be able to afford furniture too instead of buying it all from charity shops

Well let’s do the maths shall we. What were your salaries back then?

But the borrowers weren't just "walking away from it". Many of them didn't realise that if the lender sold the house at a loss, then they would come after the borrower for the shortfall, sometimes several years later

Oh God, you've reminded me of John Major and the Exchange Rate Mechanism.

I has owned my first flat 4 weeks when that happened. The £ came under attack and JM put interest rates up 5% in one day. After saving for years to scrape together a deposit, it looked like I wouldn't be able to make the 2nd payment and I'd lost everything. I was terrified.

Every generation has had it better in some ways and worse in others.

In fairness I think this is exactly the point she was making.

It’s just our ‘worse’ is very very very much worse.

It’s just our ‘worse’ is very very very much worse.

House prices were much cheaper.

It's also revolting to have a misery competition. Personally I thought the point was progress and want rather than resent, better things for the next generation.

As it it's no better and we are leaving them utter uncertainty, with added viruses, the impact of consumerism and climate change.
They are entitled to feel worried. I am and I'm middle aged.

Bought in 1991. Sold in 2002 in negative equity and ‘temporarily’ moved into rented. Not been able to afford to buy since.

@EllenWaiteourkid

house prices

This article has some interesting graphs, including average mortgage payments compared to earnings.

This is the thing.

My oarents bought their first flat in London for £9k. It’s worth over half a million now.

I bought my first house in the 1990s. It was EASY. I made zero changes to my lifestyle, (went out ALL the time) and saved a 5% deposit and fees in one year. I had a fixed rate 8% mortgage. Anyone bleating on about how hard it was, show some respect to what generations now face now. It's far easier to pay off a smaller sum of capital at higher rates with pay rises linked to inflation, than it is to borrow high sums of capital (plus associated inflated stamp duty and deposit) at low rates.

I came off the housing ladder in 2008, and it took me SEVEN years of extreme frugal living to raise enough deposit to buy again in 2019. As I've been alive over several decades, I can confirm it's far harder to buy now.

I don’t think that’s true. Minimum wage didn’t exist. Everything else was far more expensive. Food, clothing, shoes, cars etc. Rent and houses were much less 30 years ago but food not that much lower than now… or rather the prices 2 years ago. Fuel costs were lowish because we didn’t use much! Unless you had worked your way up the ladder and were very mc, you didn’t heat your house much, if at all and no one had many clothes. Dh got a job for £2 an hour in 1992 and was chuffed when he got £2.20. At that time, salary for an exec job was 40k 30 and would maybe be 100k for the same position but it wouldn’t be seen as anywhere near as prestigious these days.

I worked a lot of hours and bought a winter coat in 1990 and it costs £80 from Wallis, which was similar in price to Dorothy Perkins at the time. Around that sort of time, I bought a pair of trousers for £40 and shoes for about the same price. My winter knee length leather boots from Clark’s were about £60. I had few, quality items that I wore to death. Yes, I could have bought a pair of trousers for £25/30 but these were special and much loved/ worn. Bras from M&S were about £10.

Even before tax, anyone earning £2 an hour needed to work 5 hours to buy the bra and almost a week to buy my winter boots. The only really cheap clothes btw were from the market and even a plastic pair of boots would have been maybe £30/40. A jumper of primark quality was about £12. So 6 hours work.

A family member is getting married soon. The bridesmaids dresses will cost about £80. When dh and I married about 25 years ago, the off the peg versions weren’t available and the bridal shop quoted us £200 a dress. I bought fabric and made them, which at the time was a lot cheaper as labour costs were disproportionately high as most things were made in the U.K.

Try then extrapolating those figures for the price of carpets, curtains, beds and sofas. People did NOT have it easier. Carpet by square meter is not that much more than it was back then. We paid £800 to carpet a 2 bed in 1994 ish. That didn’t include Lino for the kitchen. Today I would pay maybe £200 more. At the time I was on 10.5k and dh was on 14k. The tax threshold was far far lower and there was no 20% band.

Dh was actually on 12.5k not 14. Big big difference. That upgrade in salary came later.

I live in a terraced house in the North West, about 20 miles from a big city. We sold our house this week for £175k. The owners before us bought it in 2002 for £46k. Wages in this area are low generally and so even a house that should be a starter home is increasingly out of reach for many people in the area.

Fundamental attribution error alive and well every day

LoL , bridesmaids dresses cost then and now are irrelevant, hardly an everyday item. Mortgage payments made every month and the house prices relative to wages are.

We had our house remortgaged last year and it had gone from £270,000 when we purchased 5 years ago to £320,000. Of course our wages haven't increased at all so we couldn't afford our own house if we were to buy now. It's getting worse yearly for people.

That was a response as to how the worse today is not worse for everything and a comparison of costs in the past to present. Unfortunately I didn’t write down what everything cost back then so I could report it to MN so I cite what I can accurately remember.

I bought in London on a single salary in 1992, but every other sale seemed to be a repossession at that time, so things did go wrong for a lot of people. Problems with negative equity too and large ongoing debts even with houses repossessed and sold. Things are clearly very different now, but there were definitely a lot of losers (not meant pejoratively!) in the past too.

Bought in 1999
3 bed semi
£54k
95% mortgage
£2.5k deposit
Both on low salaries - didn't earn £20k between us yet we could save that deposit and still live and even - gasp - go on holiday.
We sold up 12 years later in the slump after the 08 FC for £135k and bought a 3 bed detached for £172k
It's now worth £320k
If people cannot will not see the vast issues house price inflation like this^ causes then they are being willfully ignorant.
Even with a MUCH higher household income now we would still be struggling to buy an equivalent sized house.
That's just not sustainable.