So what happens when we're all old and we don't own our homes?

[user8665410]

Genuine question.

I'm a millennial with no hopes of ever buying a property despite earning a decent income.

There are many in my situation.

What happens when we're all in our 70s, 80s and 90s - which we will be because medical technology keeps letting us live longer - and no longer able to work. Where will we live? Who will support us? Will we just get kicked out of our homes we've been renting for (potentially) decades??

My current rent is £2,585.00, the State won't be supporting that I'm sure.

I think people will be expected to move. The only council flats that are constantly available are over 55s small 1 bedroom flats.

Pretty sure rent is less than £400 a month which is probably more realistic to ask taxpayer to fund.

Who knows, but millennials are those that are nearly 40, we are not talking about the generation now facing coming of age in inflation, high interest rates and high house prices, with low wages.

millennials have been impacted by wages, really wages have been falling since the 80s

I used to think this but actually the reality is many couple with professional jobs are earning 100k+ between them and so can easily get mortgages for 400k+ houses.

There will always be a market for houses, unfortunately it's just the less well off and single people who will find it more and more out of reach.

I was lucky that I was able to buy a 1 bed flat alone but now even with my DP we're not able to take the next step unless we move far away.

If your rent is over 2 and a half grand, you can surely find somewhere cheaper to live - there’s a lot of high earning potential in areas where rent (and thus prices) are.
The housing crisis is awful, but so many will just have to make a choice between living in a nice area, or buying a house.

I think there will be huge change in policy surrounding home ownership and housing in general. Most people won’t be able to afford a home and if those people vote they would vote towards something that will help with their housing needs.
Not sure what it would be though.
I think there also has to be another massive council house building scheme again. There is plenty of land. I recently discovered that only 9% of the U.K. land is developed.

The problem with this type of set up is the service charges which benefits often won't cover all of. They can be extortionate.

millennials have been impacted by wages, really wages have been falling since the 80s

Yes, I'm public sector and well aware of how my wages have stagnated, but we also had low interest rates for 10+ years which made home ownership easier to achieve vs the situation right now.

You're paying over £2500 a month in rent and you can't afford a house?

You can afford a house, you're just choosing to live somewhere exceptionally expensive

@peasblue a lot of millennials haven't benefited from low interest rates though as they haven't been on the ladder for 10 plus years?

Plenty of elderly people don’t own homes now, and plenty of millennials have bought their own homes. There will always be pensioners who own and those that don’t, perhaps the proportions will change but it’s nothing new.

Rents vary depending on where you live, £2500 rent is ridiculously high, I’m assuming you are renting something bigger than a one bedroom flat or are in a ridiculously expensive area. I’m a single person and my rent on a one bedroom flat is £700. Obviously rents vary depending on where you live and sometimes you need to live in a specific area for work, but once you’ve retired you would be able to move to a cheaper area. Sometimes housing is subsidised for the elderly. Some elderly people will move in with family rather than renting somewhere.

There are European countries where home-owning isn’t as prevelant as in the UK (eg: Switzerland and Germany it’s under 50%) and they make it work, it will be a culture shift but modern life is rarely at a standstill and it’s normal for shifts to happen. I don’t see it being a major disaster.

2.5k for rent is ridiculous. Find somewhere cheaper

We need way more social housing

@frippu stop taking me out of context, I have never said millennials have had it easy. I have just said that there are still a large number of millennials that have managed, but if the situation continues it is going to get progressively worse with larger proportions affected with each generation that passes.

What type of place are you living in that is in excess of £2500 per month. If you can afford that then why not move somewhere cheaper and save for a deposit. Also I don't agree that everyone needs to go to uni to get a decent job. There are plenty of apprenticeships available. Ok the wage is very low to begin with but you are more or less guaranteed a job at the end of it and you can work your way up. I know someone who started part time at a supermarket. Left school and worked there full time and then applied to train as a manager. Worked their way up and are now an assistant store manager.

They introduced the workplace pension because they could see that a vast amount people would have to rely on benefits to make ends meet in old age . It's just another tax really.

@peasblue I'm not taking you out of context. I simply said millennials have suffered from wage stagnation. And a lot aren't on the housing ladder yet so can't have benefited from 10 plus yrs of low rates.

Millennials span from the 80s to the mid 90s....
Of course it's going to be difficult for future generations but many young people are still millennials.

Fruitynutcase - Workplace pensions have been going for years. I am 60 and when I started work at the age of 18 I was automatically put into the company pension.

They introduced the workplace pension because they could see that a vast amount people would have to rely on benefits to make ends meet in old age . It's just another tax really.

it's not going to help much as some of employer contributions are pitiful

Haha, OMG the out of touch home owners going "wow that's an insane fortune, you must be renting a literal palace" really prove that the divide between clueless privileged homeowners and people stuck in the rental market is unbroachable.

I pay £2300 for a two-bedroom flat in a shitty tower block in Woolwich which is in zone 4, 45 mins to London, and a very dodgy and violent area with a lot of gang crime and murders.

£2500 is pretty standard for a decent 2-bed flat anywhere even vaguely in a good area in London. You can find 2-bed flats for around £2k but less than £2k, you're almost certainly going to be looking at one-bed flats or studio.

A family house in central London would be £4k a month bare minimum. Unless you go somewhere really shitty.

For example, I just did a search for 4-bed houses in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, there was ONE house for rent that was £4k, and then the next cheapest was $5200. The average family house in Kensington rents for around $6k a month.

Same for northwest London. Cheapest family house around 3.5-4k a month, with average price being around £6k a month.

Renting a single room in a shared house in Kensington is over a grand a month. There are student flats in Kensington renting at £4k a month.

£2500 is NOT expensive for rent, that's just how much rent costs in cities these days. Renting a small flat anywhere in a major city is expensive, it just is what renting costs.

Not everyone can go move to a cottage in a tiny village somewhere super rural with no public transport, just to be able to rent somewhere cheap! And if we all did that, prices in your lovely villages would soar and we'd all get the blame. Exactly how welcoming are these small cheap villages to outsiders, anyway? Is there a wide range of different jobs and careers available?

I pay £2300 and certainly would not be able to afford a house, why on earth would anyone think that?

I really do think this is a lifestyle choice you have made though. That's an insanely high rent, and I'm assuming you (and your partner?) are on very high salaries to have passed affordability checks and that you are in London or an expensive part of the SE. It feels like you should consider a substantial downsizing or moving out of London to give yourselves room to save (you could easily rent a 2 bedroom house for £1500 in my city (1 hour commute from London) which would allow you to save £1k a month more than you are saving now, to get a deposit together and move out of London altogether.

It sounds like you are both high earning professionals, and even a salary hit might create a smaller gap between your salary and house prices if you moved to the North of England.

The housing pressure is very focussed on the SE (which I appreciate is where most of the jobs are) and is evenly spread around the country.

My parents bought their council house (contentious) in the 70s. Otherwise they would have always rented. Their parents always rented as did their parents. We were poor.

My generation bought (now 60s). My children are struggling to buy. I think the assumption of ownership for the lower paid is a relatively new one and we’re moving back to a time when renting was the norm unless you were of the professional classes. My parents would never have been able to buy on the open market - their heavily discounted council house gave them a way in. I’m not saying that was right - I’m just saying it opened up home ownership to a new demographic.

BTW no inheritance here. All gone on care home fees so nothing to give to the grandkids for deposit.

I can see expansion of 'care homes' , they are prolific around here already. At the moment in the main dementia etc, I can see this being for general old age. In other words, it is a modern version of the poor house.

I often wonder about this. We felt forced to move out of London to be able to buy a house in our early 30s around 6 / 7 years ago.

I was very aware of 1.5k rent (I bed SE London zone 3) not being sustainable in retirement. I didn't want to count on inheritance as I could inherit but I think planning on it is a terrible idea.

Obviously not everyone can make a choice to move to a cheaper area!

I wonder if pp's have a point about people dying and that bringing houses into the market?

But yes totally agree on it being unsustainable and a potent crisis.

@frippu yes you are stating the obvious. The problem with taking snippets of my following posts is that you miss the context and my original point. This thread is asking if millennials getting to retirement age will be the tipping point of the housing situation, maybe in some areas like the SE, but from where I'm sitting (in MY bubble) millennials outside of the SE (or other expensive areas) the housing situation has not been as acute and there have still been some options, I don't know what the stats are, but I'm assuming there is still a significant number of millennials that own homes across the country, yes there will be less than previous generations. We are on a trajectory for the situation to spread and get worse across the country for future generations, but I think the OP is coloured by their situation (as I am mine) thinking it is worse across the board for our age group than it is, OP asked "where will we live" well lots of people do still own in their 30s (whether we will if interest rates continue is another thread!)

Basically, I think what the OP describes isn't widespread YET, but we are that path with future generations sadly.

Care homes are so expensive though, minimum of £500 a week even with council bulk buying discount. Councils won’t fund unless there is no other option.