to wonder about housing

[sozzledchops]

reading all the recent threads and the recurring thing that was pointed out was that rent and the cost of houses has gone through the roof which obviously it has. But when we were little our family of 5 lived in a small 2 bed terraced council house then were eventually moved to a bigger semi det 3 bed. There was very few private housing or detached like the big 4 and 5 bedroom houses that have sprung up everywhere in the past 15 years or so. How did people afford to make such big moves? Me, my brother and sister all live in much larger 4 bed houses (2 of those detached with ensuites etc) as do many other people. So how many people here actually live in a much bigger, posher house than the one they grew up with? More curious than IABU.

I don't. and I have no idea how people afford such big houses, although assume they must earn lots.

I live in a much smaller house that the one in which I grew up in, although in terms of income me and DH and enormously better off than my parents were.

[[Rabbit hutch UK: Newly built homes have the smallest rooms in the EU
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205709/Rabbit-hutch-UK-Newly-built-homes-smallest-rooms-EU.html#ixzz13Cm9TT6n]]

(sorry - link is to Daily Fail but is interesting)

Ha! That didn't work.

Rabbit hutch UK: Newly built homes have the smallest rooms in the EU

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205709/Rabbit-hutch-UK-Newly-built-homes-smallest-rooms-EU.html#ixzz13Cm9TT6n

I assume that people who live in big houses bought at the "right" time. And have huge amounts of equity due to the housing boom.

Round where I live a good sized 4/5 bed would cost at least £800k. That is beyond the realms of most salaries, not least because you'd be expected to put down a £160k deposit.

where I am in the South West they can cost from 250,000.

I lived from 2y-9y in a 3-bed semi (2 adults, 2 children).
We then moved to a 3-bed detached and I lived there from 9+ until I left home. My parents later built an additional bedroom over the garage when my mum's brother who is DS came to live with them.

My dad was in the police so got housing allowance, which would have allowed them to afford the semi
Then police wages increased when Maggie wanted to smash the miners and my mum did an NNEB then a teaching degree when I went to school, and started work when I was 9, hence the move up-the-ladder.

We brought our first house (3-bed semi) at the same sort of age as my parents (not sure what their first was), but then had children later so brought a bigger house (4-bed detached) before we had children.

We afforded our house through a mixture of things, including help with the deposit on the 1st house from my parents, 2 x professional jobs, a stint aboard on ex-pat wages, not really spending that much (comparative to our income) on other things.

I was brought up in a 3 bd council house. The house I bought was a 2 up 2 down dump. It cost me 50k in 1999 and I borrowed against it for improvements - double glazing/kitchen and the like. I ended up with 20k profit when we sold it to move abroad in 2006.

We now RENT a lovely house. They build much bigger houses as standard in Belgium. We couldn't afford to buy it and I don't honestly think we could ever afford to move back to the UK.

My hope and plan is that we will be able to afford a small village house in the Belgian/French countryside and pay for it before I retire. I am 42 and dh older. The clock is ticking.

I live in a house about twice the size of the one I grew up in but it would cost £100K more to buy my parents old house than mine because they live near a nice city and I live 30mins outside a rubbish city.

I know quite a few 'middle class' people who now live with their family in a smaller house than the one they grew up in. House prices now are so high that it takes two salaries to buy one and on average new houses are smaller than they were in the 1950s. Hence a family friend is a consultant surgeon and struggles to buy a small new build 4 bed in Oxford but his parents (father consultant surgeon and mother SAHM) lives in a 7 bed vicarage in Shropshire.

It depends on your childhood where you started from. My DW grew up in 2 up 2 down in a fairly shabby bit of Newcastle. I grew up in a 4 bed farmhouse. We have lived in a range of different sized houses/flats over the years.

maybe BeenBeta:

most people I know started off at the bottom of the pile (not saying we're scum or anything, of course) and now live in a palace compared to where they started. I just used to see all these big detached houses springing up and wonder how all these families could make such a big leap.

My friends and I all live in much smaller houses than our parents. In worse areas.

Thanks to property price inflation most of us can't afford to buy houses like theirs despite the fact that most families have two working parents and when we were kids our Mum's almost universally stayed at home.

grew up in a 4 bed semi house, up north where prices are way cheaper. i think it was something like 30k when parents bought it, or even less?! (about 25 yrs back they would have bought it i think), but we live in a rented flat cant afford any house cos we are in london and prices are ridiculous

pfffft. growing up i lived in a large 4 bedroomed semi, with a large drive and back graden. it was lovely. my parents owned it (well it was mortgaged) they bought it for about 20k in the early 80's, sold it for about 200k a few years ago.

ironically, growing up i was quite disdainful about it and always said to myself i would live somewhere "better" when i was "grown up"

now at the age of 30 i rent a 3 bed ex council house from a housing association, with no hope of ever ever buying :( and i count myself damn lucky to even have what i have got. :(

I can't imagine ever being able to afford a house as big as my parents roomy 4 bed detached house. At the peak of the boom it was worth £600k!! They bought it for £118k in the 80s.

If we save a deposit for 20 years we could get a £150k pretty standard 2 bed terrace the same as we are renting now.

Frankly unless I inherit my share of my parents house (which obviously I don't want to anytime soon since it involves my dad dying) there is no point in DP and I even aiming at buying, since what we need will always be more than we have the deposit for, but to rent a family house is not really that much more than what we pay for our terrace.

I also really hated my parents house as I kid because I thought it was so dull. It is just a standard 70s box. But now I look at it and think my god the rooms are so BIG.

My parents brought a 1930's 4 bed House in London 39 yrs ago for 16k. It is now worth 700k?

I live in a nice 3 bed HA house in London ...no i couldn't afford to buy. The only people I know who live in a place the same size or bigger than their parents homes - brought houses 17 odd yrs ago ..and have moved up the ladder