"£110 pounds a week - that is outrageous!"

[Mists]

Says my Dad.

About my three-bed in a social-housing (nice actually) estate. DH works and it is paid for btw before anyone starts

I used to rent a two-bed for £800 per month eight years ago.

He is always on at DH and I to buy and I am always trying to tell him that it isn't like the seventies when you could buy a house for one Guinea two times your basic salary.

AIBU to GRRRRRR (that's me being articulate) at him?

It's outrageously cheap, if thats what he means?

Hopefully that means you can start saving a deposit to buy somewhere, which ultimately will make more sense. (I am assuming that you have reasonable earning power if you were renting for £800 eight years ago, and your DH works too)

Oh just tell him to fuck off and get with the programme .

Where I live a small one bed flat is 900/1100 pcm.

You are lucky and have a good deal there.

I have told him and keep telling him that housing costs are the root of so many of the problems.

All he can knows is that he, a working class boy rose up the housing ladder without a degree or being able to write anything legibly.

I wish he could see that things have changed and that he was lucky to live in the times that he did but all he thinks is that DH and I are not being sensible or trying hard enough

Don't even get me started on the baby boomers. How easy have our parents had it all these years? My parents, too have absolutely no idea that raising a family today is a bloody financial magic/juggling act compared to when they were in their 30s. Grumble groan grumble groan. And it was their generation who buggered it up for us, of course. I've told my parents I won't get so much as a free buss pass when I'm 60 and of course, I'll only get to retire the day I die and not a second before I die at that! The bloody nerve. Do your parents read the Daily Mail, OP, perchance?

Ah right. It wasn't clear from your OP whether he thinks its outrageous for being so cheap, or outrageous because he mistakenly thinks you're paying over the odds.

Ignore him. Basically, people who bought their houses back in the day when only one partner needed to work, and when houses were relatively cheap, can be really ignorant about housing costs now.

However, the fact is, you've got a 3 bed house for very cheap rate, so I would get saving a deposit. Maybe your father is worried you won't ever get on the housing ladder (even if he's expressing it badly)

Do you think it's feasible Violethill? I would love to own again but I can't work or put my disabled son in childcare (he is three) and my DD has a life-threatening condition which means that someone always needs to be around to make decisions, drop everything and go to London should anything happen.

DH is self-employed and can just make the rent but I used to earn a fair bit as a primary teacher.

We are both about to turn forty this year and it's depressing but while the children are young and vulnerable maybe it's best for them.

Private rents have risen HUGELY in recent years though - I know that before my dad died 13 years ago his rent for a 3 bed house (housing assoc) was about £250 per month. I'm sure it would be more now, but I can't imagine it would have quadrupled, which is what private rents are in that area now for the same sort of house.

I have to say, my mum still occasionally says 'Five shillings to post a letter!' No doubt we'll be the same when our children buy a sofa for £1,000,000 and roll their eyes when we yelp.

can't you just say 'Too right dad, if you can find a cheaper rent in this area or a house for [what you can borrow], you're on.'

Violethill I pay approx £75 a week for my 2 bed council house. Incredibly cheap. I wish I could afford to save for a deposit - especially with the interest rates being so fantastic

I earn a reasonable wage, unfortunately there's very little left at the end of the month to go into a savings account.

In an ideal world I'd be saving to buy a house. If I did, what deposit would I need to be able to afford the most basic house, which in my area is on the market for upwards of £100k? My wage wouldn't even get me a mortgage for 3/4 of that.

It's very easy to rave about 'cheap' housing. The reason it is cheap is because the people living in it are more than likely unable to afford anything else.

Oh, and I used to have to private rent - 10 years ago I was paying £900 a month for a crappy bed sit in Horsham. What I once could afford has no reflection on what I now earn, it doesn't always work that way.

Wow! it's really cheap. Where I am 3 bed houses are £1200- £1400 a month, for a nice hoouse with garden etc.

I guess youre just very lucky to have social housing, meaning your rents are much lower than private rent.

With the market as it is now, most lenders are asking for a 25% deposit which is completely beyond the reach of a lot of first time buyers. We are lucky that my DH earns a good wage but with house prices as they are, we are still looking at trying to save upwards of 65K for a deposit for a small, basic 3 bed property. Surely it would be impossible for most people to save this kind of money even if they were paying a very good rent where they are now?

My brother pays that for a garage in London so yes it's very cheap!

"Five shillings to post a letter!"

Isn't is strange how the previous generation are always up on rising costs for trivial things yet they can't see that the essentials have spun out of control and are far beyond most people's orbit?

I wouldn't mind but my Dad isn't exactly a financial genius. He retired owing a fortune on credit cards and went for one of those dodgy equity-release schemes.

He spent the lump-sum on holidays and still owes on the credit cards plus he doesn't actually understand compound interest so he thinks that the £30k he borrowed ten years ago will be £30k and a few pence when it gets called in My calculations say that it is actually getting pretty hairy and that negative equity is looming and I'm wondering if I'll have to pay!

But he did very well and climbed up the housing ladder as it was and became a higher-rate tax-payer with no degree from an East End family (evacuee when he was three) where he shared a bed with his four brothers. Different times. I suppose he thinks that if he came thus far then his educated daughter should have gone on to greater things

I wonder what those things would have been if times were the same. I count my blessings but it's hard trying to explain why I haven't done "better" than him

That is very cheap. We are near minumum wage workers and dont get any benefit help and pay a lot more than that for our mortgage.

Sounds like my mother, who thinks that if you earn a wage (any wage), you can just buy more or less any house you want.

So she keeps asking my sister, whose DH earns around £25, why they can't buy a 'nice house' costing around £300k.

Oops.

That should, of course, say £25 k

I pay £90/wk for my 2-bed HA flat. I get 1/4 paid for by HB.

I can't afford the month let alone savings! Different situation though as I'm a lone parent.

I think OP your situation, again, is different. You, by the sounds of it, have enough to deal with, and I think owning your own home in the future is probably second on your list of priorities to your DC's who need you now. It's a shame your Dad can't respect that.

My parents paid something like 9,000 for their first home (3-bed), sold it for 86,000 11 years later, and bought our 4-bed house in a nicer area for 91.000. Now worth 250,000 even in this climate. I would be looking at 180,000 for a 2-bed in the area. Just ain't gonna happen.

Tell him I pay £1075 a month for a 2 bed!

The thing that my parents like to bring up is how much cheaper household items are, such as washing machines, curtains, furniture etc. They like to tell me how they had to live with no curtains for a year as they couldn't afford to buy them and pay the mortgage but so what? I'd quite happily go without curtains/furniture etc. to be able to buy a house at the same relative value as they did.

I pay the full amount of rent, I am also a lone parent. I get minimal help from tax credits.

If only I had just my cheap rent to pay, I could live the life of riley!

Although, lets see, yes, huge drug problem round here, massive unemployment.....etc etc etc.

I'm not paying £75 a week to live in the life of luxury, I am on a council estate, I live 'up North' so is automatically cheaper than a London garage.

I have no way out of this though, no choice in where I lived - I was all but homeless so I gratefully took what I was offered. I'm here as long as I'm a lone parent and the only person bringing a wage in(7 years and counting).

Mists - YANBU and a very interesting story.

Especially the bit about your Dad having loads on credit cards and doing equity release. That is the position many pensioners are in.

You are right. Buying a house now is a totally different kettle of fish than it was in the 1970s. The boomers have no idea just how incredibly lucky they were and how unique that time was in generating apparent wealth by just buying and selling houses. Funny that most people seem to have borrowed against it though and have very little of that wealth left.

A lot of chickens are going to come home to roost soon. House prices are still falling and the economy is not recovering.

Me and DW have steadfastly refused to buy house for 25 years and are unique among our friends who all think we are mad as we could have afforded to do so. Te reason we never bought is that I saw my parents just 1 day away from bankruptcy in 1979 and DW the same with her parents desperate to pay a mortgage. DW and I fear debt. Renting has many advantages. Borrowing yourself to the hilt is not the only way to live and if we get serious deflation (as we already have in wages) it will ruin many people.

Stay renting.

LO at Shodan's Mum

noodle it is very cheap I agree and to be honest your standards drop when you rent. The bathroom and kitchen are twenty years old and we have no way of updating them. You have to put up with things like that, it's the price you pay for cheap rent.

Both DH and I used to own houses but circumstances meant that we lost them.

Now that we have two disabled children, DH is self-employed and I can't work atm so we couldn't get a mortgage.

I'd love to own again, I really would, but having disabled children isn't a choice, we had no warning and having almost lost DD while work (school) wouldn't let me go I'm very unsure about going back to what people think is a family-friendly profession

Every day I thank God that my DH and I made the decision to move in together when we did. Becasue I didn;t have a job, our mortgage was based on his income so our max was £40,000. it limited our options but we are happy.

So the house is ex local authority in what is considered the worst estate in the town I live in, but it's nice where we are, no problems at all.

Our monthly mortgage and insurances are less than £250 per month.

current market rent for the same sort of stuff in the same area is £450 a month rent.