To wonder how people are going to actually buy houses?

[slatternlymother]

There's going to be a whole generation that can't, isn't there?

What about those people who rented due to circumstances/not knowing if they wanted to live there long term/work commitments etc, and then hit the wrong end of the financial crisis?

We rent, and have (luckily) really well paid jobs for our age. We are 25, and between running a car, putting DS through nursery, and just living, I doubt we'll have enough of a deposit to buy anything reasonable before we're 30. 28/29 at an absolute push. And that will be pressuring us to make a choice on where we're going to be living, but we won't be able to leave it much later because otherwise we'll be tied up in a mortgage forever.

But we are so, so lucky. Actually, it was blind luck that got us here.

And if we're struggling, how the hell is everyone else coping? Tbh, I'd happily rent all my life, but I worry about retirement age and no longer being able to pull in a decent wage.

AIBU to think that long term, more and more elderly people will have been in rented accommodation their whole lives, so when they do retire; they're going to have to fall back on the state, aren't they? To put them up in council accommodation?

Isn't this just a massive time bomb for the future?

Sorry for rambling thoughts, I just have been thinking about this quite a lot recently

So if they needed to save a deposit there's £3,000 a year straight away

Yes within a mere 15 years they will have saved enough for a deposit on an average priced house. Assuming that property prices don't go up.

Who knew it was all so easy?

There's a nation that's built to last!

'So, serf, I hear you were so stupid as to become a fireman, and your wife is a care assistant in a nursing home. What a pity! Your choices mean you do not deserve a secure roof over your heads, but I expect prompt service when my house in Marleybone goes afire. And someone to wipe my mother's arse whilst she is trying to kill them with Sundowner's Syndrome.'

'Oh, but, sire, you can go to fuck. I would not even piss on you if you were on fire.'

'Whyever not? I skivved out on all those boring lessons about those nasty peasants killing my forefathers because they were starving and not permitted to grow vegetables on the lands they rented from my lord forefather, they were hanged for that and for foreaging game on his estate (and they were!) in winter. How dare they?!'

Titter. Just like Cameron yesterday afternoon, asserting there was no need for foodbanks.

Titter! When Julian Fellowes presented yesterday and told of those hanged for growing veg and foraging game in winter on the bastard Duke of Richmond's estates.

Can't imagine why anyone would be angry, surely! They just made poor choices.

Nobody said it was easy and yes have a moan about it, I do regularly but it doesn't do me any good so we have to think of other options and ways around problems because moaning about it utimately doesn't actually help. Where we live they have just announced house prices have risen for the first time since 2010.

We'd currently have to borrow 5 times 44 year old DH's salary and save $60,000 and we will eventually, along side paying four sets of school fees and feeding and clothing ourselves because what's the alternative ?

Easy? It has become impossible and will do so for more and more. And the rental laws are disgusting.

So we all buy a one-way ticket out? Is that it?

Some nation, because that is the message that is being sent to the likes of slatternly, an engineer married to another. Fuck off to Germany! Think they'll come back? Will they fuck! Or their children. They'll take one look at the place and laugh.

Because it's not just unskilled peons we're talking about anymore.

You left, Mosman. You're not even in the UK anymore.

Get out of here, slatternly. There's no hope for you here, because they don't care about the likes of you. They won't change a thing, in fact, it will grow worse. It's the Titanic and your Carpathia has arrived.

You left, Mosman. You're not even in the UK anymore

Christ alight that really takes the biscuit.

She's in Australia, Compos. Hence, dollars.

We did leave because there were no jobs available in the UK for my husband, so our choice was sit and complain watching our standard of living get lower and lower or do something about it.
I've moved from Birmingham, to Liverpool to Gloucester to Australia for work.
When times are good you save and then when they aren't your in a position to do something about it.
If you think it's bad now, what will it be like when you're 75, possibly alone ? That's how I've always thought about it.

The multiples problem has happened here in Australia as well. The average income in my city is $47,000; that's for an individual, but with two people working fulltime that's just over $90,000. The median house price, including outer suburbs (an hour plus drive to the business district) is $390,000. So that's a 1:5 multiplier even with a double income family. Utilities, childcare, etc., have all increased massively over here as well.

Mosman lives in a city which is, I think, more expensive than mine. I live in one of the more affordable cities, in terms of prices:salary ratio. My friends who live in Sydney and Melbourne are facing the same things you guys are: they've been double income their whole lives, they live sensibly (I don't know anyone with kids who doesn't swap frugal tips, use handmedowns, etc), they tend to have university degrees, and yet most of them are struggling to buy their first place in their mid-late thirties.

We can still obtain mortgages with a 10% deposit, which makes an enormous difference. And our tenants have better tenancy laws. I'm certainly not saying "don't whine because everyone has it hard" - I think you guys have been sold a rotten deal, and I think the government rhetoric about austerity and personal responsibility is utterly morally unconscionable. I'm just saying that it's not an uncommon problem for this generation.

I also think that those people talking about how when they first had a mortgage life was hard are missing quite a lot of points. Yes, it was different then for many reasons. Flat screen TV references are fucking ludicrous.

But also, I understand slatternly's frustration. When we first had a mortgage, we did do it hard for a while. Slept on a mattress on the floor with no curtains, at first, while we scraped up the money to furnish the place. But we had a few things in our favour, all of which helped massively:

1. We were young, and it's a lot easier to live skint when everyone around you is also young.
2. We didn't have children, and it's a lot easier to live skint when you don't have children.
3. This is the main one. We could see that our efforts were going somewhere. Gradually, we had furniture. And gradually, the mortgage started going down. And then we got payrises and the mortgage went down further. It is a lot easier to deny yourself if you can see a future where you can stop denying yourself. Paying down your own mortgage, vs trying to scrape up cash for a deposit when all the time property prices go up and banks get tighter? It's no comparison at all.

House prices will correct at some point, probably when rates rise. Despite current low rates, huge numbers of people are in arrears or forbearance. Banks don't want to take a hit on the loans so are propping up the market. Funding for lending has had some benefits for borrowers, another prop, but ultimately the market has to correct. The downside is it will either be because of higher unemployment, or raging inflation.

Buying after 30 or even 40 isn't somehow wrong though. To me it seems like the natural order to have that time to save up.

Raging inflation is quite honestly the only way out of this mess. I've been saying for the past 5 years that's the master plan and quietly it's been creeping up year on year.

Even when I was at uni 15 years ago, I used to think the UK was pretty crappy compared to some n European countries. Few people agreed with me then but I guess mire people see it now. Its ridiculous, we have the costs of living in an expensive country, but low salaries, poor transport infrastructure and big sectors completely unrepresented in manufacturing by British brands. Education has gone for a free for all to those who can pay, talent is wasted, the workplace rewards inefficiency and incompetence.

I think moving to Germany is probably a better solution if you want a decent life. Rents are lower but it can be hard to rent somewhere desirable due to the competition. And don't think landlords will run around after you as they do here. Germans are more self sufficient, my German friends actually didn't believe me when I told them about HMOs and self closing doors...

It's all very well saying "Just find somewhere cheaper to rent" but rents have actually gone up in the past year; by 7% in London and 4% elsewhere. This is while most people's incomes have either gone down or stayed the same, and while benefits (including benefits paid to working people) have gone down.

So you cut down in other area's, what's the alternative under a bridge when your 70 ?

I bought my first house - a new build 3 bed larger detatched house in Bristol for £102k. We put a 5% deposit down - £5k, which we had saved between us (mainly him). I was 25 and earned £20k and my husband was 32 and earned £24k. It was a perfect family home with a reasonable mortgage of £97k, which was less than 2.2 times our joint salary.

The same house will now cost you £250k. However, you need at least a 10% deposit - £25k, and are left with a mortgage of £225k.

Salaries have gone up since 1998, but not enough. The job I was doing then would now earn me £28k and my husbands job would now earn him about £35k. So between us we would be earning £62k. Therefore the same house would give us a mortgage of 3.6 times our joint salary. BUT we would have to find a deposit of £25k first!

I am 40 and my husband is 47 - I thank my lucky stars we were not born 10 years later.

We moved areas to the South East 5 years ago and rented for a year whilst finding our feet in the new area. Renting is HORRIBLE in comparison to having your own home. Examples:

• Our landlord wouldn't let us put pictures up on the walls as it would leave holes (albeit very small ones from picture hooks)

• Decorate it to our taste even though we had 3 children who wanted bedrooms that were child appropriate rather than plain magnolia.

• The cess pit kept overflowing so we couldn't use the garden, we complained but the cost of updating the sewerage was too expensive for the landlord, so we ended up not being able to use the garden the whole summer we were there.

• We were not allowed any pets - not even our hampster, which we ended up having to leave in Bristol with friends, which really upset our eldest child (age 5 at the time).

• He gave us notice as he decided to sell after 1 year, which meant we had to move to another property and find yet another deposit. Yes you get your deposit back, but only after 2 weeks (min) of leaving so you have to find the next deposit, which amounts to £1000s on the new property before you have the old deposit back. Also you have the cost of removal companies each time you move - again this is £1000ish each time.

Renting is a nightmare.

You do realise that for people on the minimum wage or just above (plenty of them in the city I'm in as it relies a lot on tourism and hotels/restaurants/pubs do not pay their staff particularly well), regardless of how much of their spending they cut down on, it is simply impossible to get together a deposit? The sums just don't add up. The average house in the UK is now seven times the average salary. You can save until you're blue in the face but you simply will not be able to afford to buy anywhere if you are taking home £11/12k a year after tax.

The problem is not to do with personal spending habits, but high cost of living coupled with low wages.

Mosman but we've already discussed that 'cutting down in other areas' will only give you a small amount extra. Someone made the point that for those small extras to make a difference; you'd be saving for 10 years (fine) but house prices would HAVE to remain the same (not fine).

tortoiseonthehalfshell I agree, I think it is the problem of a generation.

I think the only possibility is the increase of HB to the elderly in future years. Because you can say 'oh, the elderly who haven't thought ahead can just go and live under a bridge', but what if like expat said; they were in low paid jobs and were saving as much as they could but that didn't match up? What about the people who can only save £10,000 every 10 years (and that is common), and every 10 years they go back to the bank, but they turn them away because house prices have risen, or they'll only lend half of what they need. WHAT THEN? Haven't they been responsible? Haven't they saved? What happens to them?

I could play the devils and suggest that just 5 years ago those small changes to spending habits actually would have been enough when 100% mortgages were available and 95% were the norm but no point in looking backwards, so going forward all you can do is make small cutbacks and savings and put it away and hope that it will amount to a deposit when the tide turns because what on earth is the alternative.
We bought in 2007 and in theory would be completely up the creek, we would have lost the house and been on a downward spiral but for the fact that we did get rid of mobiles/sky/had everything 2nd hand for a year saved £5k and got on a plane to where the work is for now.
I've found Australia to be in a worse state than the UK for housing as it happens but we'll suck it up, start again because there is no alternative your rent will NEVER go down, your mortgage will.

They were reporting on the housing market 'picking up' this morning on the news as though this was a good thing.

Mosman, there are plenty of people who already don't have landlines or sky packages and buy everything second-hand. I know loads of people who don't even have a computer, never mind broadband. They are already cutting to the bone, and even with a 100% mortgage won't be able to afford to buy anywhere when the cheapest two-bed places around here go for £140k. It doesn't matter how much you economise if you are earning so little that you can't get a mortgage. It was completely different for people in my parents' generation - my dad was a train guard and my mum was a dinner-lady. They still managed to buy a three-bedroomed house with a massive fuck-off garden. What would someone earning those kind of wages be able to buy now? Fuck all. Glibly trotting out what people should be doing ignores the reality that for an increasing number of people, owning their own home is impossible and likely to remain so, even if they don't buy a flat-screen telly.

ILikeBirds, I hate that kind of thinking. "Good news, a roof over your head is becoming less affordable". Ffs.

owning their own home is impossible and likely to remain so, even if they don't buy a flat-screen telly

It might be likely if they don't but it's guaranteed if they do.
Plenty of people only own their properties because the council houses were sold off and I know personally people who turned down the opportunity because they couldn't lay their hands on £300 for the solicitors fees, bet they wish they hadn't bought the tele.