To wonder how the next generation will afford a house?

[Housepricewoes]

DH and I want to move to what will hopefully be our family home, in 2 years. Work commitments means we can't do it sooner but I'm stressing about how much house prices might rise in that time.

That got me thinking about how today's children will ever be able to buy a home.

I know it's a very British thing to aspire to home ownership but rightly or wrongly it is the norm.

Many of my friends and extended family have only been able to get on the property ladder with a significant hand out from the bank of mum and dad, but unless their circumstances drastically change, they are not going to be in a position to do the same for their children.

What do you think will happen about houses with the next generation?

Indeed one of the most common complaints I hear from parents with adult children still living at home, is that their children want to move into a house when they leave home. Whereas when they left home, they lived in bedsits, rooms in shared houses or tiny flats.

And I know the rented housing market is an appalling state, ever since the Conservative Government destroyed tenants protections in the late 80's. So I do know there are real issues there.

It is possible. I'm 28, DH is 30 and we have owned our own 3 bed house since I was 25 and he was 27, neither of us have particularly high flying or well paid jobs but we did it. We saved up by not spending ridiculous amounts of money on nights out every week, not buying a new smartphone every year, spend a fortune on fancy clothes, going on holiday abroad (we didn't even go on holiday at all for 3 years), not buying a tablet or consoles etc instead we put the money towards a 10% deposit. We still had to pay rent and bills for the place we were in and run 2 cars (because we cant share and mine is a LOT bigger than his) but we got there and saved enough for a deposit to buy us a fixer upper. the kitchen and the bathroom haven't been done since the 60's, yes my bathroom suite is cast iron and avocado, no I don't have a dishwasher or built in appliances in the kitchen, I only have one worktop, my cistern is a big black Bakelite box but we are young and we will get there. We both muck in and learned to plaster walls, wire socket replacements, work a back boiler, change taps (with lead piping is no mean feat) and it still isn't quite finished but it is liveable. and I will get there eventually. sometimes I look at my friends who moan they will never get on the property market and think well bloody work for it. they want a holiday every year, new phones and tablets and a brand new ready finished house but they don't want to put in any effort.

For 98% of people under 30, their housing situation is much worse than their parents. For some 2% it is better.

The post war boomer generation had it easier than generations before or since with access to Grammar schools, social housing, almost full employment in the 60's, final salary pensions, a coping NHS, free Uni etc.

Now we are reverting to the historical norm, where the masses struggle and only those at the top of the pyramid swan through life. Many people think they are "middle class" - historically this was only a tiny proportion of the population.

We have a window of opportunity to do as the Irish have done for centuries - prepare our children to fly the nest properly, and if necessary seek a life beyond London & the SE, emigrating if need be. Or we can accept that in another couple of generations the lives of our descendants will be as down cramped, overcrowded down trodden and unrelentingly miserable as the East Enders of the Victorian Era.

Successive governments have put global corporate interests ahead of the needs and wants of the British people - so we should stop looking to the government for solutions. The appalling handling of this years floods should have brought that home to many. White collar jobs are now following the flow of the heavy industries and being outsourced, and in a decade or two even doctors will be forced to accept zero hours contracts.

Lanabelle - just so your story makes sense to people here, what were your combined incomes when you were saving? How long did you save for? How much was your rent while you were saving? How much was the house you own now? How big was the mortgage?

Because if I was going to try to buy a 3 bedroom house where I live it would cost 280K minimum. Rental on a one bedroom flat is about £900 minimum. Commuting by train costs about £200 a month, car and house insurance very high.

I don't think we'd be able to buy a property now for the first time on our income, even though they have gone up, and even if we scrimped on phones etc.

Lanabelle I do agree to a certain extent (although it depends on a lot of factors) I know people who have happily with their parents whilst working fulltime and wasted the opportunity to save by having financed cars, expensive clothes, latest gadgets and endless nights out and holidays. Also people who have saved a similar to me and DH and spent the whole sum on big white wedding. Me and DH realised saving a deposit would mean a cheap small wedding for under 1k, a second hand car threading financed and other things, I guess a lot of people aren't happy that they can't have all these things like they grew up expecting really.

The suggestion that anyone could afford to buy a house if only they cut down on holidays, phones and clothes is patronising and for most of the country a nonsense.

The simple fact is, the price of houses is going up faster than most people can reasonably save up.

Even renting is becoming less and less affordable. I don't know where you get the idea that today's young people expect to move out of their parents house into their own house - a flatshare has long been the norm, but these are now becoming more crowded (with living rooms being used as bedrooms to reduce costs), and more long-term, with more and more people flatsharing into their late 30s.

Our generation (and those after us) are also supposed to be paying 10% of our earnings into pensions too - not much chance of that happening for most.

My sister has two kids and has been putting away their child benefit money in savings for them since they were born, with the intention that this will help them through uni and to put a deposit on a house. With university costing them £40,000 each, these carefully squirrelled away savings will not even cover tuition, let alone living costs; there's little chance they will be able to graduate without a substantial level of debt, and that too will impact their ability to buy (as if the disparity between prices and earnings wasn't problematic enough already).

In short, the generation coming are well and truly screwed.

I've noticed that the rents for flat-sharers are extortionate, which is going to impact on people's ability to save up any decent deposit to buy their own home.

And when you're a 22 year old graduate with student loans, overdrafts and credit cards, it's all too easy to start thinking of it like monopoly money. Because if you thought about the reality of it you'd never sleep at night.

In that situation, you might as well go and buy yourself a new pair of jeans or a cheap holiday, because the alternative of a parsimonious existence for years on end trying to save up to buy a crappy box of a flat (that in all likelihood will still be out of reach regardless) is actually a bit of a rubbish way to live.

Mrs Blackthorn - your sister could move to Scotland while the children are still young- and she wouldn't have to worry about Uni fees at all! It's her choice to stay where she is and fork out £40K+ per child in tuition fees, or she could send them to do one of the English speaking degree courses on the continent where fees are as low as £500 per year and living costs/housing is lower.

It's become uneconomic on so many levels to reside in London & the SE, for all but a few, and we live in a world where we have options for travel previous generations have only dreamed of.

My sister already lives in the north of England, having been unable to afford the south east at all. But BiL would struggle to find a similar job in Scotland (95% of his v specialist jobs are in London, he's lucky to have found one up north at all).

Of course anyone could theoretically pull themselves up by the bootstraps, move their family to a cheaper part of the country where there few jobs, and save every spare penny in order to buy somewhere in a place they didn't really want to live, away from their family and friends.

But none of that helps the next generation, for whom the situation is going to be even worse.

DH and I bought our first home for £11,000. A small 3 bed detached. We had worked for a year, post university and saved for a year, while renting rooms in shared houses - I think we had a deposit of £1000, and were able to get 2 times DH salary plus 1 times mine as a mortgage. Same house now sells for over £200,000, so with a 10% deposit, a buyer would need a mortgage of £180,000. I suspect this would now be out of the reach of a young couple just starting out, having been earning for a year.

I think the uni experience will be more uncommon for our generation too. I think there will be more staying living at home and going to the local uni or travelling to a further one.

Our children's generation sorry

Lanabelle's story is similar to many who have managed to buy. We tolerated second hand clothes and equipment for the children, handed down furniture which would otherwise be thrown out etc.

If you have two salaries of say £20k and you buy before children you can probably buy in most areas somewhere up to £100k+

I do not agree most people will be worse off than their parents. That does not apply to me for a start and a lot on this thread.

I don't think anyone is saying now is a dead easy time to buy although interest rates are very very very low and help to buy lets you borrow 95%.

I fundamentally disagree with MrsB though. We have always followed the "jam tomorrow" deferment way of life and it is absolutely wonderful. You might not have something now but later you do have it. You pay back debt when you can too once you've bought and are on your feet again and that helps you move on too. Also it can make you personally happier too as the postponement of immediate pleasure can lead to longer term happiness in that you have an anticipation of future reward rather than a day to day life experience where you will never get out of the rental rut.

Help to buy lets you borrow 95% yes but then look at the repayments which will be unaffordable on that amount borrowed.

On a 95% mortgage on a property of £170000, the repayments are £1000 a month. Who can afford that? I know I certainly can't.

And around here that is a cheap, very, very small 2 bed property.

maria your circumstances and experiences are simply not representative of the situation the majority of people are in.

You've said you had the same profession as your daughter and that she has the potential to earn £1m+.

You keep harping on about how it's never been easy to buy blah blah, but that wasn't the point of the thread.

It was about the situation the next generation are going to have to face, particularly given how tough it is now, something you just refuse to acknowledge, and given your daughters earning potential, will probably never have to.

Don't bother anymore housepricewoes. She is far removed from reality.

Except I do think Maria has a point about deferred gratification.

This must be the most overindulged generation of children in history. Whole class parties at a venue at 4. Multiple after school 'activities'. Smart phones 11. School trips to New York. Don't get me started on Proms.

I know it's hard to swim against the tide, but perhaps it might be a good idea to scale back on the unnecessary extravagances and put the money aside for them instead. OK. It won't buy them a flat, but it'll cushion the transition to life on their own, which is going to come as a horrible shock to some.

Im just watching the first episode of How to gey a council house. The places and homes are so ugly. Why anyone would choose to live there when you can live in beautiful areas for so much cheaper with beaches, woods and surrounded by natural beauty, and buy a place as a couple on a low wage.

Not all children live like that thyme. Mine don't and despite what dd1 tries to convince me she isn't the only child in the school that lives without these things.

'Mrs Blackthorn - your sister could move to Scotland while the children are still young- and she wouldn't have to worry about Uni fees at all!'

Yeah, because that's really going to last. Get real

There are always these clueless eejits who spout off claptrap about holidays, gadgets and clothes.

The next generation? Learn to speak as many languages as possible, get specialised job training, and LEAVE.

This is still very common, at least in London. Also common: divorced people having to go into flatshares. DP lived in a place that was rented out by the room, with no communal areas bar the kitchen (which was for cooking in, not sitting in. The landlord also rented out a shed in the garden to a couple). One of his 'neighbours' was a divorcee in his 40s, whose kids came over at the weekend and would stay in the room.

yup. i too have seen the makeshift shed "room".

it's totally common to turn the reception room into an extra bedroom and let by the room. the only common area is the kitchen.

I think you're missing the point, Maria. My nan used to think it absurd that I hadn't bought a home when I had the money to buy a stereo. Because in her day, these were expensive and the £200 cost would actually have made a difference to her ability to buy.

A stereo still costs about £200. But that and the £22 a month I spend on my free-with-contract smartphone makes so little difference to my house purchasing ability as to be irrelevant. It simply is not the case that people would be able to buy if only they were still using their old Nokia. Because house prices are going up much faster than anyone could save. My place is now valued as £250k more than I paid for it - which is almost as much as I have earned, pre-tax, in the same period of time. Even if I were to have literally no outgoings, thus saving every single penny, I would not be able to afford the same place now.

Unless something changes very radically, that trend will only continue. Wearing second hand and using an old phone is going to make absolutely no difference to most people's ability to save for a 5% deposit when, as is expected to happen in a generation, an average home costs a million pounds.