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?

No bochead - I don't want our DGC to live like our Great Grandparents, but I also think the assumption that we must own as the only way to have security and that the bulk of the population owning is the way it should be is also a false assumption - a lot of working poor stuggle with the running costs of home ownership, from boiler break downs to replacing windows, there's a lot to be said for your rent being your only housing costs, but at the moment that comes with insecurity, and there are precious other investments that people on lower incomes are encouraged to have.

There are a lot of people that if society was set up again for renting being a long term housing solution, not just the ideal for 20-somethings - it would be far better for society. My point was that it's only been for a couple of generations that we've tried an arrangement where the majority of people buy in order to put a roof over their heads, and to me it looks like that idea hasn't worked for most people. Rather than tinkering with it or trying ot find a way to make that system work, how about not assuming a large percentage of people renting is a bad thing, just tackle the negatives to that situation.

Do we really want our grandchildren to grow up in a world as bleak as that of our great- grandparents?

The selfishness of many baby boomers on the rich pensioner bus pass thread would suggest that answer is yes.

Instead of HS2, use the money to build homes.

Suzzie - I sometimes wonder if you were frightened by a Boomer in your cradle.

It does seem to be an obsession of yours.

The Boomer (I'm not one. I was a War Baby) had about as much control over house prices and interest rates as you do. i.e. Zilch. And all the Boomers I know are helping out their dcs with cash and/or childcare.

This inter-generation envy is pointless - and unattractive.

Helping children out with cash just turns the whole thing into a pyramid scheme.

It's not envy, its a whole generation being screwed. Its easy for you to see it as pointless when your not one of the ones being screwed.

I don't agree at all that this generation is having it worse than the earlier ones and we've been through this again and again on this thread. Clearly they have it a lot easier than the 1900s children who were in cramped rented slum housing. No one disputes that. The 1930s depression, no food, no shoes lot did not have it easier. Those killed in WW2 certainly did not have it easier. A few moved to the London surburbs from slums when those houses were built in the 1930s but most could not afford to buy them.

The 1950s lot my parents could not buy for years as prices were too high and most people did not earn enough. They had rationing and not enough food. There certainly was a post WW2 aim to make everything better for everyone else but it never quite happened.
The 60s were not easy. Our empire was over, times were hard, ship building and mining were dying. The 70s which I can remember were dire - yes I accept there was massive inflation then which meant if you bought before that time and kept your house its value went up a lot in value but most people could not buy anyway. Those that could have to cope with very high tax rates and high interest rates. Plenty lost the lot in the 70s property crash.

80s - when I had my first children as I said above hard for us to buy even in outer London. Interest rates in the 90s rose to 12%, property prices crashed. I just can';t find a golden era. A few people who bought in say 98 and sold before the credit crunch in London might have done all right but most of us are in the property market for 50 y ears so temporary lows and highs do not benefit us very much.

I just don't agree with the basic premise of this thread that today in 2014 things are much harder for our children than they were for other people in British history. I think younger people just have no idea of how hard life was in the past and expect things to be handed to them on a plate. If they are finding life difficult - we obviously sympathise with them (welcome to our world/past) - it always has been so. Stick at it. Work very hard. Do some of the things those who have bought ion the thread have done - no holidays, buying an absolute tip of a place in a dreadful after and work harder than anyone you know and things may just about come out right. Move if you have to.

I think at done point the tipping point will arrive, and I'm sure it will be well before squalid housing becomes even as common as it was in the 1960s. If the private rental sector gets concentrated into fewer hands, there will be more incentive to politicians to reform it.

I don't think any politicians set to achieve inequality. They all want to deliver prosperity. It is just that those on the right are more willing to allow out as a side effect. Inequality of housing was something lots of politicians on the right and the left worked hard to reduce, albeit in different ways, after WW1.

What depresses me is that I don't see any politicians being bold enough to propose any solution, eg property taxes or rights for tenants. They probably don't see votes in it it

I completely agree with you jessica and have made the points you make on other threads.

However that doesn't make it less true that, despite there being many good things about being alive in the UK in 2014, there is a housing shortage given the size of our population and the concentration of work in certain areas e.g. the south east.

I think younger people just have no idea of how hard life was in the past and expect things to be handed to them on a plate. If they are finding life difficult - we obviously sympathise with them (welcome to our world/past) - it always has been so. Stick at it. Work very hard. Do some of the things those who have bought ion the thread have done - no holidays, buying an absolute tip of a place in a dreadful after and work harder than anyone you know and things may just about come out right. Move if you have to.

I think you are condescending And have little knowledge of the problems the young face.

Jessicamary

I said to my 70yo mother (who remembers rationing) that perhaps people were overstating hite hard things had got. She immediately pointed out that in her lifetime, no one had to rely on foodbanks till now.

The UK's wealth has certainly increased. However, it is increasingly in the hands of those who do not (and indeed cannot) work hard enough to deserve it.

I think it is more true to say that in the old days they didn't have food banks and starved or got rickets than that they didn't need food banks.

However, that doesn't change the fact that there is a shortage of suitable housing now.

I agree there is a shortage of housing. I am not unsympathetic to young people. I have children of my own. I will help them where I can. I think the market goes up and down over the years with peaks and troughs but that London even 30 years back was too expensive to live in the centre of. We certainly could not afford anywhere further in than zone 5 30 years ago.

However the developers have massive land banks. If they thought the demand was there to build in areas where people want to live they would go ahead and build surely. Most demand is in major cities, particularly London. It is in some parts of London where you get 10 people rushing to view on the first day a £200k to £400k place is available and bidding over the asking price. it is not elsewhere in the country. I am from the NE. The terraced house with cellar my grandparents live in costs about £119k today - here is one on the same road - which is not a fortune even up there. 4 beds and in their day they had to rent a room or floor to a tenant to make ends meet.

www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=36492049&sale=48893315&country=england

Jessicamary makes some good points, when you compare to previous generations. It is obvious that previous generations had some very tough shit to deal with too (alot tougher in many cases). No-one can deny that. Ergo - it is not somehow inherently 'harder' than before. The young just starting out are not the 'hard done by' generation versus previous.

It's hard yes, but in a different way.

To go back to the original OP about our own children, I guess we cannot predict if/what will be harder or easier for them (many of us who have very young DC are tens of years away from this).

But I think we have to accept that the CURRENT crop of 20 and 30 somethings don't necessarily have it any harder fundamentally than their parents did or their parents before them. Yes, those aged about 45 currently, who saved and worked hard, are laughing now in many cases if they bought pre crash but that's not a whole generation.

The problem is most jobs are in the South East. People don't want to live in Croydon rather than Durham because of the architecture - they just want to go where the jobs are. No job, no mortgage or even money to pay rent.

I completely agree that I'd rather be an unemployed graduate than an unemployed Jarrow marcher.

JessicaMary - Demand is why developers DON'T build on all of their land at once. It's land banking and not building which keeps demand and prices high. Fewer homes = more demand, higher prices.

There weren't foodbanks, but neighbours helped each other out. I remember my mum giving bread and butter to the neighbour so she could give her kids toast for breakfast, as there was absolutely no food in the house. That kind of informal help was common. The need was still there.

Wearing second hand clothes, especially for kids, was very very common.

I am 47 and until I was 5 I lived with my parents and brother in what was called 1 room and a kitchen with a shared outside toilet. Those kind of living conditions were common for poor people.

Things have got worse for traditionally middle class people. That is because the middle class has expanded. So they do have less money and can't afford what their parents could. Life has got better for many poor people, although Cameron is trying his best to make things much worse.

My best friends at school when she left school looked after her disabled mother as well as working. There was no help at all then, no DLA. I looked after a disabled woman in her 40's who was in a place run by a charity. Before the charity she was in an old people's home as there was literally nowhere else for her to be as she had no family that would care for her.

In the past if you were a lone parent, lesbian, gay, black, disabled, lived your life in anything less than the traditional way, unless you were well off, life was harder.

I think I have a very good understanding of how things were in the past but that is precisely why I don't want to return to those days. Those who's main experience is of the 'golden days' seem to have tendency to be condescending bordering on nasty towards the younger generation who have it harder than they seem to care to admit.

As to the days before that, why would we want to return to the days of 6 or more sharing a small room. I don't mean a bedroom but that room is the entire 'flat'. Do we really want 10 or more families sharing a single toilet. Do you have any idea what impact this had on the spread of disease? TB, dysentery and cholera. TB is already making a comeback, yes we have antibiotics unlike the old days but there are multi drug resistant strains being discovered all the time so we can't rely on having these treatments for longer.

As for nutrition ricketts is already making a comeback. Furthermore do we really want to return to the early years of the First World War where 100s of people failed military medicals due to malnutrition? These were working people who couldn't afford to keep themselves adequately nourished.

I understand some people won't care as it's only the poor so it doesn't affect them and the poor and they're expendable after all. Well I happen to think their wrong. Firstly things can happen to lead to anyone becoming poor, not one of us can guarantee that our children or grandchildren will never end up poor. Secondly once diseases take hold they will spread more easily I poor communities but if the levels of disease become high enough then it can hit anywhere. Just look at Prince Albert. Thirdly and perhaps the most appealing to the proper better people getting people do all the skivvying will be a lot more difficult if we allow the scum to become so unhealthy.

useless - Yes I am more concerned about increased poverty in this country, than that some middle class people can not afford the lifestyle their parents had.

Greenwinter - YY to that!

Educational provision has deteriorated significantly in my lifetime for many children with SN's, and I'm not THAT old. Changes to the system mean things are set to get much worse not better.

20,000 still die each winter due the age old fuel/food choice that impacts the poor. A boy born in Glasgow has a one in four chance of living long enough to collect a pension. Peak oil & the growing crisis in global staple food stocks mean that a densely populated nation like ours is going to increasingly feel the pinch in years to come.

I just think we are sleep walking into a future that is not what we want for our descendants at all. Taxing foreign purchasers who have no intention of living here for property that is so desperately needed by the native population is just one small step to avoiding a Dickenseque existence for those who come after us.

Using social housing receipts to provide affordable secure tenancies is another. Reforming our utterly corrupt financial sector so that more people feel they have a wider range of pension investment choices is yet another. Overhauling our private rental sector so that "agencies" cannot fleece the desperate with arrangement fees, introducing tenancies where rent can be paid in part by improving properties is another. Decriminalisation of squatting is controversial but needs to be considered.

The I'm alright jack philosophy only takes a society into shared misery eventually. I think the biggest single problem is the refusal by so many to accept that actually they are part of the working class. The Mrs Bucket effect I call it.

I have a lot of sympathy for today's generation, not least because if you've been brought up with new clothes and a comfortable home (and have not seen the privations of your parents when the lived in one room etc) no one can expect you to understand how hard life used to be. Nor do most of us want life to go back to being so hard.

Nor am I against thread of people in the same position making themselves feel betting by saying how hard it all is. What I want people to understand is that most generations have had some pretty dreadful times and that if you work extremely hard and give up treats to save for the future most people in most situations can improve their situation.

We only just criminalised squatting in domestic premises after some truly dreadful cases where young London families were about to move into their home and a load of lay about squatters steal it. That change was terribly much needed. Squatting in commercial premises should also be criinalised - it has not been yet.

I suspect what many parts of the countries want even more than cheaper housing at the moment is full employment which they don't have. We need to get more real jobs out to the regions so no one need be out of work at all.

We are back in the 80's when the Tories were first in last time. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer.

Well actually the affordability problems were created by Labour. Pre-1997 housing was much more affordable.

Tories are making it worse now, but it's a bi-partisan thing, politicians of both parties enriching themselves to the tune of millions of pounds by fucking everyone else over.

The sale of council housing, with hardly any replacements being built, was the policy that started the rot.

"and that if you work extremely hard and give up treats to save for the future and vote in a party that has some solid long term policies to deal with problems such as concentration of jobs in the south east and lack of access to housing most people in most situations can improve their situation."

Just thought I'd add that bit in. .