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?

You don't need to add it as people can move either where prices are cheaper or where jobs are.

Jessica where it's cheaper and where the jobs are at opposite ends of the country.

There doesn't seem to be a political party dedicated to fixing some of the structural social problems in the UK right now. I want to vote for a party that:-

1. Sees it's job as maintaining the national infrastructure (sewers, bridges, flood defences, transport routes, utility maintenance) as a KEY priority, not bottom of the list.

1. Education based on best evidence based practice as a universal service to all families. We have a nanny state that actively undermines parenting while demoralising teachers, yet we have had a persistently high level of adult functional illiteracy and innumeracy for as long as I can remember.

1. Prioritises the needs of it's own citizens over providing increasing levels of welfare to global corporate entities that have NO loyalty to the UK whatsoever. (e.g When are the banks going to repay the taxpayer for the huge sums borrowed in 2007/8, when is Amazon et all going to pay a fair tax on the profits made sales to UK consumers) This also means using public money to tackle the growing housing crisis in a sustainable way. Not providing perverse incentives for the bubble IN London & the SE to getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Why aren't democratically elected councils trusted to use the receipts from social housing rents and sales to provide suitable affordable secure tenancies anymore? Why can't the government put some real investment into social housing?

1. Is capable of maintaining our borders - no this isn't an immigration concern in the style of the Daily Mail, but a public health one. Scientists admit we are overdue a global pandemic and with Ebola and MERS on the march it'd be nice to feel reassured that we could implement a reasonable and humane quarantine on what is after all, an Island nation. (Think of animal rabies control and public health, not the racist rants of the far right please!).

1. Supports STEM companies and SME's who are the engine of our future economic prosperity.

Looking at the self- absorbed numpties in charge at the moment there isn't a mainstream party to vote for. Labour is no more committed than the two currently in charge to social justice, and ending the endemic corruption that runs through so much of British life nowadays. Ordinary hard-working families of daily fail fame are being stitched up by a kipper.

Well said Boc, I couldn't agree more.

I think part of the problem is it's v difficult to come up with a national housing policy. The BBC website said that 41% of homeowners in N.Ireland are in negative equity. Rising house prices would be welcome there.

And when they wheeled out Help to Buy - largely to make a splash at the Party Conference in September - it seems to have been positive for the rest of the country, but disastrous for London and the S.E. Well, positive for those who were accepted. A high percentage were turned down.

But this is a temporary measure, only till 2016, and the new regulations have given the lenders the excuse of putting up the rates to cover admin costs. Which, I suppose, means fewer successful applicants, so really it was only a PR gimmick for a boost in the polls, not really a policy, as such. (Like the £1 million threshold for Inheritance Tax, which never came to anything.)

The other point is that the global crash was so closely linked to the U.S. sub-prime debacle that I think everyone, especially the banks, is v nervous about making it easier for people to buy.

It sounds as if R4 P.M. are doing a special housing feature every day this week??? Well, someone is - only caught the end of the trailer.

Having said which, they could do something about social housing and tenants' rights.

But this is unlikely to appeal to the Conservatives' core vote. And Labour, since Blair, is now focussing on the middle ground. Though, of course, if more of the middle classes are struggling, there might be some votes in improving rental conditions.

It's only the Lib Dems who are coming up with proposals, but no one's going to vote for them anyway.

The huge disparities in local markets around the nation led to my comments about democratically elected LOCAL councils having more of a say in the housing policy on their own doorstep.

e.g Westminster has learned from some of mistakes of the Dame Shirley Porter era and would love to be allowed to earmark properties for native Brits to purchase/rent only instead of seeing whole blocks lying empty while their homeless list grows relentlessly. That council is discovering belatedly the benefits of traditional communities.

In NI it might be advantageous to try and attract foreign buyers to push up prices a bit and help dilute the sectarian divide a bit in the process? I don't know tbh as I'm not familiar at all with life in NI. All I know is existing policy is exacerbating social frictions to a point where sooner or later we risk civil disorder, and I'm fairly sure that the locals have better ideas for how to improve things than the out of touch numpties sitting in Westminster.

We could most those who are in expensive parts of London who are not working and on benefits in social housing to NI perhaps to get the better ethnic mix there.

www.rightmove.co.uk/overseas-property/property-44575721.html

Republic of Ireland. can you imagine what this same property would cost in Sussex?

Or jessicamary we could go one better and get those desperate sould sofa surfing or in expensive B&Bs into secure housing before uprooting settled families who might not want to move perhaps? Which ethnic minority were you thinking of btw - the Cornish?

Good God, Jessica Mary! That's a bit drastic. It's bad enough shipping them to Birmingham.

Can't see that going down very well. Wonder what Boris - There'll be no Kosovan style social cleansing on my watch - Johnson would say to that?

What do you mean about 'improving the ethnic mix'? What assumptions are you making about the ethnicity of those unemployed and on benefits in expensive parts of London?

It's not going very well removing those who don't work and are kept by full time working mothers through the benefits system by imposing the so called benefits cap which ate £26,000 a year of benefits is £34,000 of before tax income, is it? Hardly anyone has been moved. yet many of we full time working mothers have moved hundreds of miles from our families ( I did) so have no support whilst we work full time whilst a lot of people who have never worked nor have for generations cannot be more than 2 minutes from their parents as they need all this support even though they don't even work. You could move all the unemployed members of their family with them.

If I cannot afford to live in Central London I don't see why the very poor can. It certainly annoys my daughter and her friends who are working 50/60 hour weeks, sleeping in friends' flats in London to make ends meet and then see neighbours who have never worked in their lives of the same in adjacent council blocks. I just don't believe be benefits cap is actually yet being enforced at all. Hopefully during this year it will begin go have some impact.

People have moved for years. Some relatives on one side of the family left Ireland in the 1800s because of the potato famine. Others moved to the NE because there were mining jobs around 1880 time. My great aunt moved from the NE to London to work as a nurse in about 1910. My grandmother moved to India to work for an English family as a domestic servant/children's nurse in about 1920. Moving where the work is is not unreasonable.

This may also leave a lot more cheaper homes in London to be bought by those in work rather than clogged up by people who have never worked for 3 generations and don't intend to.

But our great-greats moved TO areas where there was work. And voluntarily.

N.Ireland has the second highest unemployment rate in the UK. It's the worst for 15 years. That's why house prices are low. 1 in 4 young people are unemployed.

The housing benefit cap is certainly being enforced. It's affecting working mothers who are often living in ex-council flats now in the private sector, not mansions in Kensington. The boroughs where the housing crisis is most acute and people are being moved to cheaper cities are the poorer ones, where people have already moved from the centre. Not to find work, but to find homes with cheaper rents.

Forcing the poor to move from rich areas to poorer areas, with worse rates of unemployment, so richer people can live in their flats? That's not the London I want to live in.

Many parts of central l

We have got slightly o ff topic. I meant the few who have chosen not to work for 2 or 3 generations and will never work to be moved so hard working Londoners on £20k - £30k a year can have the homes.

I certainly agree and my grandparents etc moved to find work as I am sure many hard working posters on mumsnet do. It is ridiculous that expensive Central London housing is full of people choosing not to work when young new graduates are sleeping on floor watching those who never work being kept in effect on their wages.

Sorry, start again.

Many parts of central London aren't that nice. It's amazing how inner city council estates are suddenly desirable when people feel benefits need to be cut. The problem is not the few people on benefits who live in central London but the far greater number of people who can't find housing in the suburbs and outskirts of London (and other cities where there is not a shortage of jobs).

House prices have not gone down because people have to live somewhere and if there aren't enough houses they will continue to pay stupid prices and stupid rents.

Which ever way you swing it, there is more demand for housing in London than supply.

It's not rocket science to suggest that many (most?) businesses don't need to be in london. However, they probably do need an incentive to move.

Sorry, should have posted businesses don't need to be in the south east, not london.

Few large businesses have main offices in central London these days.

"Forcing the poor to move from rich areas to poorer areas, with worse rates of unemployment, so richer people can live in their flats?"

And while it might seem fun when you are young, I don't think there is much demand from families wanting to live in a poorly built ex council flat with few facilities and local shops.

Council flats tend to be better built than many of the modern "executive" apartments.

To be honest I would say that Mayfair, Belgravia, Euston, King's Cross etc. etc. lack facilities and shops where you might actually be able to afford something or buy something useful. Have you never tramped around central London trying to buy something that you would find in 2 minutes in your average provincial town? Chic, edgy, bijoux maybe. Practical, no.

I agree that not all council blocks are badly built. However, plenty of them are just grim and already house families on £20-£30K a year. (This is anecdotal based on a small sample of random people I know - there doesn't seem to be anything particularly unusual about them though).

On the other hand perhaps I am wrong and there is big demand from young families who are blocked from living at the top of a high rise in Tower Hamlets because of the long term unemployed.

One of my daughters lives yards from Holborn Station. I don't find any shortage of what you need there. Even Oxford Street is a short distance away.

Anyway it certainly is something with huge demand - the need for cheap accommodation in London or near it so any mumsnetters needing a business idea that might be a good one to think about.

I love London, was born and brought up in London and lived there until 2 years ago.

However, I can think of any number of city centres I'd rather be wandering around than Oxford Street or Victoria, and thats before you take into account wrangling a toddler or a pushchair.

Without completely taking this off into the realms of "is central London a nice place to live", my point is who cares if people on low incomes or even unemployed people live in central London? Moving them out to somewhere that is cheap because there are no jobs at all isn't going to take them off benefits, and as central London is such a small area, wouldn't really help many people.

Generally people working in London do not live in central London. That is why streams of people pour over Waterloo bridge every morning and have done for decades and why we have a tube system.

And now we've got HS2 which means we can annexe Birmingham to London as another commutable suburb.

There are plenty of homes in this country, they are simply in places nobody wants to live. The solution is NOT to build more homes in the South East, it is to make the regions more viable and attractive places to live.

Planning laws have just changed again which will ensure that every last space of amenity land and brownfield site will be turned into poky flats in which desperate families cram their children so they can go to work and get food on the table.

Sorry that was largely a rant against HS2 which I consider symbolic of everything wrong with our national response to crises. If there's not enough money, print more, if fuel is bad for the environment put the price up, if people are unhealthy tell them to eat 2Kg of veg a day, similarly, if there are not enough jobs near houses build more trains so we can commute.