there's never been a worse time to be young and British, your screwed if your under 30

[lhldn]

OK the title is taken from a torygraph article, but I do find myself agreeing with it and being sad for the next generation.
www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11231796/If-youre-under-30-bad-luck.-Youre-screwed.html
We’re all becoming depressingly familiar with the results of these policies. The single worst (and most easily grasped) problem is housing. Our housing market has become an in-and-out club. If you’re over 50, in addition to your primary residence, you may well own a couple of buy-to-lets which will augment your already well-upholstered pension. If you’re under 30, you’re screwed.

If you’re under 30 in London, you’re super-screwed. You’ll be in your 40s before you’ve saved enough to buy a dump in Catford. And even then it’s likely that you’ll be outbid by a buy-to-let investor or, increasingly and tragically, refused a mortgage because you’re too old.

A long list of policies across three very different governments has got us here. The “one off” sale of council houses to make us all Tories in the 1980s - over two million homes that went cheap, often criminally cheap. The bottom three rungs cut off the ladder, the proceeds pocketed and the houses never replaced. Even so, property was still cheap back then – and if the housing market was anything like a free market, we might still be alright.

However, for all their devotion to the free market, our leaders have shown no interest in allowing the housing market to function this way. Rather, each year, we build a tiny fraction of what is needed ensuring prices march endlessly upwards. We have no coherent national housing plan. Our planning system is a mess. We have artificially low interest rates. We sell homes off-plan to foreign investors and don’t build enough to house the immigrants who are vital to our economy. The result is an cruelly dysfunctional market – and one which works brilliantly for your parents.

In tandem with this, over the last few years we’ve done a great job of increasing the wage gap between age groups. Guess who low wages hurt? Not people in their 50s and 60s. In fact, they actually help older people as they as more likely to be investors and employers. So, there’s no house for you, but the people who vote can afford a cleaner for their holiday home.

Housing is the most pressing problem

Really? The Telegraph article said "your screwed"? Astonishing!

I agree with suzanne thought it had been proven that we don't have a shortage of housing just unfair allocation

Where has this been proven? We have the same allocation system as many other countries yet our capital city is now the most expensive in the world.

There is no way on God's green earth I can even afford to rent a house. I don't want to live in a bedsit ffs. I want a proper house - want a family and everything to go on it. Obviously, I can't afford that, and won't ever be able to afford that.
It's upsettign when it's constantly on the news that over 25s are still living at home with Mum & dad. I can't wait to get out of that place, they're toxic. But, I can't afford it. It's a choice between being miserable, or skint with under 25s. and if you want to be on the council list with no kids, under 25s don't get housing benefit anymore.

suzanne I didn't say I'm gifted with second sight but if you think we will ever live in socialist utopia you're in for a shock.

hairtoday Neither did I say anything (rude or otherwise) about anything being down to my hard work and everyone else being lazy. I simply said I know someone who complains about not having a house whilst at the same time spending astonishing amounts of money on "stuff". Where was there any comment about me working hard/harder/at all?

buying a home would be a lot less of a worry if young people could:

• rent somewhere on a long term (3+ years) contract, with certainty of rent during that time. This is in the landlord's interest but against mortgage companies and letting agent's so it's unlikely to happen.
• be allowed to decorate and make a rental property feel a bit more like a home, not just like living in someone else's property.

as i understand it (and I have not looked into all this for a while I have kind of given up TBH) the gist is that figures supposedly showing a shortage of housing have been massaged by vested interests to support their own gain. the last I heard 'property developers' the larger ones held land banks which would last 15 years. the suggestion was that they were more interested in loosening of planning regulations to allow e.g. green belt development.

pus as has been said up thread, there are large numbers of BTL shoeboxes being built in London rather than homes needed by owner occupiers (which I gather is very small and very large) plus those more suitable for retirement etc

Atticus
You can argue that actual utopia is impossible but I don't see how you can know along what lines society will be governed in the future.
Nothing can be ruled out unless it is a logical impossibility, the fact that something seems impossible from our current position is neither here nor there ?

No but short of some sort of cataclysmic disaster sometime many thousands of years in the future where everyone is suddenly deprived of every possession and thing of value they own I think I can safely say its highly unlikely.

Pointless argument you seem to want to make.

People expect so much so early!

25 year olds expect houses etc


Didn't happen when I was 25, we were in bedsits until we married then in cheap rented. Bought first house when 30 and expecting, this was a wee semi (and only afforded it because DH was an engineer, not on a measly NHS salary like me)

I'm sure people under 30 are allowed to vote.

There has to be someone who represents their POV to vote for

No HB for under 25s? God, I momentarily forgot that. The Tories are also proposing to deny out of work benefits to 18 - 21 year olds after 6 months of claiming (after which point they will still be able to earn their pittance by providing Tesco with free labour).

VOTE YOU WHIPPERSNAPPERS, FOR GOD'S SAKE VOTE!!

OP is essentially right, but it's a bit London-centric. I'm trying to sell my house to go into rental, and am making an enormous loss from when I bought it a few years ago. Prices have been going down and down in our part of Britain, and buyers are having a field day. There's quite a lot of property out there to rent, mind you.
In terms of income, everyone here is seeing their salary go down and down year on year, except for those at the very top.

*I'm sure people under 30 are allowed to vote.

There has to be someone who represents their POV to vote for*
Also how do you vote when you can move as often as every 6 months?
Personally I've moved 9 times in 8 years, registering to vote with the council was not a top priority.

Moniker

totally agree.
We rented and got first mortgage when ds1 was one and we got married too.
No expensive wedding, honeymoon, wedding dress or rings,
we begged, borrowed, hired and bought cheapest rings we could find.
Honeymoon was cleaning out kitchen cupboards previous owners had used as bins.
We have only recently started having holidays at all and couldn't even afford to go on the national grid at one time.
Yes, we have a second home now, but no pension. You couldn't trust private pension companies back then and lots were going bust, so we saved for our future.
We had no modern technology back then, one old banger for dh for work, very little furniture and could never afford to buy new.
Our dc had second hand clothes and could only afford simple xmas pressies for them when they were little.
Gym membership, forget it, have a jog round the park, do the housework, dance, go for brisk walks.
Take aways, cook for yourself. Entertainment stay in, watch tv, make your own free entertainment.

Well clearly, even when capitalism is operating at its most egalitarian, there will be people who are poor in every generation. So it is neither here nor there if you are, or know of, poverty stricken 50+ ers.

OP, I agree with you, that is is quite unique to see an entire generation be fucked over so remorselessly. So it is neither here nor there if you are, or know of, young people who are wealthy.

Until we can talk about this without descending into a discussion about individuals we can't even begin to unpick this shitstorm.

Personally I've moved 9 times in 8 years, registering to vote with the council was not a top priority.

I have always said more stable rules for private rentals should be a top priority.

But yes politicians won't respond to the young until you vote. And there won't be someone to vote for unless you vote. it's a vicious circle. Frankly, it's pretty damn easy to vote. While I am generally on the side of the young, on this issue I am not. it takes 10 mins of your time.

@morethanpotatoprints

the problem is that the young have 0 prospect of owning in some parts of the country. 0. If you take a salary of, say, a teacher, even if they didn't eat, buy any clothes, walked to work everyday, etc etc etc they couldn't buy in most of London.

So, it's perfectly rational to go out and buy a shiny phone. Why save for a property you can never buy?

When you were young the things that mattered were cheap: housing and university tuition, two huge outlays for the young today.

I'm 25. I have two degrees. I worked from 15, worked sporadically through university when I could get work (I started uni in 2007 just as the recession hit). I got into a job before I graduated from my Masters. After a year that was pulled out from under me due to budget cuts. As of October 2013 I have lived with my parents and work 4 part-time jobs (all minimum wage, and rarely do these hours combine to make a full-time week), as well as running my own online business. If I moved out I could not afford the rent round here, and if I moved away I would have to start the process of job-hunting all over again.

I cannot get a proper, full-time "career" job. I have been looking for 18 months now. In that time I have had three interviews, out of a ridiculous number of applications. I have looked outside my sector widely - law, accountancy, finance, tax, energy and environment, pilot, military, intelligence, civil service, estate agency and real estate, recruitment, defence, building and land management, even applied for a job managing a vineyard! The only two things I will not do are medicine / caring work (I have neither the qualifications for the former or the stomach for the latter), and teaching (unless I was lecturing at a university). I do not have the money to go back to university and retrain. I live in hope of being able to secure funding for my PhD, however the last time I managed to secure funding it was withdrawn, two months before I was due to start at Oxford (which was, and still is, my ultimate dream!).

It is not my CV or my applications. The interviewers I've had all said they were very impressed with it. I have showed it to my parents, to my current bosses, to my old bosses, to my professors, to my friends. It has been revised, re-revised and updated. I'd show it to my dog if I thought it would help. I have 5 main versions which can all be tailored to fit specific job applications.

I am single, no social life (when I moved back home to my parents I brought the average age of the population down by about 30 years) have no prospects job-wise and nowhere to go from here. One day I would like to maybe own my own house, maybe get married, maybe have children, the normal things that most people might expect, but I think that will have to stay a dream. It is increasingly beginning to look like I have no future, and a swift bullet would be kinder.

And I am far, far from being a unique case.

It is not that we are not prepared to work hard, it is not that we expect things NOW. The economy shrunk rapidly, it was easier to get rid of the younger, less experienced professionals, and now we are all so much dead weight, still carrying about ridiculous amounts of student debt.

Until we start seeing ownership of more than one house as morally wrong things won't change much. For the last few decades the opposite of this has been promoted. I think profit from property needs to be very heavily taxed or outlawed. Everyone deserves a house to live in and nobody deserves more than one house.

moniker

Didn't happen when I was 25, we were in bedsits until we married then in cheap rented

This is one of the difficulties - there is no such thing as a cheap rental. Renting is the same as a mortgage payment and the ability to prove that you're able to pay your rent on time for 5 years plus doesn't count for much with the lenders. They want to see a deposit - not necessarily from savings, gifted is fine.

We got on the ladder by living with parents for over a year (me, dh and ds). Realistically, to avoid being screwed we will have to stay in this house for the 25 years and pay it off then or hopefully overpay. We are lucky though as we are 28 & 32 so should repay by 53 & 57 respectively... what happens if you never buy and are expected to rent in retirement? Do you just not retire?

If you do that happybubblebrain the rental sector will shrink (maybe no bad thing) and become phenomenally more expensive then it is now - not so great if you don't actually want to buy at any given point (and lots of people don't)l

Everyone deserves a house to live in and nobody deserves more than one house
Totally agree, if you have a second home you are condemning someone else to a life without a secure affordable home.
No one can thrive or be content without the opportunity for a secure affordable place to call home, yet some people think it's fine to deprive others of this right. ?

Would you deny someone the chance to go to school or antibiotics to cure an otherwise fatal infection?

Well said BarbarianMum

"life to a point is what you make of it and how hard you work for it"

We can't all be bankers.

The average family home in London is now something like 11 x the average family salary.

I live in an undesirable part of South London where a one bedroom flat costs £170K (not a nice one, mind). The majority of teachers, nurses, skilled trades couldn't afford to buy here now as it's hard to get more than 3x your income in mortgage.

The only silver lining is that my children will have to be nicer to me to avoid destitution once they become adults, as I won't have the feckers living at home with me if they refuse to help and contribute.

Uncontrolled and spiralling immigration hasn't really helped either. This is a small country with a very high density of people. We're living longer, and we're letting a lot of people in.