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

where would you want your son to go? do you not think they are having these problems in the US, Australia, Spain, France or Italy? My brother has a successful business in California he can not get a mortgage and his health insurance is over a $1000 a month for him and his two daughters and tax rates are not so different to what they are here

I agree with paying higher tax and there to be more tax rates we pay so little into the NHS of course we are going to have to pay more and why have people not paid into a private pension scheme when they have been working

times have changed, home ownership became too easy to achieve, people were being given 100% mortgages prices were rising by they week and then people were given mortgages way above what they could afford and it had to end at some point

I am in my early 40's I feel far luckier than the women in my family in their 70's yes they may own their home but coming from a working class background they suffered far greater poverty than I ever did, they never had the opportunities that I have had. Like someone else said every generation has problems life has not always been so great for baby boomers

US, Australia or New Zealand for DS. Lots of my family have emigrated to Australia.

Controlled house prices (by methods including: more council tax bands/mansion tax, taxing second homes, stricter mortgage lending terms and regulations-many of which have been brought in and luckily they have already started cracking down on people using property as a business asset to escape stamp duty). Home ownership did not become "to easy to achieve" ideally it should be achievable by a large number of ALL ages.

of course home ownership became to easy to achieve with 100% plus mortgages up to six times your salary so not only could you buy a home you could furnish it too. I was offered 5 and half times my salary I was on my own and pregnant yes it would have bought me a lovely little house in an area I really wanted to live in but I would have been foolish to take it as I knew if things change I would lose it and they did change

I have family in the states, Australia as well as friends. I have friends, good salaries who can not afford to buy in Sydney (cost of living there is extremely high) so rent. the US many parts of the country property prices are very expensive and if you pay your own health insurance its a large payout to make every month. an aging population is a problem the world as a whole is facing

I agree with higher tax, I am not in agreement with Labours mansion tax I agree with more control over rental properties

I would like to see stricter lending but then you are pricing people out and it has always been that way. We also have a high percentage of people with single ownership that impacts the housing market too

NZ: hope you don't mind earthquakes, which can happen ANYWHERE. Very isolated, social problems, many people struggling financially. (I've spent a lot of time there)

Australia: high costs, unsustainable resource situation regarding water, difficult climate, social problems, hideous traffic in Sydney and Melbourne, lethal insects.

US: guns, high crime, no money no medical treatment.

of course plenty of good things about all these countries - but holding them up as utopias is very naive.

Utopias no. But......

USA price to income ratio (2014)= 2.41
canada (2014)= 5.41
Australia (2014)= 7.43
NZ (2014)= 5.8

UK (2014)= 7.8

From: www.numbeo.com/property-investment/gmaps_rankings_country.jsp

We are healthcare professionals so in a good position as regards relocation and jobs, DS may follow suit.

Mansion tax one of the most sensible taxes being mentioned.

Home ownership has become progressively more difficult over the generations after the "baby boomers".

YANBU there are deep structural problems in the economy(and the European economies more generally) which are really hurting young people at the moment. The problem is stubborn and all attempts to address this so far have failed to address them.

as it has elsewhere, certainly in the states but they had other issues that we may not face now and we have had more opportunities i can not understand the attitude its not fair time have changed they will change again

i would look into costs of living not just property if you are seriously thinking of immigrating. the costs of food, bills, healthcare, i could not get over how expensive groceries, clothes and electrical goods are in Australia and they have certainly gone up in the states too

Freudianslipper I back up my stances with statistics (which I can interpret very accurately) not anecdotes. I would wish DS to enjoy his life doing a respectable career that he enjoys, I believe this (for him) will be more easily accomplished away from the UK.

oh please

back it up all you like go and experience it (i have and have family friends who have) he may do and it may work out well which is great i would never rule out moving to the states (not Australia for me) and I am lucky that option is open to us

just i am not going to agree that it is all doom and gloom here and all great certainly not in the states and Australia (have experience of both) but many people have moved and done well

just take into account costs of living too it is something if you are seriously thinking of immigrating that you have to take into account and Australia is a very expensive place to live

I'm am going to write this next paragraph for full effect, short and sweet.

I'm sorry to say this but you are going to have to man up and accept the reality of the world. No one owes you anything, you don't deserve a house, holidays, food, nice clothes, a happy family or good relationship. These are all things that are earned. What can you contribute to society that is worth all these things (im not just taking about money here).

You are lucky to live in a society that has the rule of law, an inclusive political process and plenty of opportunities for giving back to the community whether that is the labour you provide, the knowledge you possess or how you choose to distribute your resources.

Aussie bloke I have all your above list. I just want the same opportunities for my child (without him having to sell his soul to the devil and become eg a lawyer).

We (DH and myself) will dutifully, when DS wishes for property, sell up and give him a deposit for his own property-as I think this may well be needed if things continue on the path they are currently taking (rising house prices, rising healthcare costs).

Do lawyers sell their souls to the devil? There is no need to resort to lazy stereotypes. What about bankers, eh?

Yep they do from what I have seen .

anecdote of course though

You need to get out more, iggly.

Totally agree with Aussiebloke.

Lots of people work long hours and cannot afford a place of their own. How is someone earning minimum wage not as deserving of owning their own home (if they wish) as someone in a profession?

How is someone in a profession, eg a nurse, who happens to be born a few decades earlier than another nurse deserve a more expensive place?

Average wage in UK £26,500. Average house price £272,000.

I graduated in 2009, got a well paid steady job in a supposedly difficult area. Saved and bought my house in 2011.

So no all under 30's are not screwed.
My mortgage is 2.79% and about 25% of my income monthly. When my parents were this age there mortgage was about 14% interest and about 60% their joint income. Same style house.

14% would repossess most of us.

It's really good to hear a success story.

?House prices are massively over inflate?d, increasing inequality makes for volatile markets, it won't take much to burst the bubble

"These are all things that are earned"

But the one thing which is essential to a normal, stable, functional family life - a secure home - now simply can't be 'earned' by large numbers of families, no matter how hard they work.

I think USA is richer, and some of their residents more comfortable materially because the USA has lots of raw materials that we have to pay to import.
Gas, oil, coal - so stands to reason they will be wealthier, it's not that they are doing things better or a more generous government. And pointless to say this is how we should run the UK.

Australia also has huge mineral reserves. But is further from manufacturers who want it and are too small to use it themselves like the US.
NZ has a small pop like Scotland, not comparable.

eg a nurse, who happens to be born a few decades earlier than another nurse deserve a more expensive place

Jeesh, I couldn't have owned my own house on a nurses wage in the 70s, I could barely afford to run a beaten up old car.

Had I married another nurse we probably could have saved for years and got onto the bottom end of the housing market after 5-10 years, similar to now probably.

Goodness there's a load of rubbish spouted on here.

"Lawyers sell their souls to the devil" "greedy rich" "I should be able to work a minimum wage job and live in a mansion because that would be fair" Its all just ridiculous.

If you work a minimum wage job you may well work very hard (or you might not) but the reality is that the job you do is not a job which requires specialist skills and so many people can do it, hence the low salary. Nobody is saying that street sweepers don't have a hard job and come home exhausted at night but the reality is that anyone can sweep streets and so that role, necessary as it might be, is simply not going to allow you to live in Mayfair.

If you work a job where you have specialist skills and thus fewer people can do it, and its a skill that the market cannot do without then it may well command a higher premium. If you also have a bit of luck in that job you may well get to a point where you can do less and still earn good money.

If you work a job where you have made a decision that you are doing it for the love of it or because it enables you to give something back then sometimes the trade off is that its not well remunerated in proportion to its moral worth (often because its public funded and we have trillions of pounds of debt so astonishingly high that its difficult to comprehend).

People complaining that life is the toughest it has ever been need to learn a little bit more about the suffering there has been in the past. Think about being poor in the first half of the 1900s, think about the wartimes. It was never "easy" to buy a house (other than possibly when the banks were chucking 110 percent mortgages at people and that was relatively short lived.) People's expectations have increased because in general the population's wealth has increased and yes it is tougher today than it was ten years ago but that was a weird bubble which burst. It's not reflective of the way things are in general.