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

I think historically only the wealthy could afford their own homes and some security in life.

Then we went through a period where this swept through society.

Now we and our economy are reverting to the old balance and the trad middle classes find themselves and their DC as far from the lives of the wealthy as the working classes.

It's very difficult for people to come to terms with!

atticus is right.

The period of societal wealth was a bubble. It's gone now.

I think it's a matter of great concern that the 'steady' middle has been pushed so far down. The country needs a stable core of people who have traditionally provided teachers, lawyers, middle-ranking management, etc.

Australia ain't no economic paradise, either. My brother moved there 12 years ago. He was out of work for a year last year and lost his house. And everything is very expensive so he struggled in a way I don't think he would have here. He's working again now, but in a far lower-paid job than the last one. And where he lives there aren't the same number of free/low-paid attractions to keep you going while you job-hunt. Beaches, yes, but in the winter when it can rain, it is good to have museums and galleries to visit free of charge, and low-price concessions at theatres, etc. Where he lived, north of Sydney, there weren't many of these things.

abraid I think the traditional middle classes could wield a fair bit of power and force some changes if only they would recognise their predicament!

But most are in denial and continue to consider themselves far beyond the average working class person.

in the late 80's the interest rates were 15%, compared to todays 1.5 ish. That really, really hurt.

But interest rates are inconsequential if you can't save the necessary deposit or can't get a mortgage or simply can't afford whatever housing is on offer.

43 and still fucked. Yes I have a job but it's not great and I want to move jobs. Got mortgage but finding it increasingly hard on one salary with rising food costs/bills etc.

My DB and SIL are in a mortgaged flat but want to upgrade. My DB finding it hard to get work or decent work in his field despite getting a degree this year.

We're better off than most though.

"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."

It's not burst.

It was lack access to credit that stopped people on average incomes buying in the 1950's/1960's/1970's. Now what stops people buying in much of the SE is the fact that the cost of a family home is simply beyond what they are able to borrow, even with good terms and 3 or 4 multiples of the main income. We have lost large amounts of affordable public housing stock through right to buy - much of it now passed into the private rental market, and very little new affordable housing has been built in the last 30 years in relation to demand.

In relation to housing things really are hard for families in the south now.

"Jeesh, I couldn't have owned my own house on a nurses wage in the 70s"

In the 1970's you wouldn't have been expected to have a degree to be a nurse.

The job has changed. There are nurses now doing what doctors were doing in the 1970's - running surgeries, prescribing, minor surgery. There are nurses with graduate degrees who are managing large workforces.

Public servants in responsible jobs requiring years of training should be able to afford a modest home within a commute of where they work surely? Otherwise how can we expect our schools, hospitals and civil service to function?

I'm creeping up towards 50 and i certainly don't have a well-padded pension. I will almost certainly be living on benefits of some kind because I did not work for many years at the behest of XH. I have been lucky to get back into the jobs market at my age, but i am barely earning above minimum wage. If i didn't house share, i would be living in rented accomadation somewhere and probably even worse off than i am now.

My father's reply to the telegraph article was. My food was rationed when I was a boy. I lived with the constant fear of the cold war, and the threat of the bomb. Your generation don't understand how terrifying the cuban missile crisis was to us at the time. In the seventies our savings were destroyed by raging inflation. Then the winter of discontent. You haven't experienced three day weeks and endless power cuts.

my father had lots more to say - but that's the gist of his response.

The job has changed. There are nurses now doing what doctors were doing in the 1970's - running surgeries, prescribing, minor surgery. There are nurses with graduate degrees who are managing large workforces

Well, study medicine and be a doctor then, if you have such a huge range of skills and want to earn a decent wage surely you have the intelligence to choose a more lucrative career!

I chose nursing completely naïvely as to how much money was a good wage, my parents didn't own their home, I had no inkling about mortgages or the other probably much more suitable careers there were for me. It was the late 60s /70s only option advised was teaching or errrr teaching.

I would discourage any of my DCs from going into public service. The salaries are low and the job difficult due to underfunding. But if they choose that so be it, but they shouldn't then complain.

And your father is absolutely right polyethyl

Of course it would be nice if everyone could afford their own home.

It would also be nice if there were no starving children in the world.

I don't think there are many who would argue that house prices are at the right level to make the country an "ideal" country to live in but that doesn't mean there's never been a worse time to be young and British, its just nonsense.

?
Housing is a basic need, just like health-care and education.
We wouldn't accept a situation where the wealthy were allowed to buy up the state education system and charge such high fee's that the majority couldn't afford to be adequately educated ?.

As for all this 'in my day we lived in a cardboard box' it's besides the point.
The uk is becoming increasingly unequal, those at the top are impoverishing the rest via unaffordable rents and house prices.
This is a volatile situation, the middle classes are finding themselves struggling along with the poor, the old divide and conquer strategy may well soon fail. ?

housing is a basic need. Owning your own home is not.

yes, and?

Forgive me. I thought this was a thread about amongst other things high house prices and how that prohibits home ownership

Do you think it's okay that house prices have become over inflated such that very few can afford to buy and renting is so expensive that even those with good incomes struggle? ?

The "young people aren't prepared to work hard" irks me. I'm doing an apprenticeship at the moment and i'm essentially sat behind a desk all day doing nothing. No one ahs time to train me, my tutor comes in, i do an exam, they leave, and repeat every fortnight. They said they stopped trying to train me because they don't see the point when "you just go in a mood when you get a bad phonecall" no, I don't. I get upset because I'm being shouted at, it doesn't mean I won't be good in the job. But no one has time to train me anyway. I want to learn, I love learning, but thats the thing, no one in my workplace has the time to help with my apprenticeship. Not one person, everyone else has work to do and I'm fine with that, but they gave up on me. I'm not even getting minimum wage. There are people I went to school with who have their own place, are engaged, things like that, and I still live at home with mummy and daddy, saving every single penny I can. I need to buy a bed this month and with christmas I simply cannot afford it.
I want to be able to work, earn money to rent a house (which you can't, cheaply, by the way) and look at it and go "wow... I've done this myself. I've worked my arse off for this". But if you're a young person, it's tough.

Suzanne I don't but neither do I agree that the majority of the country's economic activity is concentrated in the SE and all discussion about housing (and housing policy) should be focused on sorting this out. Lots of cheap housing in South Yorkshire. And if there were more jobs around more people would be able to afford to buy it.

iggy2 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).

Sorry, whaat? Are you really, really stupid? By all means, make that sort of comment about serial killers, paedophiles, etc., but personally I draw up commercial leases. No devil worship involved. Other solicitors in my firm do family law work (you know, custody of those pesky children, ensuring one parent isn't left destitute when the other walks out), employment law (ensuring employees aren't bullied by their employers), and so on.

I did all the studying necessary to pass my exams with good enough grades to get a job. I missed nights out, spent weekends stuck in the library, AND I held down a part-time job the whole 5 years I was at uni. I then had two years on a very minimal salary while I trained. I got a bank loan to pay much of the deposit on my flat.

I did a bit of teaching part-time in the evenings to fund my studying at the local college, and my heart would sink when you would try to encourage students who obviously had parents who had encouraged them to share their own attitude against hard work, motivation, etc and instead to have this defeatist attitude that the world owes them a living and life is unfair because that doesn't happen in reality. And to truthful, even if you gave some people a mansion, they would still manage to destroy it - look at some examples of lottery winners if you don't believe me.

What have you done Iggy2? Have you found a niche market in making gingerbread woo cakes or similar to substitute for getting a real job?

I agree there is a problem with house prices, but the other problem is that there are buyers who have large deposits, including ftbs, and competing against them when you don't is almost impossible. If ftbs didn't have large deposits, that would make a massive difference to the market via ripple effect. Once you have a property, its not so bad. How to solve?

OK please ignore my last. Or for 'is concentrated' read 'should be concentrated.'

Barbarian, I completely agree that the imbalance in economic activity is a problem which needs to be addressed ?

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.

Jesus Christ. You don't buy the average priced house as your first time buy. I bought a one bedroom flat with my DH and we're both devil worshippers sorry lawyers. And we don't live in the south east. We're 33 and 35.

Is the problem not also that certain people basically want to live the life that only aristocrats could have done in times past? Swanning about not working, or working only in a field that interests them but doesn't pay their bills. Have countries ever been able to support large numbers of people wishing to do that in luxury conditions?

I think house prices are too high particularly in London. I haven't rented for 5 years and so am not particularly au fait with rental prices. A quick look at right move however shows that around here rents for a three bedroom house start at around £450 per month.

I don't think that there's never been a worse time to be British and you're screwed if you're under 30.

I do think expectations are too high and there's a sense of entitlement.