"Have you thought about buying?"...

[NickyEds]

As in a house. We're currently (and increasingly desperately) looking for a new house to rent. In our area stuff comes up, is viewed and goes within a day. We're on all the usual websites every day looking for somewhere suitable. The last house we viewed and applied for, 14 other people also applied for and we didn't get it.
If one more person says "If you're having trouble renting, have you thought of buying??"...GGrrrrr. Yes we have thought about it. We don't have thousands of pounds sat about. It's not an option. The question is usually followed by "Can't your parents help you out?". . Maybe they think that the thought has actually never occurred to us and they're genuinely being helpful but AIBU to scream in the face of the next person who says this?

[NickyEds]

but I do know people who were earning £30-40k in their mid-20s

Of course there are. They are rare. There average salary is around 26K and this is reached on average by 38 (compared to 29 in the 70s by the way). I live in t'North and houses are much cheaper than the National average and it's still not realistic to save £15K on that money. In general in this country the young are poorly paid, and if they went to Uni usually have debts (some of which is usually to bank which does have to be repayed irrespective of earnings). I totally agree that if you're in a couple earning, say £35K each at 25 then buying a house is perfectly feasable but this is in no way representative of most people's lives. You're naive if you think doing without a nursery and a holiday is going to get you on the housing ladder if you earn £30K between you, have 2 kids and pay £8000 per year rent (+plus fees every 6 months).

[LotusLight]

Well 30 years ago only two full time professional salaries would buy you a very small first property around here and most people could not afford to buy so I'm not sure that has changed.

It is certainly very very wise nowadays always to buy before you have children and well before. My grandfather waited until he was 40 until he married and had children due to cost of it all. My parents were married for I think about ten years and both working full time before they could afford to buy. They bought about 3 days before I was born.

[mumto3alexa]

Uni debt is often the problem. We bought first, and then went to uni at 21. That way we felt safe in the knowledge we were on the ladder and paying down a mortgage. I think in some cases that is a good idea and would our own dcs if they choose that route.

[mumto3alexa]

Is there know way between you that you can make more money or take on more hours to get on the ladder?

[NickyEds]

It is certainly very very wise nowadays always to buy before you have children and well before.
Lotus The average age of a first time buyer is now 36. Again, it's not always wise to leave having children until your late thirties. If you bought well before that might put you into your 40s.

[Newbrummie]

Buying first then going to Uni strikes me as a better plan of action all round

[mumto3alexa]

Not everyone is given money. I started saving at 14 and had various jobs by 17 I moved out to my first rented flat in bunk beds with my friend. I had 7k in bank by then all saved myself bar 1k my nan left me.Then I bought my first place on my own as I was 18 I got my first full time job. Sold again 3 years later to something with another room and went to Uni.

Now I am 30 have 3 kids and dh and I both work round each other as we are preparing to buy our forever home. We have made decisions 99% of our age group wouldn't do. I have just now qualified in to a professional role. All our hard work is paying off. People might moan but they were welcome to do the same

[LotusLight]

mum, yes. I graduated when I was 20 whilst friends were clubbing it. Bought before I had a baby.

None of us are saying it is easy for anyone but it is worth planning ahead if you can. I suppose I am saying to a potential first time buyer try to be younger than 36. Don't have any gap years, work really hard, don't do the party phase until you have the money, don't have babies until you can afford to have bought, work hard early on and aim to buy in your 20s.

[Newbrummie]

How fucking ridiculous is it to have to start saving at 14 for a house though?
I have pensions for my kids so I have given a lot of thought to compounded interest but really nice as it is to be mortgage free by mid thirties I do think you need to have a life too ... Certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from travel or even a bit of partying

[Capricorn76]

I started saving 50% of my wages when I was 16 and working a Saturday job in McDonalds. I went to a uni in my home city to avoid high student debt. I was actually ridiculed by some of my peers because I stayed with my parents until I was 26 by which time I had enough to buy a 1bed in a non fashionable (at the time) area in Zone 3. I still had a life and partied but I had a longterm view and saved accordingly. My dad always warned me against using my wages to pay off someone else's mortgage.

A lot of my friends wanted to live entirely in the here and now, moved out of home really young when they could've stayed at parents, went to a far flung uni even though there were similar courses nearer to home, did expensive gap years, upon leaving uni had to rent in the most fashionable places or wouldn't buy in the previously uncool area I bought in to get on the ladder so stayed renting and now they can't buy a home as the market's got away from them and they don't have the deposit.

Of course some people will never afford to buy home e.g. a single person on NMW for example but the people I'm talking about could've if they'd made different choices 20 ish years ago.

[skinoncustard]

Mum, Lotus & Capricorn76 .

Well done, it just goes to show that with a bit of forward thinking it is still possible to get on the 'ladder'. The idea that ' you can have it all' without any sacrafices still persists.
Life is all about choices. Some choose one way , some another.

[LotusLight]

I know. I never say it is easy for young people - it isn't but you tend to find those who have bought have tolerated some things others might not or bought in areas people might not like or started with some grotty one bed in an area their friends would not even dream of renting in.

[SevenAteNine]

If you stayed with your parents until the age of 26, is it really fair to say your parents didn't help you to buy your first home?

[TooOldForGlitter]

I feel your pain OP. It's like a battle that will never be won. I bought a house in 1999 with my now ex husband. It cost £42,000. It sold when we divorced for £145,000. It was a two bed terraced house in Lancashire. Had he not remortgaged it beyond the limits I'd perhaps own another home. As it is, ive been renting for years. Paying over 65% of my salary on rent. Affording a mortgage deposit? It's a dream!

[mumto3alexa]

I don't think you need to stop partying. I have only just got in for the night. Most people aren't finished going out in their 20s. I am a mum to 3 and I am no way near stopping partying!

[SevenAteNine]

LotusLight: where in the country are you? My dad qualified as a teacher in 1974. On his salary, he bought a 3 bedroom house in Henley on Thames. No help from parents, or spouse. This exact same house sold last year for £550,000.

[LotusLight]

In the 1970s in 3 years (I was at a school) inflation went up 60% over three years!! You can hardly imagine now. We had the 3 day weeks, power cuts, were using gas lamps and the coutnry was called out on strike all the time. It was chaos and people started leaving the country as tax rates were so high - my father was paying 65% upper rate on NHS income and 15% more than that on his modest buildling society savings income! So yes the 70s were an interesting time. Wages did go up and those who bought before 60% inflation found that after the 70s property crash (in which by the way loads of people lost everything) there were big rises and yes people made money. However things always do go up and down.

In the early 80s my children's father was a teacher. They could recruit no one in this bit of outer London because of house prices so they had to provide school flats. When I was pregnant with our first I was living in one and we were sleeping on a mattress on the floor not that that does anyone any harm. We did buy that same year before the baby came and the midwife was so surprised we owned rather than bought she questioned me about it on a home visit.

[Unescorted]

The housng market is dysfunctional for many reasons and they vary across the country.
In the "North" there are areas of low house prices due to the poor transport connectivity and low wages. You can get a house in Nanthead for a fraction of the price of one in London but you would still struggle to pay the mortgage as there is very poor broadband, one road passing through, no train and buses only run a limited timetable. There is no employer within 20 miles.
Further South in the Eden Valley second home owners have pushed prices so high that there is no hope for a person on a average income for the area being able to afford a house.
Further south still in Pennine Lancashire it can take you 4 hours to travel to the cities for employment, and again broadband connectivity is poor. Local employers pay lower wages than in Manchester. This is an area of many empty homes, but the housing stock is of poor quality (I know of a terrace where the back wall fell down when the downstairs extention was removed on one of the houses). To bring them up to a habitable standard is more expensive than pulling them downand rebuilding. Until transport is improved this is not a financially viable option. Additionally the empty houses tend to be 2 bed terraces and the prices of 3 bed and above are expensive.
In the Cities (and commuting distance) are high - in our area a 3 bed property is around 300K. 4 Bed 500K.

I don't think BTL landlords are the whole issue, although many bought with mortgages that were too high & have to charge a rent that will cover the expenses and provide a yield. The house is occupied at least. I have seen some research that suggests that houseprices have less to do with availability of the property and more to do with the amount that banks are prepared to lend. Unfortunately they lend a lot for BTL mortgages as rental yields are high and in the '90's and 00's people were able to borrow 100% on self cert mortages or high salary multipliers. This pushed the house prices up - and when banks closed the door on these products it left many people without the means to buy a house. Therefore rents increased and BTL landlords (including pension funds, individuals, corporate bodies) are able to borrow more to buy houses because the yields are higher.

[Balanced12]

I live 'up north' and I would rather pay a fortune renting in a rural nice, the cheap housing comes hand in hand with misery.

Everyone around you is miserable, the houses are falling to bits no point in improving your terrace as next doors landlord won't (damp come through e.g broken guttering). People drinking in the front gardens and kids screaming and scratching cars. So you will never sell it so you are then trapped in that misery.

Be there done that don't recommend it!

[propelusagain]

I live even further than the North- in Scotland.

We usually marry within our immediate family, eat small rodents and soil. We do have at least one person in the village who can read though. There are no cars so our children are safe, but life expecancy is 24-most of us have had 7 or 8 kids by tha time so it's not an issue.

[LotusLight]

prop made me laugh....

Don't assume we have good broadband in outer London! First of all we have just about no mobile signal in this house. Secondly we are 4 miles from the telephone exchange so broadband was hardly 1 whatever it is. We spent 10 years trying to find out how to get faster broadband. Open Reach said if we could raise £13k from the immediate neighbours (we each aid something like £300) they would pay the other 2/3rds of the cost to get the right kind of power to the local box and I raised the money and the neighbours were great - lots of people paid (even though had they not paid they would still have had the same chance to buy the service) and now I get 17MG download speed so at last about 15 years after most people in cities I can watch iplayer on my pc.....

Housing has always been a major issue everywhere. In the UK Scotland in fact we had enclosures, didn 't we and people turfed off land then later improved crofter rights. Then much later slum clearances from cities when we could afford it after the industrial revolution, then lots of the area where I live outer London had lots of building in the 1930s with people moving from inner London and tenements to houses out here and maisonettes and commuting into London for work. Now yes it is very expensive to buy in London or even within the M25. It is about £185k near me to buy a first flat which is not cheap even with 2 full time London wages. Houses cost more - the first 3 bed terraced we bought out here costs about £350k now. You coudl still do it on our trainee lawyer and teacher wage though as interest rates are nearer 2.5% than the 12% we paid 30 years ago.

[GuybrushThreepwoodMP]

We have a decent income and rent.
If we repaid monthly mortgage the same as we pay in rent, we could borrow approximately £90,000. We have enough savings to bring that up to enough to buy a 2 bed flat terrace many miles from the city centre (south east). We have 3 children. We rent a lovely 4 bedroom detached house 20 minute cycle from town.

Buying is not a feasible alternative when it would require such a huge sacrifice in quality of life.

[expatinscotland]

It's not the 70s anymore. Or the 80s. It's now. No one fucking cares how there were no microwaves and outdoor loo's 40-years-ago, time has moved on.

[Newbrummie]

Equally no point in comparing apples with pears with the whole my parents bought their 5 bed detached for 2 crowns and a bottle of shandy.

[LotusLight]

I agree with both of you. In fact I was telling the twins this week that inter-generational comparisons are never very fair as all any of us can do is cope with how things now (which tends to be a veil of tears for most people except the lucky few in most generations).

if we look away from "fairness" or a human right to buy a 4 bed in a nice area without working one's way up or whatever and just look at where we are now then the route for many to buy is hard work from a young age and buying something grotty in your 20s when your friends are going out to meals and living it up and buying coffees in starbucks.

It can also be about positive attitude. My daughter rang today. Someone had been talking to her about their new business. Her colleague had spoken to them too. Her colleague said it had made her realise she could never do that. My daughter had thought the opposite - how inspiring that could be me.

Some of us will want to suffer now with children in tiny places we own and others will want bigger rented places but only renting for life.

Guy could you not buy the 2 bed now and let it out so that if renting turns out bad for you or once the children leave you have something to fall back on which you own?