To not really have much sympathy?

[cailindana]

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/14/babies-an-impossible-dream-the-millennials-priced-out-of-parenthood#comment-63353806

The writer complains that she can't have babies because she resents the idea of moving out of London.

Others in the article complain they can't afford houses and so won't have children.

AIBU to think that yes house prices are mad but if you really 'dream' of having babies then there are ways to make that happen and it's not 'impossible' unless you are unfortunate enough to be infertile (in which case there may be other options if you are willing to consider adoption/fostering).

I have to say the whole thing comes across to me as a bit whiny.

Romford is within the M25 so it is in London. The station is also part of the Transport for London network and oyster cards are accepted. I think it is zone 5 or 6.

Yes, it will be like where I live - an outer London borough in zone 5.

People make choices. i don't blame younger people brought up with things like central heating, maternity leaves and new clothes - things many of us older ones don't take for granted because all we can each do is cope with the situation we are in and all we can know is what we have known but we can explain to people. I just had one of my teenagers in here talking about a clothing item and I said in the past we got that free from or for very little money from jumble sales (the older children all wore second hand uniform always). He said yuck that you might wear clothes others used to wear and I said certainly some clothing prices have come down but that there was less money then and that all I need is for him to have the internal resources that if ever he falls on hard times he realises you can live perfectly well in second hand clothes or indeed sleeping in a tent if needs be... mind you his Duke of Edinburgh award was apparently the worst time of his entire life I doubt he will be rushing off to take up camping.

The link below is interesting, with regard to the expectation of buying your own home being a (historically) relatively new phenomenon beginning in the 1950s and peaking in the 70s, and the shifts from private renting pre WW2 to a quarter of the population in social housing by 1961, and then the 1988 Housing Act removing a lot of the controls on private landlords and a change in the law in 1989 meaning councils no longer had to keep housing stock saw the beginning of a gradual return to more and more people renting privately, at the same time that doing so became less secure.

www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census-analysis/a-century-of-home-ownership-and-renting-in-england-and-wales/short-story-on-housing.html

He sounds very spoilt to day that Deos. I could never imagine any of mine saying that.

Kids today certainly still wear second hand clothes Deo - how strange to think that no longer happens reduce, re-use, recycle - massively wasteful to always buy new even if not counting the pennies!

Average house prices in the UK were 6 times the average wage in 2001 and 9 times the average wage in 2011, whilst in 2008 lending rules were dramatically tightened meaning larger deposits are required and higher multiples of salary cannot be lent.

Private renting became less secure when the 1988 Housing Act removed a lot of controls on landlords, and social housing stock has been declining since Right To Buy began in 1980 and the Local Govt and Housing Act in 1989, pushing people into private rentals.

From the study I linked to earlier:

" The average house price for those who were first time buyers increased by about 96% between 2001 and 2011. This meant larger deposits which are linked to the house price, were required.

 Tighter lending requirements, especially in the wake of the recent recession meant a larger percentage of the house value was required as a deposit, as the era of near 100% mortgages became a thing of the past.

Declining wage growth and rising inflation over the period exerted pressure on household spending and eroded the value of savings. While in 2001 the average house price in England and Wales was six times the average gross wage, by 2011 the average house price was nine times larger than the average wage. This meant households needed to save for a longer period in order to provide a deposit.

The fall in people buying their homes and the subsequent rise in people privately renting has seen schemes such as ‘Buy-to-Let’ flourish over the decade. "

So the poster claiming you can actually buy more for a typical wage now is just, simply, objectively, totally wrong.

I agree with others saying that you don't have to have it all sorted to have children. Circumstances can change at any stage. I moved to London heavily pregnant and we made the decision to rent in a nice area, with a reasonable commute and good childcare options nearby. The trade off is that we cannot buy a suitable home here despite each earning a good wage. In the future we will probably leave London and take a drop in salary/career prospects to have another child.

I don't support the 2014 tighter lending requirement. I think the local bank should be free to assess individuals and exercise discretion. I saw in the papers yesterday by the way a new lender is coming in who will allow more self employed and the like to borrow as long IF they have 15% deposit. I cannot remember the name of the new lender.

(He's certainly not very spoilt in not wanting second hand clothes - most teenagers don't want them, but I always want the children to know they used to wear second hand clothes and that there is nothing wrong with doing so. Young people today tend to take things for granted which are part of their normal life like central heating or an inside bathroom so it's not really fair to expect them to have the same views as my parents suffering under ratioining in WWII might have. However it does no harm to remind them.)

I'm still PMSL about redannie's post on page one.

For example im a civil servant and if I was doing my job in london I would be getting 6000 a year more than I do now.

Right love. You think £6k extra is enough to counter the increase cost of housing? So happy the civil service seems to be attracting the brightes people to work for them...

I think whois is making a good point. A maximum NHS London Weighting payment of £6279 is a drop in the ocean when the average house price in London is 143% higher and the average rent is 128% higher than in the rest of England and Wales.

From the Unison website :"The single biggest element in the extra cost of living in the capital is housing. In January 2014, Land Registry figures showed average house prices across the whole of England and Wales were £168,536, but in London the average was £409,881 (143% higher than the England/Wales rate). This house price gap has been growing ever larger, with London experiencing 10.9% growth over the last year, compared to 4.2% across England and Wales.1
The same picture is apparent in the private rental sector, with the the England rental rate runnings at £665 a month in January 2014, compared to £1,516 a month in London (128% higher than the England rate)2. The differential in local authority rented property is less exaggerated but still significant, with average rent across England running at £79 a week in 2012/13, compared to £99 in London (25% higher than the England average)3.
In general, these differences in housing costs are not in line with the difference in average weekly earnings. The 2013 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings put the average gross weekly wage in London at £571, compared to £416 across the UK. Therefore, average earnings are around 37% higher in London, but this is principally due to the different composition of the London labour market. The average is driven up by the far higher proportion of relatively highly paid professional and senior management employees within the London workforce."

London weighting payments according to the RCN: "Inner London: 20 per cent of basic salary (subject to a minimum payment of £4,076 and a maximum payment of £6,279).
Outer London: 15 per cent of basic salary (subject to a minimum payment of £3,448 and a maximum payment of £4,395).
Fringe zone: 5 per cent of basic salary (subject to a minimum payment of £942 and a maximum payment of £1,632)."

There are plenty of people who use second hand clothes, freecycle, facebook buy and sell and ebay. I know many people without central heating. Not having central heating is not that much of a hardship

The link to the 'affordable' 1 bed flat at £138,000 is interestingly proving the point - unless you have a large deposit, you're going to need to have a combined income of £38k (that's secured) to get a mortgage big enough (and if free-lance, having several years of accounts, showing a stable income of that level). That's perfectly possible for a lot of graduates to be earning by the time they are 27/28, but by that time, many will be thinking about starting a family and be aware that a 1 bed flat wouldn't be big enough for a family. Add in paying down/back student debts before starting to save from what's left from london living costs, and it takes a long time to get to the £13/14k needed for deposit.

There was another article about the decline of the 'batcherette pad' as fewer young woman (and young men) are able to buy those studio and 1 bed flats to live alone for a few years before settling down and buying a home as a couple. Those years of owning alone does mean you've spent your monthly money on paying down a mortgage giving you a bigger deposit towards a bigger, 'family' house with a DP (even before you factor in house price rises), it's skipping a stage, which is beginning to be factored in by developers.

For years DC wore 2nd hand Boden as it lasts very well, and EBay Levi jeans and Superdry etc. I even managed to resell some things later. They still have bits of 2nd hand uniform especially PE kit. Nobody is or was any the wiser.

I have to confess that most is new now because things don't get outgrown so quickly now they're teens.

You can't decide somewhere is London because it's a London borough that's definitely a non Londoner/ suburban Londoner idea.

I mean, London borough of HILLINGDON, LOL

Also I don't think buying second hand kids clothes will help you save a £50k deposit.

I have some sympathy for the writer, but I think that this is the "cost" of choosing an insecure, low-paid career. She can either move further out, get a second freelance job using her skills for a year or two, or take on a salaried role that is more palatable to lenders. Nobody goes into journalism expecting £££s, surely?

I do agree, though, that wherever possible it is useful to have a "foot on the ladder" before having children - even if that property is then rented out and the family rents a suitable home elsewhere.

I bought my first flat as a trainee solicitor after scraping the deposit together through a few years of living frugally and taking on weekend jobs. This was 2.5 years ago - my take-home pay from my main job was £1,500 a month. I have zero sympathy for others in average to highly paid professions who don't have the foresight to make sacrifices and then moan because their "lifestyle" isn't compatible with a starter flat.

We moved out of London after our first was born and we wanted a second. It was shit and I miss it like hell, but if you can't afford it then you can't afford it.

As it has been pointed out that maybe a £138000 might be a tad on the expensive side for a FTB to manage how about this flat
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-51215098.html

24 mins into St Pancras

According to the Halifax who are doing 95% mortgages you would need a deposit, if 2 people were buying this place of £2500 each. And a salary of one earning £12500 and one earning £10000 to afford this place.

The poster who was going on about average house prices needs to understand that when you are a FTB you don't buy the average. You buy what you can afford.

This one even comes with its own parking space.

If your career doesn't pay well then as far as I can see you have 3 choices

1. Either continue with your career and do without what others without a career can afford.

2 Or you can supplement your career with extra minimum wage work

1. Or you have your career as the extra work and do a job that has a regular paycheque at the end of the month.

Just make your choice.

Olivers you are being deliberately obtuse - clearly if average prices have gone up pretty much all prices either side of average have too.

Just because you can trawl Right Move and find one or two one bed properties which a couple on an average or below average income can afford to buy, does not mean there are enough properties for all those who need them, or for even a few percentage of them.

The figures back up the clear fact that it is harder to buy a family home in your late 20s than it was for the baby boomer generation, and that renting is also less secure, due to house prices having risen faster than wage inflation, and to changes in the law in favour of landlords in the late 80s.

However it is also true that the precedent set by the baby boomer generation has led this generation to expect the same as their parents had. The fact is generations before did not have the same expectations, and this and future generations can't either.

The writer is whiny because she and her peers just need to make compromises and get on with it, having kids is possible even if buying a 3 bed semi to put them in isn't. However along with her whining she does have a point about house prices in comparison to wage inflation and the insecurity of private rental, not to mention 0 hour contracts (which she doesn't mention as that is not part of her personal story) and the fact that every fool has a degree now, so loading yourself with student debt and 3+ years of study and bar work rather than working and saving isn't really any kind of leg up to a better salary (unless you did a vocational course) and really many people might as done as well getting started with a full time job at 18...

No I am not being obtuse. I had just gone on Rightmove to give a couple of examples.

I do deal with more FTBs than most people have hot dinners. No one is willing to compromise and accept you have to start somewhere. I have almost come to exchange with a FTB many times and without fail there is always a reason why they cant put pen to paper.

I am scared, I've had it FengShuied and its facing the wrong direction, I think I can afford better if I save up a bit more money. The lists are endless I have had one once who didn't think she could go ahead with the purchase because it was not as haunted as she first hoped. All spent a fortune on mortgage applications, solicitors etc In the end it goes to a BTL who completes without a hitch within a few weeks.

I think the point everyone is missing is with regard to the baby boom generation, I think some one quoted upthread that 85% of us did not go to university, so instead we started our jobs and house buying a lot earlier. I bought my first property at 18. By the time we were in our late 20s we had moved 3 or 4 times and were living in much larger properties than what we had started out buying 10 years before. Equally we all did have several extra jobs just to make ends meet.

Oh oh. Just found a 2 bed flat in Strasburg Rd SW11 for £250k. Isn't that in nappy valley? Obviously no bifold doors onto terraced garden or wine cellar but it's 2 beds in Battersea!!

Do you mean this one? Then you'll see that it's clearly marked cash purchasers only.

Banks will not lend on a lot of ex-LA flats in London due to the construction type. Often slightly cheaper flats pop up on Rightmove but they can't be bought by FTBs or non-BTL landlords as they are only available to people with at least a quarter of a million in the bank.

Oh and there's more! Shared ownership 3 bedder in SW4 (is that Vauxhall?) for £146,000.

And I presume you mean this one?. It's based on 25% ownership so it's a £582,000 flat of which you can get a mortgage on a quarter and pay rent on the remaining 75%.

It also clearly state Minimum income needed: £69,900

That's interesting, BreakWindandFire - I just did a Rightmove search of 2 bed flats for £200k within 5 miles of my borough. They were all for cash buyers. I didn't know that was a thing.

Devora A lot of ex-Council flats (esp. in London) are concrete panelling / precast concrete and are considered to be of non-standard construction. Banks won't lend on them, or will only do BTL mortgages at high interest rates. So 'cheapish' flats will appear on Rightmove, but you can't actually buy them if you are an ordinary purchaser!

My daughter and husband bought ex local authority in London with a mortgage so it's not impossible.

Do beware of flats which say cash purchase only - that sometimes means there's something wrong with them that a lender would not allow. Eg my son was buying somewhere and our lawyer discovered the HS2 road would go not just near by but in the field behind the houses. The lawyer said no lender would lend in that case. So a cash buyer will have to be found by the sellers.

however I agree with most on the thread that if you have a reasonably well paid profession and buy some hell hole as young as you can things tend to come right. If you wait for the perfect home once you're about to have babies and lose a salary you often don't have a hope in hell.