To hate this Kind of sneering attitude to places outside London

[wasonthelist]

"many things in life would be better and cheaper if we all just gave up and moved to that six-bed detached in Ashby De La Zouch. But could you really subsist in a place where the height of culinary pleasure is unlimited smarties on your ice cream at the local carvery?"

I am not sure if the author, Caroline Mginn, who wrote that in Time Out -
a) Really believes that Ashby has such limited culinary offerings (it doesn't)?
b) Thought she was preaching to the converted and no-one outside London would read it?

I grew up in London, and bought my first property in the 90's.

My parents had pretty average professional jobs and didn't think twice about buying a flat and then house in a pleasant part of SW London. It is pleasant now and it was pleasant then. It has always been pleasant. The only difference is that now it is very, very expensive. It's doubtful whether the streets around them would be within the price bracket of even a highly paid doctor now.

I knew plenty of people who bought flats in cheaper areas in the 90's. Nobody was particularly shocked, but I can't say that the areas were all up and coming then or that they have up and come 20 years later. They are just more expensive.

I have benefited from being able to buy in the 90's, but I'm not confusing luck with judgement. Without underlying value rising prices don't benefit anyone. Its just a bubble that no government dares to burst.

I live in central London. I don't care where you live OP.

But pretty average professionals can still buy in London, as previously stated there are so many factors that have determined the price rises, not least the fact that the population has started to grow since 1991 rather than fall, last year we passed the 1939 pre war height, and think about 1939 the way people lived in homes then was much different.

I don't confuse luck with judgement either, apart from the deicion not to sell the flat I bought on my own (with the deposit from the inheritance from my DF dying suddenly and young), I know we have been lucky but we bought a house as a home not as an "investment".

I'm from Ashby too!

If we are going to properly embrace the Ashby stereotype then we should be having crumbled Jaffa Cakes on our ice cream due to the McVities factory being located in the town...

Also I don't understand this: " We can't afford what our parents did 40 years ago" lark. There was a very different set of economic and social circumstances that influenced those prices, the process of change that has happened since has been so fast that you can't expect things to remain the same.

I think there's a massive generational difference these days. My parents bought a house in the 60s for £9k, my dad, who is now 85, gets aprox £2k per month with his work pension, state pension, my mum's pension and disability benefits. He also profited from the sale of public assets in the eighties. Pp these days will never be able to achieve those levels of wealth by just having a v average job. Those days are gone and it seems like this is the first generation that will be worse off than their parents!

I agree with the point being made about cutting one's cloth. I'm 30 and thinking about the people I knew at my London state school, around 2/3rds of those I'm still in contact with are still in London. Of those, about half own property (mainly with partners, some alone). The others, who haven't prioritised saving, are renting and have lived a much more luxurious lifestyle than those who bought - but aren't property owners.

Now, I'm not saying those who own live in Chelsea or Fulham. But they have bought properties, houses and flats, in and around z2/3 of the south east and none of them with ridiculously flashy jobs.

Two of the people who bought on their own are teachers, by the way. Not with HTB. With lots of savings and a sensible head. But they made sacrifices which current popular culture tells you you shouldn't have to make - you should be able to have it all, NOW, and something is wrong (with society, with things being 'unfair') if you don't get it immediately.

DH and I probably live the furthest out of London proper (z5), and we did it because we wanted a family so made our money go further. Cutting one's cloth.

But in material terms they won't be, think about all that our children have and tell me that they are worse off than we were materially, or our parents were who grew up pre NHS?

Not being able to buy a house in a naice area of London is not a necessity.

Things will work out for the young in their retirement too, you''ll see, your parents couldn't have "guarenteed" any of the benefits they recieve now when there was all the economic turmoil of previous decades going on.

Also I don't understand this: " We can't afford what our parents did 40 years ago" lark.

Sorry, don't agree with you there.
Anywhere in the country the percentage that you have to pay from your wages for your housing is much higher than it was 40 years ago.
Consider that 40 years ago many mothers were SAHM and if the wife did work then her wages weren't taken into account when applying for a mortgage.

Slightly off topic, but there's a programme at the moment about a family who are living through different decades as a social experiment. It's fascinating! Sure, they didn't have all the mod cons we take for granted now, but they were still well off, fulfilled and happy. And an average family could have afforded a family home that's now out of the reach of many.

I used to live in Edinburgh and I would get friends in London telling me about a new comedy find, and I loved the bit when I could say "Oh I saw him last year at the festival"

I was watching that programme and thinking I didn't have a lot of that stuff when they said it arrived as being "common" for people to have it, talked about it with some friends and they agreed.

Yes housing was cheaper, and yes people could manage on one wage, strange that there was a massive jump in the level of house prices as soon as a woman's salary could be taken into account and people could borrow more isn't it..

Ah but if you frequent comedy clubs you'll find that most of them that make it to Edinburgh have been hardened with the London circuit first, all those comedy open mic nights and mid week nights at smaller venues and such..

Lurked, you have found a two bedroom flat with no garden on the North Circular, the second bedroom being more of a box room. The only thing that would make living next to the North Circular desirable would be removable of the North Circular. You are talking about 'cutting your cloth', but taking out the maximum 25 year loan available when interest rates are at rock bottom, with no particular prospect of increasing your household income isn't cutting your cloth, it is borrowing a vast amount of money on a wing and a prayer. You talk about first time buyers, but it is unclear how this couple would ever be able to afford anything else.

Meanwhile, having no spare cash, this couple might as well be living anywhere - Ashby de la Zouch for instance.

Things will work out for the young in their retirement too, you''ll see

Things are not working out now. The NHS cannot cope with the aging population.

"Ah but if you frequent comedy clubs you'll find that most of them that make it to Edinburgh have been hardened with the London circuit first, all those comedy open mic nights and mid week nights at smaller venues and such."

Or venues in the provinces. We even have comedy clubs in South Yorkshire you know

"Parent who grew up without an NHS,"-this is bollox the NHS was established in 1946. The vast majority of those who bought 40 years ago were post war babies. That generation has the best health and longest life expectancy ever. That includes their children.

Disclaimer: not rtft.

I find that people find it totally acceptable to be utterly sneery about London too. My oh and I are in the middle of buying our first flat here. We have spent 345k which is a fairly modest budget for London but any time friends/family who live outside the south east hear the price they are all and start banging on about how if I moved to Manchester/Leeds/Newcastle etc we could get a 4 bedroom with garden etc and how we are mad for staying in London. Well no in the first instance, as if we did move to aforementioned places we would not have 345k to spend for a start. But other than that people don't seem to recognise that London is my home. I have grown up here and I love it. The vast majority of my friends and close family live here. Yet apparently it's perfectly acceptable to call it an expensive shithole. I would never dream of saying anything like that about someone's home.

strange that there was a massive jump in the level of house prices as soon as a woman's salary could be taken into account and people could borrow more isn't it..

You act like that is some kind of conspiracy. Of course the price of housing went up.
Overnight many families could afford more expensive houses. Simple supply and demand.

Merry what do you want me to do? Provide certainty? Most people take a gamble on any number of factors when taking mortgages. They do what everyone has done, take the plunge, pay off a bit of their equity and hope prices rise so they can move if they need to in future. Im sorry I can't gaurentee income but would imagine a ftb couple might have prospects of higher earnings in future.

To the person who said that parents couldn't have grown up without the NHS? I was talking about my parents, born in 1924 so were 22 before the NHS and lost siblings to lack for health care. Stop whinging

Pipbin that was what I was implying.

To the person who said that parents couldn't have grown up without the NHS? I was talking about my parents, born in 1924 so were 22 before the NHS and lost siblings to lack for health care. Stop whinging

I said that it was less likely not impossible.
I'm not whinging.
However, having parents born in the 20s would make you a baby boomer which explains the 'I'm alright Jack', 'you lot don't try hard enough' attitude.

Whinging ?? I'm alright too, graduated in 2000 having had all my fees paid, bought in 2002 no deposit needed huge increases in salary every 6 months for the first 5 years of my working life. We have a 4 bed house in zone 2 and owe only £200,000 on it with 16 years left on the mortgage. But I know I was fortunate.

Nope not a boomer, was born a few years ( although not many) too late for that being the youngest of 8!

I agree we have had some fortune but also spent years and years without new clothes, having one old banger car, scrimping and saving so that we could have one family holiday in the U.K, working desperately hard to pay the mortgage, needing both of us working to do so and paying childcare.

Everyone has struggles, it has never been "easy".

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/11432189/Let-the-boomers-prove-they-arent-a-selfish-generation.html

maybe I totally agree. IME there's far more sneering at at Londoners on here than there is the other way round. There's a steady stream of catty remarks about Londoners living in million pound rabbit hutches, choking on traffic fumes and coughing up black bogies and don't us suckers know we could buy a 6 bedroom house with 20 acres of land etc. if we moved out.
I adore living here and so do my DCs. I wish I'd grown up here. My overwhelming memory of growing up in a tiny market town were of feeling that I might actually die of boredom. I hardly see DD 13 at weekends. She has her Oyster card and can go anywhere she likes for free, she's not reliant on lifts like I was.
I would never be rude about anyone's home but calling my home a shithole seems to be fair game on here.
I think that some people think that London is mainly populated by bankers and media types. It really isn't, it's mostly full of ordinary people- teachers, nurses, office workers, retail workers, cleaners etc. We're not some kind of different breed.