Aibu to think that "suspended adulthood" is going to lead to large problems?

[BlancheBlue]

www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/22/young-people-living-in-a-suspended-adulthood-finds-research

Just this really. There was a telling comment about this article with the ever increasing age profile of parents the chance of children knowing grandparents is going to be remote.

I think lots of the boomer generation really fail to understand this. Whenever it is said it is tough for young people que loads of "well I worked my arse off and owned a house by the time I was 21" type comments.

Jaxhog Shhhhhh - you are going to spoil it if you encourage everyone to move up here!

Although I do think things are nowhere near as bad as people say if you aren't "London-centric", one thing I've realised is that people can't start off in the way that I did. When we bought our first house (nearly 15 years ago!) I was just 22, Dh was nearly 25. Dh did extra work in the evenings, I studied for a qualification, we knew that if interest rates went up we'd be able to afford the house but would have to live on beans on toast, the garden was a death trap until we had the money to sort it, we used packing boxes as furniture, blah blah blah.

But the average age of house buying is now something like 36. Biology dictates that people need to have kids before they manage to buy a house. And if you have a baby and a toddler you can't both work 16 hours a day, you need furniture that doesn't collapse on regular occasions, death trap gardens are not advised etc etc. What was a fun adventure at 22 would be a nightmare at 36 with two kids in tow. So people's requirements for a "starter home" go up - not because they are "greedy and entitled" as one poster likes to claim but because their lives are so different from first time buyers from 30 years ago.

don't London was way more affordable in the past - where I work people in their late 40s and early 50s were able to buy flats and even small houses in normal suburbs/locations pretty easily and I am not talking about city workers here but "normal" public sector employees

Maybe it works differently on desktop, but the mobile search for houses only most certainly gives you a lot of industrial estates. Rightmove is not a perfect tool.

The point was that you think it was easy then it wasn't. Houses were cheaper wages were smaller. Young people now aren't the only generation to struggle

T4nut, I don't live in London. I don't live anywhere near London. Housing costs are not just a problem in London.

My parents, in their early 20s, bought a 'starter home' that was a Victorian 2.5-bedroom detached house. That same house would now cost over £250k. I couldn't have afforded that in my early 20s.

'Starter home' now seems to mean 'tiny studio'. I couldn't have afforded that in my early 20s, either.

So what are all these jobs that can't/don't exist outside of the south east? I'm not debating that they exist just wondering why they do (and in such numbers). Maybe addressing that would be part of the solution to the south's housing crisis (and would be of more benefit than just building more and more homes in the SE)?

Art you are tight that debts from Uni is also making a HUGE difference to the situation.
I fear for my dcs TBH....

But Barbarian I think people are using it as some kind of code for not being able to afford a house. It's not. If you have £250k you will struggle to buy a house in London. But you will also struggle, from the top of my head, in:

Hertfordshire
Surrey
Berkshire
Oxford
North Kent
Sussex
Brighton
Reading

These are only areas I know about in the SE. However you'll be able to find something in:

Kent costal towns
Luton
Nottingham (parts of)
Leicester
Essex (parts of)

It's obvious the reason housing is cheaper in these areas is because fewer people want to live there- it's undesirable. Are you really blaming people for wanting to live in a nice place? It's like people have forgotten how important a good home life is.

I used to work in property in the Midlands. You can get a house in parts of Nottingham for £80k. Would you want to live in it? Not in a million bloody years.

Barbarian film critic. Screenings are in London almost exclusively.

bill I think alot of posts in this thread shows the true feelings people have about the "younger generation" - they are just feckless losers on their iphones pissing their money away on socialising.

As this group gets larger and larger and angrier and angrier change will come and que the million posts on here with people crying and wanting sympathy when THEIR lifestyle is corroded.

I know a lot of people who have trained in IT/webdesign etc... They all tell me it's near impossible to find something where I live. To find a job as a graduate, you have to go South, London preferably.

I suspect a lot of the financial jobs are there too.

And a lot of the higher levels jobs (all the companies main offices are still in London aren't they?)0

Right. Housing is my frustration at the moment, for two reasons.

1: I am 39, have three children, am a student and am trying to save in order to eventually own my own home. Problem is, house prices are going up faster than I can actually save so by the time I finally can get a mortgage I still won't have enough. I rarely go out, have the lowest contract for my phone that I can, and don't have a tv or sky (broadband though - woo! Living beyond my wildest dreams). The job I finally get, being vocational rather than a well paid career, will be relatively low paid and as PPs have mentioned, average house prices round here will be about 7 or 8 X salary. That's in the Midlands.

2: I wouldn't mind renting quite so much if there were actually any checks and balances on the rental market, like there are on the continent. Everything seems very heavily weighted towards the LL: they can increase rent as much as they like yearly (as I have discovered to my considerable cost), they can make life very difficult and expensive and they can turf you out with only a couple of months' notice. If tenants had more protection, and costs came down a little (it's viciously expensive round here - again, Midlands, not south east, then life would be a little easier for a hell of a lot of people. I don't think expecting a little quality of life and not scratching by in order to save or make rent is too much to ask if one is working for it, surely?

Thousands of 2 or 3 bed properties for under 175k here (south wrst)

At the risk of cancelling the cheque

I don't get the link betweek young people staying with their parents and the purchase price of a house. I rented rooms in shared places for 16 years before getting my own place. Sure I'm not the only one.

Do people really expect to move from parents straight into their own place?

T4 - have you looked at mortgages recently? You can't get 5% mortgages. So people are looking much higher

Really? Someone ought to tell the mortgage companies that....

www.nationwide.co.uk/products/mortgages/first-time-buyers/what-we-can-offer

No, but saying there is a "crisis" because not all young people can afford a nice house in a nice place doesn't really pull on your heart strings as much as saying "home of your own unaffordable to the young" is it?

Lots of people don't live in "nice" places. Why are we not panicing about that?

Barbarian, just to talk about what I know -
things like advertising, branding, trends forecasting, marketing consultancy, consumer insights.

There'll be the occasional job outside London, but few and far between. Like 95% to 5%.

WhyASpoon totally agree with your second point.

I used to work in property in the Midlands. You can get a house in parts of Nottingham for £80k. Would you want to live in it? Not in a million bloody years.

Exactly, this just sums it up. So it was ok for my generation to do this, but not good enough for this generation. They are somehow worthy of much more and shouldn't belittle themselves.

barbarian puts his/her finger on it -there needs to be solid investment and encouragement in not-London and the south-east, to spread us out a bit more evenly. This does not mean shaving 20 mins off the trip between Birmingham and London. It means industry, manufacturing and real business (not money shifting), with training, transport links, health care and schools to go with it.

that needs long-term planning, not vanity projects.

Why I have no real issue with renting as opposed to buying, as you said, it's the crap that surrounds it. We had our rent increased by 23% after one year. We've paid our rent reliably and not had our contract renewed. We have six monthly inspections where they go around our house and criticise my furniture, criticise if my daughter has toys out, if I haven't mowed the lawn that morning ("you knew we were coming, we expect the house to be tidied and cleaned to a high standard") and take photos and films to report back to the landlord. I just want somewhere to live that's secure and safe and private. And at the moment renting is not guaranteed to be any of these and there's nothing you can do.

I am late 30s and saved for 12 years on a lowish salary to buy my own place so I do roll my eyes a bit at some of the whingers. However, houses are much more expensive than they were even when I bought five years ago, plus average student debt is much, much higher than when I graduated, so I do agree they have it harder.

Most people used to rent. It was a small time in history where that was changed. We are going back to the norm.

things like advertising, branding, trends forecasting, marketing consultancy, consumer insights.

So overinflated London salaries for nonjobs that could be performed by chimps then?

laurie I have a friend in publishing and she was in a similar position (now emigrated to NZ as an extreme solution to house-buying conundrum). But logically you must admit that there is no reason that these jobs must be concentrated in this way.