The reason young people can't afford to buy houses

[GrabtharsHammer]

Is because they all have iPhones and Sky telly.

So sayeth my mother.

Nothing at all to do with the ridiculous house prices then? They are baby boomers and bought their first house for a few thousand quid on my dads modest salary.

Apparently the youth of today just need to get rid of their gadgets and telly subscriptions and then they will easily afford a deposit and mortgage.

Are everyone's parents this judgemental and out of touch or am I just particularly lucky?

(Fairly lighthearted) AIBU?

And sitting on milk crates, bluetongue :o

Snort. Those must be some Sky packages the yoof round your ends have got OP.

The lack of affordable housing is too big a problem for any government to sort out. Council houses should never have been sold off without new ones being built. Due to the short supply I think house prices are absolutely ridiculous in most areas where there are the most employment opportunities.

I'm a baby boomer and it's shocking the way the younger generation have been treated but please don't blame us as we don't all have huge mortgage free properties and massive pensions!

Those saying their parents bought no clothes... Clothes were expensive in the past. Many years ago servants were cheaper than clothes, and more recently - I'm talking the 70s - buying an outfit was a fairly serious outlay. There were no supermarket clothes, no Primark - even Chelsea Girl/Clock House clothes were not throwaway clothes. Today I can go to Asda/Primark and get a jumper for a fiver or less. That would have been unthinkable in baby boomer times. And as for eating out... where would you eat out in 1973? There were fusty old restaurants or formica-clad cafes. Or, if I were on a shopping expedition with my mum and dad we'd go to a department store for a coffee.

It's not like there were all these Prezzos/Costas etc available to boomers and they were sanctimoniously turning the other cheek in order to save money for a house deposit.

I'll be honest....yes, houses are expensive however my DM earned only a small amount when she was bringing me up as a single parent and went without holidays or any luxuries to save a deposit and pay a mortgage.

If I had lived like her....no holidays, spend very little on food (she would often just eat something on toast and only spend money on good food for me), rarely bought clothes, rarely went out, never ate out or ate takeaway, no mobile (they didn't exist), etc, etc then I would have my own house by now.

The thing is our expectations now about how our day to day life should be are so much higher (due to media and advertising influence), so we spend a lot more on what we consider normal living compared to our parents generation. I think it would add up to £100's each month if not £1k+ a month in my particular case.

There was something in the papers in the UK about that here bluetongue a couple of weeks ago.

People either go out for brunch every weekend - I can think of a nice restaurant that does unlimited brunch food and fizz for £25 pp or they get loads of nice food and booze in and invite friends round and make a day of it.

The woman in the article said she was spending £50 every Saturday on brunch food and booze for her and her friends - fizz, avocados, smoked salmon, berries, chia seeds etc.

This also illustrates the huge differentials across in price changes the country over the past 10 years.

Yes, this is true. My husband and I bought a house in the SE a year ago (because inherited/were given deposit money - this is true of absolutely everyone else I know my age who has bought a property. No one has managed the - according to many on this thread - easy feat of saving a deposit from scratch). We paid £250k; the identical one three doors down has just gone for £290k. We bought at the absolutely top of our budget and - in a year - this budget would no longer buy a house; it now only buys flats in our area. Obviously this would mean that if we had only been able to buy a flat a year ago we would now not be able to afford anything with our budget. That's how quickly rising house prices can make a mockery of your saving, that's why we have been so undeservedly lucky to have family help, and that's why many people I know without that help simply despair.

It's not like there were all these Prezzos/Costas etc available to boomers and they were sanctimoniously turning the other cheek in order to save money for a house deposit.

Yep. Similarly - you didn't have an iPhone? Well done you for resisting the urge to buy an item that didn't exist!

'None of them are going without holidays/phones etc. If you are still at home and earning you have a potential to save a lot of money without scrimping, especially if there are two of you. £4k x 5 years=£20k x two people = very good two bedroom house deposit here. Definitely doable.'

IF you have the good fortune to have parents who can afford to keep an adult in their home for free . . . for 5 years. That's when it's 'doable'; that means it is not for quite a few people.

Maverick It's not necessarily that people are incapable of budgeting, it's more that people in their 20s now have vastly different expectations about what constitutes 'normal' versus 'luxury' and essential versus non-essential. It's not necessarily their fault, it's just that we all have a lot more to feel we should be spending our money on now, to feel that we are living rather than just existing. Years ago it was a simpler existence with fewer choices and less temptation or pressure to have high value status items, foreign travel, a nice car etc.

I guess what I'm saying is...

Imagine if you added up all the money you'd spent while you've been an adult on:

• takeaways
• meals out
• fast food or convenience food (including pre-made sandwiches, pre-cut veg, pre-made salad, etc)
• phone contract
• holidays
• gym memberships
• broadband
• any additional TV service (sky, Netflix, virgin)
• any finance on cars (parents would have just managed with an older car)
• designer clothes, high end high street clothes
• make up that costs more than No. 7
• leisure activities like cinema, theme parks, shows
• laptops, tablets, iPads, iPods

Harold MacMillan famously said 'You've never had it so good' and I think it's slowly dawning on people that nobody will ever have it so good again. The boomers are likely to be regarded as, financially, the luckiest generation that ever lived. I don't blame them or hate them - they were just born at the right time but it does grate on me that a minority of them (like my DM) just don't 'get it'. My parents did 'work hard all their lives' but, at that time, working hard guaranteed you financial security. It just doesn't anymore.
My DPs are in their early 70's. They both did teacher training and received a reasonable income while they were doing it. There was full employment and it was possible to train on the job in a lot of professions and 'jobs for life' were still a thing.They were able to get a council house while they saved to buy their first home. In 1971, they were able to buy a 3 bed house in the SE on one junior teacher's salary (my DM was a SAHM at that point). Inflation went through the roof and they were able to buy a detached 4 bed house in a more expensive part of the SE.
They paid nothing towards me attending uni (grants were phased out in my last year and there were no fees).
They paid a small amount towards costs of uni for my DB and DSis.
They both retired at 60 on very generous pensions and also get the triple locked State Pension.

In contrast, if my DCs go to university, they will leave with about £50,000 of debt. They won't be eligible for social housing so will either still be living at home or paying a vast amount of any income on rent whilst paying off their student loan and trying to save tens of thousands of pounds towards a deposit if they want to buy.
They will be working in a climate of insecure employment and zero hours contracts.
God knows how old they will be when they get to retire and I very much doubt that there will be a state pension then or much of an NHS so they will probably spend most of their adult lives paying into a private healthcare scheme.
We are in an incredibly lucky financial position due to having bought a house in London at the right time so will help out as much as we can but I know lots of people aren't in a position to do this.
My DPs came to visit recently and we went to our local park. A group of teenagers came past, several of whom were swearing quite loudly and my DM made a comment about how young people seem so angry these days. I pointed out that maybe they have a lot to be angry about but she just doesn't see it - she just trots out stuff about how they all seem to have expensive trainers and phones. And this is from a woman about to go on her fifth holiday this year, the most recent being 3 weeks in Kenya.

And YY to the 'big wedding'. Our parents would have spent very little, mine only got married when I was 15 and they spent £5k which they thought was extravagant.

It's your children's own fault for being too feckless to be born to parents who can keep their adult children into their 20s expat. We're only talking about kids from naice families.

Rhodabull I am in Brighton. We bought a wreck, and a serious wreck it was, in 2013. We got this house just before it came on the general market, as we'd been stitched up trying to buy a previous house and the agent selling our place had this coming up so gave us a heads up. We offered on it before a 'for sale' sign even went up. We were lucky to get it - I agree it is difficult but not impossible.

You could also add tattoos and beauty treatments to your list stumbly.

Imagine how much all those tattoos, waxing, hair extensions and comedy eyebrows cost?

I think yes we do spend more now. We only ate out on birthdays in the 1970's, and even then it would be at a Wimpy or something. My parents only bought alcohol and sweets on Fridays. We did not activities after school that cost money. We had one uniform and it was expected to last at least a year. I remember that people were poor in terms of disposable income. We didn't have a car until I was quite old and my dm would take 3 of us on the bus.

BUT my parents bought their first house for £3k (with no savings, no inheritances), a 3 bed semi in a leafy area in G London, when my dad was an administrator, my mum had a Saturday job. Those houses are now worth nearing £500k - there is absolutely no way, no matter what your spending habits, you could do that now.

And YY to the 'big wedding'. Our parents would have spent very little, mine only got married when I was 15 and they spent £5k which they thought was extravagant.

How old are you? That might have been quite extravagant!

I think this points to something else - people find it hard to get used to inflation and so have a tendency to judge 'expensive' against a fixed point in the past. That's why people hate chocolate bars costing nearly a pound (they should be 35p! They just should be!), why I'm always a bit shocked by the cost of a pint, and why so many old people believe that only Wetherspoons and supermarket cafes will do you a meal for a 'reasonable' price. So when someone in their 70s hears that a young person spent £100 on a phone I think they often have a reaction based on the idea that £100 is a lot more money than it actually is.

I think people do expect more now, including myself, I just don't see the point in buying a shifty flat or in a horrible area and going through all the stress and costs of buying and selling when I could just stay in my decent rented house for an extra year (hopefully only 2 years in total since I left uni) then together with my dp should be able to afford a 3 bed semi in a decent area (East Midlands) on a combined income of 35-45k, we're also planning on a great holiday next year which will be around 3k, yes that could go towards a house but we will enjoy it, it will only set us back a few months and it's something we want to do before we settle down with kids which we will do after we've bought.

I think it's much harder if you are single as your income would gave to be much better to compete but I do think it's easier to houseshare or stay with parents if your on your own.

Another issue is having kids before buying a house that mist baby boomers would be married and bought a house first, I know I'm sure lots of exceptions but this was expected of them and not so much now. Kids cost loads either in reduced working hours or childcare and might require a bigger and more decent rented house than a couple or single person alone would making it harder to save.

I will suggesting my DC do apprenticeships
and go onto HE from there if wanted
When they are 18 they will get access to their isas which we have been paying into on and off since they were born
That is all the help we will be able to give them
We have 20 years left on our mortgage and we are 44
No early retirement for us

I really don't know what planet this sort of parent is on.

I am a boomer parent, and every similar parent I know is all too painfully aware of how ridiculously unaffordable houses are, compared to when we were the same age as our children. Of course it's particularly crazy in our area, where even a 2 bed flat in a non trendy area can be priced at half a million - way up from even a few years ago.
Hence many of us helping out with cash, if we are in a position to do so.
I wish it were not necessary, not because I begrudge the money at all, but because it's so unfair on those who cannot expect any help.

I don't know precisely what the cause is, but preferential mortgage tax relief for landlords, Gordon Brown's raid on pensions (leading many to think that buy to let was a better option) and increased pressure because of large scale immigration, coupled with a failure to build enough homes (homes not targeted largely at Far Eastern investors!) are certainly factors.

Successive governments have evidently believed that soaring house prices are popular, because they make home-owning voters feel richer. IMO governments of both colours haven't been so bothered about priced-out younger people, because a substantial percentage of them haven't traditionally bothered to vote.
Finally, I think this sorry state of affairs is changing.

My mum bought her first house in the late 70s for £4k.

It was a private mortgage. She saw a vacant house she wanted, learned that the owner was in a local nursing home, paid him a visit and they worked something out.

When he passed away she inherited the rest of the house. His children all had their own homes so they didn't persue her for the money. She thinks he just wanted company and my mum calling in to see him once a month with her payment and her babies were the highlight of his month.

There is no way in the world that would happen these days.

Aha, so now we're blaming it on people wanting a 'big wedding'. Gees, I can count on one hand the number of couples I know who are even married, and we're one of them! Bullshit. Most don't bother getting married nowadays.

The other thing with housing was that, prior to selling off so many council properties, pretty much anyone could get a council property. If my parents had wanted, they could have lived in their council house for the rest of their lives despite both being professionals. That isn't an option anymore.
DH and I bought our first house in London 20 years ago for £72,000. It sold 2 months ago for £650,000. I make that an approx 900% increase. Our wages haven't even doubled in that time.
And people saying that everyone has always had to struggle to get on the property ladder, maybe we were incredibly lucky but we honestly didn't. We got a 98% mortgage (it was still possible to get 100% mortgages at that time) and our mortgage payments on a house were less than we'd been paying to rent a one bed flat.

Having phone contracts and paid for tv, Netflix and so on might be small change in saving for a deposit but they make one hell of a difference in considering how much you can afford in your monthly repayments.