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?

It doesn't make any difference to me if my house is worth less, because I use it to live in!

That's the attitude on the Continent.

Here in the UK, we've become accustomed to viewing our homes as an investment.

Any significant political change (in housing policy) could only be achieved through a radical change in social attitude.

I don't think I'd mind if the value of my house dropped sharply if I assume that all house prices will drop. The value of my house could be measured in potatoes for all the advantage it gives me, I just live in it. If my house drops from five potatoes to two that's no problem so long as my next move up the ladder drops from six potatoes to three (or whatever). Does that make sense or do I sound like I'm on glue?!

I think the sky thing is a total red herring, I need high speed internet at home (I run an online business) and it was actually cheaper to get the full package than just the internet, I tried really hard to only get the internet as I don't use the phone or watch the telly but it is was going to end up MORE expensive. Also phones are designed to break after two years and thats why people upgrade.

Before anyone says anything I own my house because my in-laws lent us money towards a deposit, I live up north and both me and my husband work. We have a comfortable life but we are seriously considering never having children as in order to be comfortable as we need both wages. I was brought up by a single mother and we never had any money and I am TERRIFIED of poverty. We are comfortable but we live frugally (old habits die hard) we buy all our clothes second hand, food from scratch, mend rather than throw away, no expensive holidays etc
But there are just some things that it's false economy to scrimp on.

I'm reminded of a couple of years ago when everyone got their knickers in a twist about prisoners having COLOUR television, this was at a time where it would have been more work and more expensive to source black and white ones.

Lostwithinthehills

I don't want to say where I live now, but I just looked at Cambridge, which is where I used to live. There is exactly one houseshare currently on Rightmove for less than £350 including bills (and, just so I'm scrupulously fair one for £325 + £40 bills). That is not 'lots' and I also know the Cambridge rental market well enough to know that there is something badly wrong with both of them: I don't know what, but places that cheap do not go unlet for over a month (as both of them have) for no reason. I lived in a really, really grotty houseshare in the least nice bit of Cambridge for a couple of years: when we had a room to rent it was £425 plus bills (in 2009) and we were just overwhelmed with enquiries.

Oh and like a PP said, I also lost a few friends over that period because I wasn't in the pub 2+ evenings a week or going on long weekends in Europe on a whim.

I have a good friend who I met at work when I was 22, we were both doing the same job and had the same lifestyle of going out every night and being in post-uni overdraft debt. In the last 7 years he's gone to far more festivals, short breaks and parties, has changed jobs 3 or 4 times and spent 6 months travelling, whereas I have progressed within our shared firm and not had anywhere near as much fun... But now I have a flat whereas he has about 8k of credit card debt and still has to house-share. It comes down to different priorities.

Lostwithinthehills

Agreed. I couldn't give a damn if your house dropped in value, as long as all the other houses dropped too so we could still get on the next rung.

I mean my house.... Although I couldn't give a damn if your house dropped too

It's two different things, really.

One is that there is a housing crisis, and that is a major political issue.

The other is that given there is a housing crisis, anyone young person has to make decisions in that situation.

And that won't get everyone a house, and it will still be crap for some people, but do the best you can in the crap circumstances we have.

So you can get threads on here about people not encouraging ordinary kids to go to Oxford. Well, no, DS did not apply to Oxford, LSE, Cambridge etc because they are really expensive places to live, and why start building connections to places like that were you will probably never be able to buy a house?

So apply to Northern universities and Welsh ones.

Choose a career you can do in cheaper places. Choose a more boring, crappier job that you can get in cheaper places.

Don't go to university, or go on a shorter course.

And people are making these choices all the time - live at home at uni, don't go, limit your choices.

And yes, it is destroying social mobility. But if you want a little house and kids in your twenties, those are the choices you make.

Lostwithinthehills I agree to some extent. The nominal value is usually irrelevant. It only becomes an issue if the value has fallen significantly and someone either has to move house, or cannot keep up repayments with repossession threatened. Because in either of those scenarios they would be forced to sustain a loss, probably enough to render them bankrupt.

Lost that makes sense, I think we he caught up with the value of money, so potatoes work.

And yes, I would assume houses in areas would go down by roughly the same percentage (depending on what was built, more flats than houses would probably make houses slightly more valuable)

Those of you who wouldn't mind house prices massively dripping aren't recent buyers?

Its not abnormal to be allowed to stay rent free at your parents house. If I've had my own bedroom since babyhood, how does the bedroom become more expensive for my parents on my 18th birthday?

Many cultures do this routinely. I have a Pakistani friend who owns a flat but still lives with her parents. She will do so until she's married. Some of my Greek friends male and female have stayed at home pretty much until marriage too. Maybe the British culture of leaving home in your teens needs to adapt?

I do realise that I'm lucky to have grown up in London so I didn't have to move from another area to get a job in my chosen career in London.

It's no good good to say just stay with your parents and save

Quite. What are you meant to do if you get your first house job as a doctor in Leeds but your parents live in Glasgow? Or you manage to get a job in finance in London but your parents live in Cornwall? Yeah, obvs, if you parents live in zone 3 London then you're well sorted!

Buying houses is definately more expensive now than ever but not impossible on a normal wage even in London if you're not fussy for your first property.

Well you would struggle to get a 1 bed in pretty much anywhere for less than £250k.

If you can't live at home - for the first few years of earning it will be very hard to same much. So say you save up £200 a month for 4 years. That is nearly £10k. Salary of £40k might get you £200k mortgage. Oh, but hardly anyone will lend on 5%. And there is fuck all to buy for £210, oh, and actually there is stamp duty and legal fees to pay... so, yeah, you haven't saved enough.

What do you consider a 'normal' wage? £30k? £50k? £80k? £100k?

It is really disingenuous to say that normal people on a normal wage 0- especially a single person with no DP to go halves with - can buy a flat in london.

Unless you have outside help in the way of 5 years of rent free accommodation or a gift of cash, it is almost impossible on a 'normal' salary.

It isn't all relative though, is it?

Almost nobody in this country is living in absolute poverty and only a few people are rich.

Most people in this country do have a parent who lives in a house with more than one bedroom.

It isn't about what is normal for you, me, a care leaver or a homeless family. It is normal in terms of it being an extremely usual situation for ordinary young people from a working class or lower middle class background - most people.

I think it is worth remembering that many baby boomers lost their homes after the house price crash in the late 80s and the hike in interest rates. I know it was looking a bit sketchy for my parents in the early 80s when interest rates went up, and my dad was very worried that we might lose the house.

It's also worth remembering that many mortgages back then were endowment, rather than repayment, mortgages and that was quite a significant misselling scandal and meant that many baby boomers couldn't pay off the capital at the end of the term.

I do agree that it is pretty impossible for young people to buy in the south east and some other key areas, but elsewhere it is still manageable if you've two decent incomes and cut your expenditure. Dh and I did without, spent no money for seven years and managed to accrue a deposit for a family home in a nice area, and we are both average earners.

The main reason why young people cannot buy housing though is that the British property market is being used as a free bank to park shedloads of foreign cash from all over the globe. Some of the redevelopments in elephant and castle, for example, are being marketed as investment opportunities in Malaysia.

Its not abnormal to be allowed to stay rent free at your parents house. If I've had my own bedroom since babyhood, how does the bedroom become more expensive for my parents on my 18th birthday?

The room doesn't become more expensive but if your parents are low income and have been getting child benefit and tax credits then they might need to charge board to make up the shortfall as you will be using gas, electric, water and food. Not everyone can afford to support their adult children and let them live rent / board free.

I mean, it is a bit ridiculous. We didn't go from having two under 18s and two adults in a 2 bed house to the day of DS's 18th birthday, when he suddenly became immensely privileged because we didn't kick him out on to the streets and burn his bed.

And nobody has said that everyone can live with their parents. Obviously many people can't. But it is simply not the case that it is an immense privilege or something done by few people.

Quite, YelloDraw. If you want to work in London - or rather the industry you are interested in is based there - you are somewhat up shit creek unless your parents live there. When I was starting out in the late 80s you could rent a flat/room in zone 2 for an affordable amount. Ha ha to that now. Property prices have really messed with social mobility in this regard.

Also London university is being spurned by many - in fact, most - young people from middle England. Ds had a look at UCL: the accommodation was unaffordable and years 2 and 3 would have been spent commuting in from a manhole in zone 15.

The point about potatoes is all very well, except that dh and I have no pensions and are rather counting on our house being worth enough potatoes to live on in the future. Also I think people are wise to property crashes and if there were a crash so many people would be trying to buy at the bottom in the hope of future rises that the crash would correct itself - iyswim.

Board is not rent.

Paying board is paying the non rental costs of living in a flat - food, electricity etc, but in the parental home.

You did Caryl, at 10.47.

You said very few people were living rent free with parents.

Flood the market with cheap prefabs, like those post War ones. Force property prices down and make 'Buy To Let' impossible/pointless.

But, as I said upthread - we have a government with too many fat cats with big fat property portfolios to ever have any motivation to make housing cheap again.

make 'Buy To Let' impossible/pointless.

Rent regulation?