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?

Essentially the system is not building the properties that would be attractive to older people, so they won't move to free up the houses families need. We don't want glorified council flats after having owned naice properties. We want smaller versions of our pleasant homes.

Maddie - thing is, in the baby boomers generation, people that low level jobs wouldn't expect to buy - it was only since the 80s we've assumed most people will buy.

But if you think the 'property ladder' idea assumes you'll pay down the mortgage a bit for a few years on the starter flat, that equity plus a small price rise will be your next deposit on the family home, that only works if the alternative is renting privately (and so paying more per month in rent than you would in mortgage) and house prices are rising enough to wipe out the moving costs.

If that couple can live with parents, so able to save the equivilent of the rent they would have paid privately, or mortgage payments each month on a flat, and you aren't in an area with massive house price rises, over 2 years they might be in a better position to buy the 'forever home' than they would be if they bought a flat now and had all the running /maintenance costs of that for 2 years.

It's not what I would have chosen to do because I'd have murdered my mother if I'd had to live with her that long as an adult but not an illogical decision.

What planet are you on supermummy? Where are all these people with the top of the range phones and very top sky package who are drinking costa every day and jetting around on holiday and REFUSING to get on the housing ladder for some unknown reason.

1. Most people need a phone and there are literally a million phone contracts which are cheaper. My husband pays £25 a month for his.

2. if you pay £100 a month for sky you are being ripped off, we used to pay £30 for ours and we had the tv only because it was cheaper in a package.

3. Assuming you're going to meet someone with the same savings as you to buy a house with is not really a good life plan. That's how people end up in nasty and expensive court battles.

I was one of those young people just enjoying life and spending lots. Difference is I wasn't fussed about a deposit as I saw it as being too far out of reach if I rented a nice flat in the city centre and I chose to do that and expected to rent for life.
I never moaned about it, simply stated that I wasn't prepared to go without seeing friends for 6 years in order to save a deposit. To me that was just joyless and not worth it. I chose to live alone so I either arranged to see people or literally would have just worked and slept and I didn't think that was much of a life.
I'm not knocking those who've done it, but not for me. I also wanted out of my folks to have a bit of independence as early as possible and was always single so no way of cutting costs that way.
My parents have since helped me with a deposit and I love my house but it wasn't a sacrifice worth making, for me.
My folks thankfully acknowledge how hard it is to buy and never lectured me, but lots of other folk did!

We are looking for a place to retire. We'd like to gift our DC deposits at their starting point. Sadly there is bugger all that we'd even bother looking at. So we shan't move.

" I wasn't prepared to go without seeing friends for 6 years in order to save a deposit. "

That's another point. It's quite cruel to expect a single person to stay in on their own every weekend.

supper not many people take up those deals to be honest because the reality is not many havethat kind if spare cash for those kinds of luxuries, Ime anyway.

29red I spoke to a broker and the only mortgage they could see me getting with my outgoing S as they are was a 35 year mortgage at payments of £620/mth as opposed to what I had worked out was the most cost effective ie least amount of interest paid to bank which was £650 over 18years. I pulled out because I couldn't get my he'd round why the underwriters would approve me for a 35year mortgage at pretty much the same payments but not for an 18year one. Wasn't sure if I was being had

older you are so right about the lying - my uncle asked his foreman at the time to put higher wages on his payslips to enable him to get a mortgage - you most definitely cannot do that these days. I was flamed for not mentioning a£4.99 subscription to a professional body by the underwriters, that showed on my bank statements. To be honest the whole experience left a very nasty taste in my mouth and I'm not sure how I'll ever get on the property ladder. I feel like I won't have nothing to leave my kids because I can't save into a pension as I have not much disposable income - the little I do have is all going into this neverending deposit pot, grrrr!

"I looked up the Cyber Monday deals and :

Carphone Warehouse, Vodafone
Apple iPhone 7 Black 128 GB 10 GB Data (4G)
£58.00 per month + £29.99 Up front cost

Sky Sports + Broadband Monthly cost with offers
£101.15 then £114.90 + One off cost £74

Total cost for 5 years £10,313 (unless my math is wrong)"

But these aren't being taken up by people on low incomes are they?
I have a smart phone that cost £10 and pay as I go for using it - almost only texts.

My TV costs were nothing until the BBC started charging for watching on a computer so it's 145 a year now.

How long would it take me to save a deposit if I didn't have a phone and a computer (couldn't actually find jobs without them, but put that to one side) bearing in mind that I'm already almost of the age when banks will not give mortgages any more?

Well I did the whole 'scrimp, save and live on cabbage soup' thing with my then-fiancée in the mid 2000s before the crash. We were in our 20's. It was a flipping miserable existence (made more miserable mind you by him). We didn't have holidays, didn't go travelling or have nice meals or nice things like all our friends. It was a lonely and sad time. After nearly 5 years of this we bought a house and got married.

Then marriage went tits up for reasons I won't go into, we had to sell the house in the acrimonious divorce and I'm now living in a private let with little to no chance of ever being able to afford a home again. Those miserable years spent scraping for every penny have meant nothing except that I'm now used to it as I'm having to make do with even less now!

I wish I'd blown all my money in my 20s and not worried about being able to buy a house.

I bought my first house in 1978 and have to chip in; it was incredibly difficult to get a mortgage, we got one through a scheme which my Mum helped us to get as she worked for the council housing dept. We had to save a 20% deposit and the income multiples were very small compared to recent times. We got a one bed bungalow which had been built to extend into the loft, and it was much farther out than where we were used to living. We got bigger houses by buying doer uppers and we didn't have the spare cash to do them up right away. I don't have a final salary pension scheme, a lot of us don't, and a lot of our generation struggled with the interest rates and negative equity. It wasn't us who caused the issue now with the need for such big deposits.

I know it's even harder now, Especially in London, but I think that choices do come into it. I have a DD and a niece the same age. DD had some challenges and left school with no GCSEs whilst DN has A levels. They both earn a similar amount now, DD has a better career path as she has been more focused. DN moved in with her boyfriend and has paid rent in an expensive town for several years. DD lived as a lodger with a friend and her boyfriend stayed at home whilst they saved a deposit for a house. DN got married 3 years ago and is still renting. DD got married this summer and has a 3 bed house in a nice but less expensive area. On the face of it DD had fewer advantages, but she made different choices and she's very good with her money. i don't think she'll have a baby until they've saved enough to cover mat leave, but DN isn't even saving for a deposit and they are heading for 30 now so if she wants a baby she's likely to be renting for ever. She could be on this thread arguing about how impossibly hard it all is, but it wouldn't be true, she just made different choices.

My parents can't see the difference between my S5 mini and the latest Iphone or the most basic smartphone.

My contract is about £15/month and my phone is waterproof in the hope it will last more than 2 years. It probably won't - the things are clearly designed to stop working!

Most people don't have the latest phone, they have something cheaper or get it when it is not quite so new - £58 is a crazy amount for a phone unless you need the minutes for work.

My smartphone is instead of a music player and sat nav. Admittedly sat navs weren't around in their day but they're really not a luxury and have been very much embraced by the baby boomer generation. Mine saves an awful lot of petrol driving in circles lost - I have a shocking sense of direction and had some interesting journeys before they became mainstream. Like pulling off at the next available layby to discover I had been going the wrong way for 20 minutes...

The thing is the consumer electronics are so cheap now - you can get a TV larger than the largest crt for under £200 - a watch with more processing power than the first £2000 computer so it looks like you're spending a fortune but it really isn't.

Things also aren't built to last. We spent 6 months looking for a 2nd hand sofa after we realised that we were really suffering from sitting on our old one. They all sagged. We went to DFS and discovered they all sagged from new (in the showroom!) and eventually found a small independent to get a pair of solid comfortable sofas. Argos furniture used to be solid - now uber flimsy - have spent a while trawling auctions and nothing new holds together - needs to be quite a lot older.

Essentially the system is not building the properties that would be attractive to older people, so they won't move to free up the houses families need. We don't want glorified council flats after having owned naice properties. We want smaller versions of our pleasant homes.

This is a valid point, except for a few developers you see building suitable bungalows every now and then, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone else building suitable "retirement" houses within the confines of a typical development. There's too much risk for the developers in finding buyers for a 2 bed or even a one bedroom house, they'd much rather churn out a 3 or 4 bed property in the hopes of attracting young couples upwards through to older families, more customers. More rooms also normally means higher cost as well obviously.

On the development we've bought on; the smallest houses are 3 beds, the development down the road where we intially looked also only has 3 bedroom houses.

it's true that there's a shortage of "in between" houses for anyone

There are very few modest family homes on the market where I live, lots of flats, and lots of big houses, but not enough smaller houses.

I think what pisses me off most about my baby boomer dad is that even though he has paid off his own mortgage, has offered me no help to get on the ladder at all and calls me a scrounges for borrowing a tanner as I am so skint. He then tells me that benefits are considerable.
When I was on a zero hour contract he saw this as a massive failing and gave me no end of grief . Now I have just got a permanent job I will suffer a drop in income as agency work is better paid but child care is the same. I would prefer permanent though as more stability. When I asked him if he could pick dd up from school once or twice a week to help lighten my load he said only if he wasn't " busy" aka.... Galavanting. And he voted Brexit!!! Aggggrrr! Entitled dosnt cover it!

Figureitout1 you just reminded me, when my parents were sorting out the mortgage when they moved, they were badgered into saying they'd give up web hosting that costs £4 per month a domain names that are £10 per year! By the way with out those we'd lose our main email accounts.

Borrowing a tanner even!

My pils were looking into downsizing from their 5 bed family home now they're in their 70s and wanted to move before they couldn't physically do so.

They have lived in the same area all their married life and wanted to move to a new development about 1 mile from where they at the moment. The cost of a new build 3 bed in the same village required their house plus £250k mortgage.

They stayed put.

Incidentally we bought a second floor flat in 2004 for £350k in London. It sold again last year (unfortunately not by us) for 975k. The only work could be decorative - no extensions or anything. How can a flat have gone up x3 in 10 years?!

What lots of people forget is that owning a home isn't a good deal for everyone. If you are lower income I think you are far better off in council housing (if you can get it) compared to buying. It is also why I think the rent rules need a complete overhaul (I say this as a LL).

As for questions about a housing revaluation, I think it has to happen or we will have a revolution. I also think there should be an overhaul of rules and taxes such as stamp duty. I believe a primary residence (where the owners are residents paying full UK taxes) should pay zero stamp duty, for a second home the owners should pay VAT and for foreign buyers, they should be banned, like they are in Denmark.

As I said in my earlier post planning needs to get with the times and allow some homes to be built. I have land, want to build a couple of nice homes, yet its not allowed. A lot of greenbelt land in semi-urban areas is mis-classified IMO by a bunch of NIMBYs as a way to help protect the value of their home. Where I am from there are houses along a street and a gap of about 200ft. No one can build a home in that 200ft gap because it is designated as greenbelt. If it was a smaller gap there would be a better chance but it would still be very difficult. Meanwhile we have families in town who are living 2-3 generations under one roof on the opposite side of the street to this empty field that does nothing. I know the owner and he would love to build a few homes on it. Not allowed because it would 'disturb' the environment.

I bought a small flat in SE 8 years ago age 21 and now I am raising a family in the same flat. It is on a main road, has no garden and had a short lease at the time I bought it, which has since been extended. It also needs a good £20k work to modernise it. I have people say to me that they can't afford to buy a home, but also say they wouldn't live where I live. I have no plans to move and will be mortgage free before 40 and no doubt the same people will say they they don't know how I did it.

TinselTwins these ghost estates and starter homes in negative equity you are talking about, are they in Ireland, or in the U.K.?

I have heard of building projects being abandoned due to a huge collapse in property prices in Ireland in the first few years post crash, but I am struggling to think of any areas of the U.K. And England in particular where people would still be in negative equity since 2007/2008 and unable to sell.

And although many housing developments were stalled for a while are there really ghost estates now?

Developers usually only stop building and just sit on the land for a couple of years when house prices crash and they can't make the sort of profits they first anticipated when they bought the land.

But surely if everyone on this thread is complaining that prices are out of control how can that still be the case, since prices have recovered post crash and surpassed them?

Don't forget the 'nice clothes' and 'new trainers' that ALL young people spend their money on instead of saving for a deposit

This according to my FIL (who has snapped up 3 starter properties in cash).

Then again he didn't have primark to depend on when his his clothes wore out, so I guess young people are much luckier!!

I think that people are unprepared to scrimp and save gor years in order to afford a shoe box. I really do think that home ownership shoukd be regarded as a luxury rather than a necessity.
When i got my inheritance i was told by several mortgage advisors that i could not get a mortgage on a zero hour contract as a single mum so i had a good time on it, travelled, explored and bought a few naiice clothes from asos.
I do ferl gutted that i cojldnt afford a mortgage but the odds were stacjec against me. I had to declare my savings then tax credits stopped and all my savings had to go on rent as my zero hour contract minimum wage wouldnt coved it.

I kust think that sometimes renting isthe best option. I rent a licely house with a garden. If i loose my job then i can geg housing benefit. I would not gave this safety net as a homeowner. If i lost mh job i would get no safety net and mg house would be reposessed. Seems very stressful to me!

Agggr... typos... lovely house. Stupid phone!

They're building loads of new properties round here. Even a two bed shoe box is £350k. We live on a small new estate of 40 houses. Most are 4 and 5 bed. It's lovely, but out of reach of most first time buyers.