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?

Lucky your 17% interest was on a property costing a much lower salary multiple than homes do today, eh? You'd have been really fucked if it was somewhere at 5 times joint income!

yes thinkingblonde - i remember when interest rates were 15%. we were on really high wages but were broke, really broke. And our house was worth about 20% less than we had paid for it

It really pisses me off the way people of my generation get slagged off for working hard. I took on part time work that filled in with dh shifts. We couldn't afford childcare if I'd gone full time, we'd have paid out more than I earned so didn't see the point. Yes we have a nice house, 2 cars, a holiday every year. DH has a half decent pension but he paid for it. He's paid into a private pension for years.
Working 12 hours a day for two weeks a time for years.

We weren't daft enough to go for a mortgage five times more than we earned.

It really pisses me off the way people of my generation get slagged off for working hard.

When does this happen?

We weren't daft enough to go for a mortgage five times more than we earned.

You had the option of buying a two up two down without needing to.

Now many people have to go for that multiple. Household income of £30,000 with 10% deposit in the south east won't get you very far without 4 or 5 x salary multiple.

I'm glad you were so sensible and hardworking though.

We weren't daft enough to go for a mortgage five times more than we earned.

Aaah so people today are daft. Nothing at all to do with the wages to house price ratios increasing as discussed many times on this thread

You know what... Congratulations because in one sentence you've just proven the entire point of this thread.

In 1976 D.H. and I, newly engaged, applied for our first mortgage, we were told by the building society manager we had to open a savings account, save regularly for a year then when we had 10% deposit saved plus legal fees to reapply. We did this by not going out much, cutting right back on spending, etc.

The WHOLE POINT OF THIS THREAD is that for all but the higher earners one can not save up 10% deposit by "not going out" FFS. RTFT why don't you.

You honestly think people can save for one year and get a deposit together. You have zero idea about current wages and house prices. Zero.

We weren't daft enough to go for a mortgage five times more than we earned.

Ha ha ha you are so ignorant it is sad actually.

Thinkingblonde has to be a troll. No way can someone be so stupid.

Of course it's a privilege to be allowed to remain at home once you're a grown-ass adult, especially if you don't have to pay rent. To live as a working adult and not have bills? A privilege, for certain.

Not a single member of my friendship group of 20-30-year-olds were allowed/decided to remain at home after starting work/university/military training.

Come on frikadela, it was sheer brainpower and good judgement that allowed thinkingblonde and her husband to purchase a family sized home costing only ten times what they could save by living frugally in a year! You were daft not to have been around then, that's all. And if you dare to suggest she's being in any way disingenuous by not mentioning that the double digit inflation was on a teeny mortgage, you're slagging off her entire generation for working hard.

This is before we even get onto the long term benefits of the aforementioned inflation for those who took out mortgages. Funnily enough, that part never seems to get mentioned either!

We weren't daft enough to go for a mortgage five times more than we earned.

With this statement alone you are not making a good case at all. Do you have any idea of the current house prices? No I guess not.

I wouldn't consider an 18 or 19 year old to be a grown ass adult.

I have an 18 year old and don't know of any any of his peers who have left home, other than those who are away from home because they are not at a local university.

I have a mortgage 5x my salary. It gives me security, has an end date and is cheaper than renting.

affordability has as much to do with where you live as when you bought though. 27 years ago i bought a 2 bed flat for 70k - this was 10 times my salary as a new graduate. My IL's current 3 bed house is worth 70-80k now.

But why would young adult offspring WANT to live at home.

I must live in a parallel universe as my mates all couldn't wait to get away from our folks to live the student lifestyle. We certainly weren't worrying about mortgages in our late teens/early twenties!

I think it is perfectly possible to find reasonable paid jobs in places outside of the South East. Both DH and I left a large commuter town in SE and moved to the South West. Plenty of work around here and housing is nowhere near as expensive as London and the surrounding areas.

We live in a commuter town in the South West and you can easily get a 2-3 bedroomed house for under £200k. A search on Indeed.co.uk brings up plenty of job opportunities and a search on Zoopla brings up plenty of affordable properties. People are moving here in their droves.

I do think it is very hard for people to save that deposit though. You have to have two good earners in a family and preferably no childcare bills to pay.

My BIL is in his early twenties and he said recently that people his age have virtually given up on ever buying a home. Its understandable that people like BIL would rather have lots of little treats to make life seem nicer when the option of saving money for a home seems pointless.

What worries me is that a large percentage of the population will be forced into rented accommodation for all of their lives. With the pensions deficit and the very high likelihood that any possible inheritance will be spent on care bills for their own parents, there will be a HUGE housing crisis amongst the renting people who are retiring in 50 years time.

It does indeed dreaming. I live in an area that's still relatively affordable now. However, it was even more affordable two or three decades back. There's pretty much nowhere that the average house price isn't a higher multiple of average incomes now than it was a generation ago. This is likely to be true even of your ILs 80k place.

I can't find data for 18 year olds, but 60% of twenty years olds live with their parents.

Shortaris, because different people have different priorities?

almond that must be a generational thing then. I'm late 30's and don't know anyone who could wait to get out!

And of course, different strokes I just find it baffling.

56% of 20 year olds lived at home, according to the ONS, in 1996.

almond I hate to break it you but selfish parents are aplenty. When I was in primary we lived in a very working class area and all the friends I had in primary had to move out of home by the time they were 20 (me included) compared to the quite middle class friends I had in secondary who by the way have the type of parents that gave them allowances at university have helped them by homes, etc have mostly been able to go back home and live off their parents.

I'm like tinsel - my parents lived in a village so in order to go to college at 16 I moved into the college halls, within a week my room had been stripped and reappropriated and I wasn't expected home for summer holidays. I had to grow up and figure it out and actually to this day my parents don't help at all with anything, not even childcare. My dad was complaining about spending £20 on a Christmas present for my kids.

I just wanted to put it out there that not all of us have parents wanting or willing or able to support us to live at home and save a deposit.

All of you saying that you can get cheap properties elsewhere in the country, etc yes you can but you are showing how privileged or lucky you have are because ime getting a mortgage is a mini minefield these days especially when you work zero hour contracts or are self employed like many are eg courier drivers, etc or are a single parent with kids - these are all very valid scenarios that banks for whatever reason still don't know how to deal with reasonably.

I was told by one bank that because I am a single parent with 2kids I need to show a disposable in me of £500/mth so they can feel happy that o wouldn't default on my mortgage if rates went up. I don't mean to be funny but that's a huge hurdle for me when I earn 26k, pay £800 a month in rent then there's after school clubs, gas, elec, food, transport, council tax, etc where in the hell will Khair £500 disposable income 😂😂😂

Figureitout, we can keep going around in circles. But most young people do live at home. Those are the facts of the matter.

Given that a large proportion of those who have left home are at university, I doubt the majority of young people still at home are middle class.