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?

DH and I bought our house 13 yrs ago. It's a fairly bog standard pebble dashed 70s terrace.

Based on the estimated value of the house now, if we wanted to buy the same house today, we couldn't afford it. Even though DH's salary has nearly ducked in that time (and more than makes up for my drop in earnings due to part time working).

We are in a city out 2 hrs from London, with lots of Londoners moving into the area. Prices rocketing accordingly.

I, on the other hand, am living very frugally - because I have an incentive

EX-ACT-LY!

Making do with second hand furniture (like I do) is satisfying if it means you're making your own home. It's a labour of love, cutting back and making and doing so you can afford to pay your own mortgage

Not so in a miserable shitty rental that you can't even paint or hang a picture in! If you're trapped in a shitty rental situation then I absolutely see the drive to put nice things into it to make the whole situation slightly more pleasant/bearable!

When I first got my interest only mortgage back in 2008 I was earning about 21k. I was lucky that in the years before I'd lived in a cheap house shares in berks, £375 a month and had saved over £20k towards a deposit. Once interest only mortgage was secured, I made as many overpayments as possible, bought my work clothes from Tesco, and budgeted like a maniac. Didn't have a personal phone (work blackberry) and questioned everything I spent before spending it. Had an inheritance of £10k which went straight into mortgage (where I know other people my age would've bought a new car - indeed encouraged me to!) so it's a bit about choices, BUT I know I was in a lucky position to start with (well paid job, lower living costs).

BUT the baby boomers had it bloody easier. I'm forever on comment boards on The Times online commenting on ditching the triple lock pension - indeed making the state pension a means tested safety net not a god given "right", encouraging oldies to sell up their massive family homes (no sdlt on downsize purchases; increasing council tax for under-occupancy, not discounting it!) if older people can't afford to heat their creaky old houses, why the FUCK do they stay?! Surely they'd be better off in a nice new modern assisted living type flat... also far less likely to fall and necessitate long NHS stays at £400/night on average. Madness.

It's their generational entitlement that irks me: "I've paid all my life, why SHOULD I have to sell up my now-inappropriate home, the council should come and oldie proof it for me, I want grab rails and a stair lift. I want a fuel allowance to heat the 4 bed house I live alone in, paid £5k for and is worth £1.5m pre-refurb and I want my state pension to increase by the triple lock, despite the fact I've also got a private pension that pays so much I'm a 40% tax payer" entitled old buggers.

My mum doesn't entirely think that we just need to save a bit harder, she just thinks we're buying in a ridiculously expensive area since a 3 bed terrace costs more than £100k.
I think I'll show her some SE prices when I'm home at Christmas to show her that we're actually quite lucky!

*ducked = doubled

What annoys me most when the older generation in my family suggest anyone of my generation buys a bigger place to accommodate (potential) children etc. they are ignoring the fact that they are inhabiting 3-5 bedroom houses thus limiting the number available on the market and making the inflated house prices worse.

House prices are phenomenal. However there is a lot of wastage too. I drive a crap car, have a crap phone and scrimp because I don't like to waste money (although I do, just on other things). I am also surprised by lavish holidays and 20k weddings. Unless my mortgage was paid off I wouldn't dream of being so luxurious.

I think she has a point especially outside of the south east.

My niece and her boyfriend have just bought their first home aged 23. SHe went to uni. They both earn less than 20k each but she saved since she was 18. This is with no help from family etc.

Also in my parents first house they lived in one room with my brother. They fixed clothes, never bought anything and life was hard but they now do have a nice house and are mortgage free. I don't begrudge them.

Divine, I agree that many people cannot. But I guess I'm referring to those who don't yet have children. I see none of them working 2nd jobs as we did. None of them saying that instead of their 2k summer holiday that can go in the bank. We went 6yrs without a holiday! I totally accept that lots of people will never afford it. But lots of people who live in London/SE don't need to be there (though I accept lots do) And there is, certainly amongst the young people I know, a confusion between want and need.

p.s. the "suggested" saving are almost always false economies:

e.g:

• without my mobile phone I would miss out on every bit of optional overtime, it'ld be snapped up by someone else before I even knew it was being offered!
• without my car we'ld have to live in a more expensive area - better public transport links = higher housing prices.
• I sometimes eat lunch out because I do so much overtime so I haven't been home to make all those suggested sandwiches and flasks…. because I've been working solidly and picking up overtime which more than makes up for the fact that I had to eat on the go without a pre-packed picnic hamper on one of the days !

I'm a millennial with an iphone but got my house by not spending money on anything else. 1 cheap holiday a year, few meals out, savings came out like another bills, and I'd always opt for house or flat shares instead of renting a whole place for myself. Am now used to that lifestyle and so as salary increases I have far more disposable income.

There is absolutely no incentive for the youth of today to scrimp when by doing so they are still nowhere near a deposit. The BBs lived in a time where essentials were cheap and luxuries were expensive. Now essentials are expensive and luxuries are cheap. When an iPad is the equivalent of a couple of weeks nursery fees or a months travel costs or 2 weeks rent you can see why people decide to go ahead and buy one. I remember the first person I knew to get a video recorder. It was £800 at a time my parents mortgage was £22 a month. He could have paid a mortgage for over 3 years for that video but an iPad is the equivalent of 2 weeks.

Nothing to do with spending 50%+ of their income on rent, of course. YANBU

Part of the problem is also the "helpful" suggestions that you should buy a grotty one bed flat and trade up, because you used to be able to take the rapidly accumulating equity and trade up.

That was great when a one bed could be had for £75k and stamp duty was pennies. You need to go quite a long way out in London to find one for £250k. Each move involves an absurd amount of stamp duty now.

We blew about £25k on our stamps for a two bed flat. In retrospect that was a mistake, we should have just pushed our borrowing to the hilt and gone for a house, because we will donate another £30k+ for the privilege of upgrading.

Also, to the poster that suggested no one wants to live further than 15 mins from work - I know youngsters who are sharing bedrooms in Zone 3 because that's the only affordable way for them to manage in London. What a load of tosh.

The problem is not baby boomers, it is the Government. For some reason on here people hate the older generation.

The reason things are hard now, is the government, I don't blame babyboomers for that

What I DO blame some (sadly many) babyboomers for is their spectacular lack of compassion or understanding, when they bitch about milenials who are stuck in awful cramped damp rentals with no security and say it's all their own fault because they have mobile phones

Ludicrous house price rises are not the fault of baby boomers.

No, maybe not - but an awful lot of babyboomers have benefitted enormously from the housing boom. It would be nice if they now didn't blame the cost of an i-phone on young people being unable to get on the property ladder now - because houses used to be much more 'savable' for than they are now. And buying an iphone isn't the difference here.

When house prices increase out of all proportion to wages, there is a problem for young people. There is a problem now.

Icy yes yes yes. Exactly!

Notamammy two bed flats are over £600k in my area of London.

How are a young couple in their late 20s or early 30s supposed to afford a deposit for that while paying £1000+ in rent every month for a shitty one-bender or £800 a month in a houseshare. Ridiculous

My dad thought that too Mammy when DP and I spent £32k on a 2 bed terrace in 1996.

He couldn't understand why we were spending 'so much' (despite his 3 bed semi being worth probably £50-60k at the time) partly because Dsis had just spunked the ridiculously frivalous sum of about £25k on a one bed terrace in the same town (we were getting an extra bedroom and a garden for our money, which seemed worth it to me).

Ruby, I pointed out earlier that you can buy somewhere in Luton for under 100k. You can get from Luton to London in under 25min.

She is kind of right. People like my parents didn't have what people expect as standard now, meals out were once a year if that, take always never, no holidays, definitely not abroad. My mum was in her 40's before she went on a foreign holiday, my dad was a dentist but even on his wages they couldn't afford those kind of luxuries. Furniture was basic and second hand, they saved for investment pieces many of which still furnish their home now, none of this interior fashion, one telly, clothing was minimal with a couple of 'best outfits' doing for every wedding, christening or special occasion that arose. One car even as a working married couple. Things like having nails done would have been unthinkable, I remember a microwave being a huge luxury Christmas gift for my mum, people used to ask if you were on the phone, not for a mobile and landline number.Yes property was cheaper but interest rates were like 25% so that brought its own issues. The bottom line was people expected to start out with nothing and that was normal. Now people expect a home, with nice furniture, a tv, internet package, nice clothes and still to be able to have take aways and treats. Teenagers are used to a really high standard of living and if they have a job are used to a lot of disposable income. If they saved this money rather than used it to get themselves used to an unsustainable lifestyle then it is possible to get on the property ladder. However society teaches a different expectation.

*one-bedder

Tinsel - I think everyone would agree that a mobile is pretty much a necessity nowadays for the kind of reason you describe.

But I've just Googled the average yearly mobile bill and it came up as £439 a year. With figures like that its not surprising that the older, more frugal, generations comment on what people are spending. That is a completely unnecessary amount for people to be spending and is the result of everyone having to have the latest iPhone or Android superduper equivalent. My mobile costs £120 a year and the phone is a decent enough smartphone with plenty of data for checking emails and job-hunting.

The same can be applied to Sky TV packages etc. So on phones, broadband and TV alone there is probably getting on for £1000 saving a year between the kinds of gadgets/contracts people are on average choosing and the basic packages which do the job perfectly well.

Oh and for those that reckon that people just don't want to sacrifice, I've cut my trips home to the bone, we've had one proper holiday in the 10 years we've been together, have one car which is pretty much paid by DH's mileage as he uses it for work, have never bought a new piece of furniture and pay a combined £30 on our phones. We're not in a position to get any help and don't have the opportunity to live at home and not pay board.
Almost everyone I know that have recently bought have had their parents pay a good chunk of their deposit, so if I sound a bit sensitive about it, I am!

As I look on ebay for a second hand bed frame at a decent price as our offer was just accepted and we're going from semi-furnished rental to our own, unfurnished home.

Yes, on a £5,000/year season ticket!