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?

FYI our current house had to have all the floors lifted because we found exposed wires under a bedroom and bathroom floor. Technically the people who did that was a paid tradesman, even I'm better than that.

I was taking one of the kids to one of their friend's birthdays once (a standard hall and sambos do) and an older relative went off on one "oh it's all halls and big parties these days! whatever happened to having a few jellies at home? thats what I used to do and my children were happy with tha!"
Well love, here's what happened, you raised your kids in a house with a separate dining room and lounge and garden on one tradesman's wage. WELL DONE YOU for having the SPACE to have your kids parties at home. Lots of DDs friends live in pokey flats because that's increasingly normal these days, so they spend £25 renting a church hall instead - £25! we're hardly talking about parties where each kid gets their own shetland pony to take home as a party favour! Yet my BB relative gets all judgy about people spending money on halls for parties..

And yes, things were tight for that particular BB, we regularly hear how they didn't have carpets for the first whatever amount of years etc… it wasn't a walk in the park, I get tha
.. but it's the judging about our generation spending £25 on halls for parties without appreciating that the SPACE to have home parties is actually a luxury these days that is causing the resentment and tensions amongst generations

Their "saving" are actually modern luxuries, things have changed and they don't translate: when I grew up dads often had car jacks in the garage and fixed their own cars - OMG a WHOLE GARAGE these days is a massive luxury! and people sublet them for nearly as much as flats! Tinkering with cars is now a luxury rather than a way to save!

Who will buy the 40k house in Halifax? As in, what demographic already works there and can afford it? Presumably someone will but would be interesting to know if it is likely to be an owner occupier.
Anyway, as halifax is not the answer for everyone, i don't think the problem is necessarily (just) not enough houses, but that so many people nowadays want and can afford more than one! To btl, weekend home, holiday home. This, particularly btl, is an absolute transformation since the 1980s and accounts for a huge increase in demand. Backed up as pp say, by mortgage lending at low rates. If govt address the btl issue through tax changes (which are starting) that may at least mean prices stabilise. Without that, won't building more houses run the risk that they too get bought by btlers (though i suppose at least rents would fall...)

TinselTwins. Do not get me started on the "wasting" money. Apparently my mother managed to have twins without the need of a car, she also had three afternoons of childcare paid for by God knows who but it sure wasn't her after she clearly wasn't coping and nearly killed the babies ... Very selective memories I find

I personally think the government is completely clueless when it comes to housing. Whilst everyone is jumping for joy thinking that they are stinging the BTLetters by not allowing mortgage interest payments to be put against tax and thinking that they have put one over on the evil landlords. In reality the cost of rent just gets put up.

The rot set in for FTBers when studio flats became unmortgageable. I know we would not have had a hope i Hell of getting our own place as a 1 bed flat was beyond our reach.

I was shot down on another thread pre Brexit pointing out that if we left the EU property prices would come down. I think the inference was if we left the EU no one could afford a mortgage as the interest rates would go sky high. I think that was one of the promises from the remainers.

The difference I see from people of my generation and people today is that nowadays people only seem to have one job. Dp and I were a bit extreme we held down multiple jobs for a year in order to try and raise the deposit for the tiny studio flat we bought. Because our salaries were so low we had to put down over 50% of the asking price in cash for a flat that the previous owners had painted the shower room and everything in it in black gloss paint.

I suppose to me I can sit having coffee dressed in £1 jeans from Primarks sale rail and my most expensive item I am wearing is a pair of trainers that cost £4 and next to me is someone in one breath berating me for being the generation that made sure her generation couldnt afford her own house and in the next showing everyone her boots which she had got for the bargain price of £200.

I have never spent £200 on a piece of clothing in my life.

Who's buying £200 boots??

Who's buying £200 boots??

Oh that is why people can't afford houses! It's the boots!!

The difference I see from people of my generation and people today is that nowadays people only seem to have one job. Dp and I were a bit extreme we held down multiple jobs for a year in order to try and raise the deposit for the tiny studio flat we bought.

This is another thing that does not translate well to modern life.

Even back when I started working (and I'm just about a millennial, al beit an older one ) Most jobs had fixed hours and days, and most people still had weekends and bank holidays off, so it was relatively easy to fit in a part time bar/waitress job (which I did!), because A: there WERE flexibile part time jobs in abundance, and B: your main job was usually pretty stable.

But now, a main full time job often requires evening and weekend work on rota, especially in jobs that used to be 9-5 so you had weekends and evenings free for PT work if you wanted. E.g. I have a friend who is a university lecturer, 15 years ago she'ld have always been out the door at 4/5pm. Now undergrad lectures can be at 7pm at night! AND she's expected to be available for marketing events/open evenings on a much more regular basis than in the past.

It used to just be doctors, nurses & police types who couldn't take second jobs, but now retail and admin and academics and all sorts are required to be available evenings and weekends and bank holidays in their primary job.

I had SUCH a cushty second job in my early 20s! I worked weekends and bank holidays in a posh restaurant, the tips were incredible, it doubled up as my social life because back then, hospitality staff had a free bar at the end of shifts. Nowadays hospitality staff are often on zero hours and weekends are covered that way. You won't get the job without being available and flexibly whenever they fancy calling you in, which you can't be if you have a main job.. besides which, your main job might call you in in weekends.. so..

Also, unskilled PT jobs were easy to get when I was 20. You could pretty much walk into a bar and say "got any work going?" and 9 times out fo 10 you'ld be collecting glasses an hour later!

Now there can be 100s of applicants for one unskilled jobs, and increasingly, previously "unskilled" jobs now require a BTEC or a NVQ.

It would be massively out of touch for me to tell someone in their 20s now to just do what I did. Its a different time!

I'm about to say something that will probably have the baby boomers saying "told you so entitled generation" and others satin I'm a snob. However I will preface it by saying I grew up on a sink council estate to a mother who worked minimum wage, we were working class, common, rough whatever you want to call it. Anyway here goes.

I don't want to buy the cheap 30k house on the council estate. I want to buy a house in a nice area. A house that reflects that I'm a professional, that I've "come good" in life, hell maybe to show that I've joined the dreaded middle classes. I don't care if it makes me a snob, to buy the cheap house on the rough council estate would feel like a step back to me. I can't be the only one who wants that.

Anyway flame away people. That might be what I want but it ain't what I'm getting and yes I feel a bit sad by that.

Again I totally agree with you Tinseltown. I always had a weekend job since I was 16 I was a waitress, I was silver service trained and i got all my first jobs walking in off the street saying 'do you need a waitress?'.
Then when I graduated and needed a job I really struggled to find a waitressing job, as in I couldn't, anywhere. They wanted someone who could commit to any hours and I couldn't because I was setting up my business and running classes on set days.

Depends on the council estate frikadelo. I live in a council estate now and it's lovely, the houses are also well built and have really big gardens.
The council estate I grew up on? I wouldnt live there for a million pounds, hence why the houses are 30k.
I literally still have nightmares about it.

True the council estate my sisters live on (in private rented houses no doubt bought for fuck all under right to buy) is lovely. House prices on said estate reflect that.

If you buy the 30k house the price will stagnate and you'll be stuck forever in a 30k house.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here about the possibly imaginary £200 boots:

I am in £20 boots this year, I'll be lucky if they last until feb/march. £20 boots at best have 1 full winter in them. I have a pair of £120 boots I bought over 10 years ago, I've worn them to death (except this year because my calfs are too fat [embarrassed] ) and they probably have another 10 years life in them.

A lot of the ways BBS are telling milenials to save money are false economies. My £20 boots won't be fixable when they break over the next 12-16 months inevitably . My £120 boots, if they break which they haven't yet, are made so you can take them to thomsons and get them repaired.

Same goes for cars and a lot of other things, a £400 car is a money pit! A newer car with a bigger initial outlay allows you to plan and manage outgoings better because running costs and repairs will be manageable.

A lot of things nowadays are designed to be beyond repair after about 5 years, so if you buy a 5 year old hotpoint it's got about 3 months left in it.. pay a bit more for a newer one and you won't have to pay out again

Very often, us milenials ARE making money savvy decisions by doing things that BBs think are frivolous

I understand not wanting to buy in the council estate frikadela. Back in 2000 when i bought my first house for £25k it was important that it wasn't on the council estate, not least because it was easy to sell on a cheap terrace and difficult to sell on an ex council house on the rough estate I grew up on. I spent my whole childhood growing Up on rough northern council estates.
I knew I couldn't afford to join the middle classes though, not when i was very young, single and earning £9k so a terrace was my best option for home ownership. I was very lucky buying in 2000 as I am now living on the 'middle class street' in a large 4 bed Victorian house. We never could have afforded this house had I not bought that terrace at the right time (and DH also bought a cheap terrace just before we met so we pooled funds within 18 months). I feel very proud when I drive home knowing that our sacrifice, hard work and a lot of luck has enabled us to get our house. There isn't anything wrong with wanting to do better in life and aspiring to 'move up' but we sometimes have to settle on just starting somewhere.

These threads always take a turn for the Marie Antoinettes if you wait long enough. I know people mean well, rather than deliberately trying to be dicks like one particular boomer upthread, but the stuff about light fittings, entertaining at home and second jobs is proving the OPs point for her pretty well.

I have more than one source of earnings , a home (just about) big enough to throw a party and a number of contacts who would, legally or otherwise, do a great deal of house maintenance btw. But it's possible to have all these things and understand why people who don't might be forced into spending more. And why being unable to do a light fitting yourself, entertain at home and have more than one job might be symptoms of the same problem preventing a person from owning a home, rather than reasons why they can't.

Frika you're dead right! You would have zero life skills if you bought somewhere you hated!

That makes no sense financially or just general life skills wise, some terrible advice on here that you're right to ignore

There is a cheap council estate about 10 miles from where I live. The busses have suspended their route through/near it because of "danger to driver and passengers" from bricks through the windows. You park your car there and chances are (if you're not one of the scary families who people give a wide berth to) your tires will be slashed by morning - so what are people who say "just by the cheap place no matter where it is" suggesting? That people in my area who are struggling to get decent housing should buy there and get taxis to work every day because the buses won't run there and you can't park your car there?

There are lots of nice (just not posh) council areas too that you can actually LIVE in, but prices reflect that. The rightmove bargain ones are not places you can easily live.

We bought our first house in 1987.
The "Thatcher Years"
House cost £23,000.00 and mortgage interest rate was 14.5 %
This was pre minimum wage.
DH works in building trade I worked in a small office.
We put down a deposit of £2,000 which we had saved hard for.
We had no luxuries such as cars or holidays but we did it, we coped and now nearly 30 years later we are still paying a mortgage albeit different house but we still don't have holidays or meals out etc. I would say we have just about managed but there have been times when things have been extremely tight. We didn't have rich parents nor did we have anyone to help with childcare (3 children) but we managed.

Tinsel Actually we rent half of our home out to keep costs down and pay the mortgage off early. We have shoe horned a dining table into the living area but the sofa is about 2ft from the TV which is mounted to the wall. We entertain at home knowing our home isn't perfect but it is our home and it is exactly where we are at. One day we will have a bigger home but right now, if we want to have an evening with friends, they come to us. Kids play upstairs in the bedroom and we sit at the table (squished) and enjoy the company and some wine.

We also went on holiday in January this year and it was the first time in 6 years. The previous holiday was cruise DH was give through work. We travel home of course but that isn't a holiday. Most of the time DH and I work and if we do take a day off it is spent taking a family member to the hospital or doing errands.

It also goes without saying that I do believe that if DH and I both had minimum wage jobs we wouldn't have an expectation that we could afford to buy a home. This is also where social housing fails to deliver. There is nothing wrong with renting. It makes a lot of sense sometimes, even if you have the money, to rent your home instead of buying. The gap is that there is now a huge shortage of social housing and there are people living in social housing who have no business doing so.

It also really saddens me that so many of the poor areas have horrendous anti-social behaviour that renders the homes to be extremely undesirable. I know in the North West a few areas that buses refuse to serve. I don't blame the bus companies but I do blame the police and our politicians for allowing this to continue.

It's funny bough tinsel about crime rates and personal safety on rough council estates. I grew up on a seriously rough council estate with a really bad reputation, it was practically a no go area at one point. However, it was when my mum came to visit me one day in my supposedly decent area that her car window got smashed in broad daylight. It was also in my supposedly nice area that I witnessed two burglaries taking place in broad daylight and had to chase off a would be burglar from my own house. I don't live in that area any more as the crime rates were shocking - much worse than the cheap council estate.

Renting in England does not "make a lot of sense". Its so unstable, unless you are VERY lucky you're looking at moving every year or two, and if you're unlucky, every 6 monts, and each move puts you on the back foot financially.

Ha ha! This sounds like my mother.

First off, getting a second job is fairly pointless. If you are paying a student loan off, and are a higher rate tax payer, you have a 51% deduction on that salary. So if I get the extra cleaning job at the weekend, the most I can probably take home is £40 for working ten hours. Is that really worth it?

Secondly, I understand that many boomers had to live in bedsits to save etc., but do you realise we do this now? I've lived in shared housing (essentially a bedsit) for ten years. I can't afford to rent on my own as it's so expensive, and am nowhere near a deposit (house prices having almost doubled here in five years).

I don't have a car at all, I know maybe three people with cars, none of them new. I don't own a stick of furniture because I move so frequently, things are unlikely to fit.

I go away on holiday to get away from my house - it's not a home, it's just a house. That I have to share with other people, who often move in and out so there's no consistency, safety or security.

Have you pointed the numbers out to your mother?

I have tried to help mine to understand that she could not have earned the million quid plus of assets she owns, based on her max. £24k salary. She honestly seems to think it's all down to her hard work.

Meanwhile, her suggestion to me is to move to places which will involve 3 hours a day of commuting. She thinks this is a fair arrangement for me, even though she obviously never had to do it.

Even my grandparents (90s) who were the first in their family to own (what is a very modest semi in the north west) can't seem to understand that I still couldn't even afford their house with my professional wage.

All very frustrating.