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?

I'd just like to point out that Luton is not the only affordable place within commuting distance of London. There are some more appealing places too!

I'm living where I live now because I realised I'd been priced out of London. Being in London, single, earning less that £30k isn't fun (and I know there are people earning a hell of a lot less than that).

So I looked at a map, looked at RightMove and worked out where I could afford to live, that looked nice and where I could still get to all my commitments in London. Best move I ever made.

Yes, dora but ... you lose your job in London, you are at least in the right place to find another.

You lose your job in Chester-le-Street/Derby/Falmouth ... not so much.

Wayfarer, and some of us know your life and are no longer that young. So no clean divides. 9-5, I wish.

Eh??? Both DH and I work in professional jobs, both have done stupid hours on many ocassions. Both of us in our 40s so your argument doesn't wash.
As for the second jobs, we both did long hours but both mon-fri so we could both cram in pub and cleaning jobs at the weekend.

And I'm not sure what the hell yourd talking about re the Luton comment as I personally have never mentioned Luton on a thread before tonight despite only living 20mins away. So your ODFOD comment sounds a little highly strung.

London always takes over these threads . Yes, we know the cost of property is higher there. But not everyone lives there. Nor are all rentals damp houses of horror.

LRD, yes indeed, but more chance in Birmingham, Manchester or Glasgow I'm sure.

Tinsel I love your posts on this thread, and how passionate you are about the unfairness of it all, even though you yourself have your own home. flowers

We do and we're very lucky, we do still get asked by older relatives "don't you WANT somewhere bigger?" oh NO, we'ld HATE to have a spare room - WTF is going on in their minds that they don't filter that guff?

Most of our furniture is from house clearance stores, really lovely solid wood stuff that cost next to nothing.

That stuff is SOL-ID! Proper heavy! You'ld need removal men to move it (the bigger bits were delivered by the clearance shop people). I wouldn't have that stuff if I was renting with the possibility of having to move being sprung on me at any time. It's not rocked science to figure out why people trapped in rental buy more generic throwaway new stuff - most of them would LOVE somewhere where they could build up a collection of eclectic second hand pieces!

And sorry Dozer but they did get your freedoms. I am in the middle of this generation gap and just old enough to remember how it was before the boomers changed everything.

"I have certainly met people who claim to be desperate to buy but not willing to forgoe holidays, tech, cars and stuff in order to do it."

Because it wouldn't be enough. You need many thousands for a deposit

^ THAT THAT THAT!

The choice for most isn't holidays or deposits
The choices are no deposit & holidays, or, no deposit & no holidays.
Why would you chose the latter? that would make NO sense?

I mean your social freedoms, not the freedom gained by the unimaginable sacrifices of the war generations.

Plus those bad old boomers and their "free" education? Only 2-5% of people went on to third level education.

Not true - closer to 15% went to university; but a LOT of boomers actually benefited from tertiary-level education in the further education and polytechnic sector (plus workplace training). Remember that tertiary level education covers everything from higher-level workplace training to courses that used not to be degree courses but are now provided by universities - eg. in courses such as nursing, teacher training, surveying, bookkeeping and accounting, and many many more. When you add all those boomers to the university-educated ones, the total tertiary-educated percentage of the cohort comes out at nearly 40 percent - only a couple of percentage points off the percentage of the cohort now doing tertiary education at university.

That's before we get into the interest rate rubbish - interest rates in the teens in the 70s and early 80s were actually dwarfed by up to 25% levels of wage push inflation which actually eroded mortgage debts in real terms, so those 15% interest rates were FANTASTIC for boomers. Plus up to the end of the 80s they had MIRAS and other mortgage interest tax breaks which made it even better. The one they all burble about is the six months in 1990 when there were 15% interest rates - largely cushioned for people on fixed rates and over v v quickly. Plus compare 15% of 100k with 5% of 300k....hmm, the same.

Finally, spare me the rubbish about the expensive tastes of the young. Consumer price deflation of goods made in Asia has meant that electronics, clothes etc. are far less in real terms than in the 70s and 80s. Travel is the same (at least within Europe - not to last much longer of course!) So the percentage of income young people spend on these things first of all looks far bigger than it is. Secondly, the ONS cohort spending statistics show that it is actually boomers who currently spend the largest absolute and relative percentage of their income by a LONG way on cars, travel, consumer durables and the service sector (eating out). Funny how boomers are always bleating about young people going out for drinks and on holidays when actually the real stats show that boomers themselves spend FAR more than young people do! (Of course they do - they have far lower housing costs and are largely paid more, so they spend disproportionate more than the young people do.)

And no, they didn't all scrimp and save during the postwar period. You show me a boomer who didn't own a record player and a clutch of Beatles albums (far more expensive as a percentage of average income at the time than a smartphone and a couple of downloads today) and I'll show you a great big fibber.

dora, well ... yes, but those are more expensive, too. The point is that you trade security for affordability. There isn't a magic place where the houses are wonderfully affordable and there are loads of jobs.

Just a few comments.

Bought first house 2 down 3 up in 1977 for 10K, yes 10 grand!

Still have it now worth £450K Tell me how any young couple could afford that?

This one £160K in 1995 now worth 1.5 Million.

Collected a few others over time and rent them.

Its neigh on impossible for most all young people to buy nowadays unless up north in Rotherham or similar but there's sod all work around there so i hear.

So the young have given up on the house owning dream so they spend on other things.

Its not a political hot potato yes the government could alter pricing release off more land and change the law to encourage more family housing less executive 6 bedders and the like, but it ain't going to happen any time soon.

And no i don't have sky TV utter waste of money anyway I have a 100 quid Motorola phone 16 a month SIM only, no apple iphone crapple here thanks:!

The first house I bought would now cost £60k to buy. The house price issue is an issue in some places only.

My mum is a baby boomer and (I think) so am I. My parents were never able to buy their own home, so mum has rented for the past 60 ish years. She wasn't able to go to university as her parents made her leave school to go to work at 14. She only ever had shop or factory work, but she was never out of work apart from when she had to stop when we were born - no automatic right to return to her job after having a baby back then. Dh and I saved like crazy whilst living at home with our parents and managed to save a deposit for our first house and to pay for our modest wedding. When we got our first mortgage we could only have a joint one if we were married or getting married within six months of the mortgage application. We only drove old, second hand cars. The only new furniture was what we were given as wedding presents, otherwise it was all second hand. Black and white TV. No video recorder. No microwave until after DC were born. Holidays a rarity. Crazy mortgage rates and low pay awards. Neither of us able to go to university as our parents felt it wasn't 'for the likes of us'. Our dcs had the opportunity to go to university, one did, one didn't and, though our income was low enough that they were awarded grants and bursaries, we still helped out where we could. We help them now by only taking a bare minimum food contribution from them. I still have to work. Do made redundant and due to age, finding it almost impossible to even get an interview.
It breaks my heart that my two are basically waiting for us to die before they will be able to get a deposit on a property but I really don't think it fair to blame that on a particular generation.

LRD, they can be but the point is there are many less desirable areas still very cheap in these cities. In Manchester you can pay 60-75k for 3beds or 650k for 3beds. Likewise Glasgow. So you can live very cheaply somewhere you can likely get work. Cities such as these often have very regular public transport too which of course you won't find in more provincial areas.

Dora come off it, every single thread on here on boomers and house prices, someone always comes on and says we could all buy a house for £100k in Luton. If you're not the person who always does then it's a hell of a coincidence.

All of my friends who bought homes were given deposits by their Baby Boomer parents. It's the norm where I come from. And the root of the property crash here. I'm the only one who hasn't bought a house. My parents are wealthy, I'm certainly not... I put myself through college, paid for my own wedding & don't want a mortgage. My folks are self-made, but they do understand how it's different for me & my sister. She asked for a deposit & is now in negative equity...

Both DH and I work in professionally regulated careers and we could certainly both find work in those 3cities.

I just don't think there's much incentive.

I'm sure I shouldn't feel this way, but I look at people my age who bought in their early 20s, before the recession - they're either in negative equity, or they're tied to jobs they hate in areas they hate.

People I know who proudly said how well they were doing aged 22 or 25, are now stuck wondering how they will cope with the costs of raising their children, because they can't easily move. They depend on being near their parents for childcare, but their parents are in areas where the jobs are not good. It worries me.

I worked out a while ago that if I save £500 per month for about 8 years I could get together the deposit to buy the house I grew up in (the first house my parents bought). I'd be 28/29 by then, not too bad right?

That's provided that house prices stayed where they were. But, in the year and a bit since they sold that house has gone up by about £50k.

Not to mention that I can't afford to save £500 per month any more as my parents started charging me £300 to live at home and I have a£600 per month train ticket. So no my phone barely makes a dent, I'm planning to buy my self a nice new iphone to cheer myself up.

I dream of being able to buy a wreak, I grew up learning the diy skills to look after and fix a house myself. It's a shame that I'm unlikely to get a chance to use them seeing as in a rental I wouldn't be allowed to even improve things.

Yes I agree Tinsel that it was easier then to get a very grotty, damp bedsit, heated by a paraffin heater, in London. Even in an area so well known for prostitution that I usually got cars stopping and men accosting me, often several times, when I walked home.
The house we bought in the NE, in a former mill town, would never have been snapped up by a property developer. It was in a depressed area and the area is still depressed today. Probably more so.
A developer would not have been able to make any money on it if he had to pay wages, factor in his time and buy materials. The same goes for the other houses we owned.
The post is trying to say that the majority of baby boomers did not have it easy.
We also had to make big sacrifices to get on the housing ladder. No holidays, no eating out, even when we used the car we had to work out if we could afford the petrol first.
I made all our clothes or they came from charity shops or jumble sales. All our furniture was second hand. We didn't have a phone or TV.
DH needed the car for work. I used to walk everywhere to save bus fare.
Also that we weren't all just trying to buy the most expensive house we could possibly afford and accumulate wealth.
Yes we were lucky and got free university education but growing up in the 60s many of us were idealistic and wanted to give something back.
People expect more today and perhaps they should but does it contribute towards not being able to afford a house ?
Probably not in most areas near London but in other, less expensive, areas possibly.

Nope, 100% not me. I just made the assumption (wrongly I'll admit) that you must be in London as you said you couldn't afford to buy within 75miles so I put a 75miles radius around London and tied it into rightmove. The 2 places that came up with most properties under 150k were Luton and Dartford and as I live in St Albans I used the example of Luton.

That's true about baby-boomer gadgets. I was born in 1970 and my parents always had a record-player and later record / radio / cassette combo. My grandparents had them as well. And an awful lot of records, even though none of them especially liked music; they were more of a status symbol.

My siblings all bought houses on modest salaries (18k-22k) back in the 90's when houses prices in the central areas of our city were around 50-60k. The same houses are now worth 400-800k.

I'm always being told it's hard work buying a house, implying that my dh and I are lazy. They all have more than 3/4 houses let out too bought just before the recession hit. How did they buy BTL's on modest salaries and deposits but I can't?! It's fucking ridiculous.