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?

dora, I just checked rightmove. In the entirety of Manchester, there are precisely three homes in the lower category you mention. And two are only that price because they're shared ownership!

So, um ... no, I don't really think you have a point.

It is possible for those without commitments (and able to live at home still) to save up for a deposit. My DH and I bought a house 5 years ago. In order to save up we:

• Lived with our parents
• Didn't buy the latest gadgets or have TV subscriptions
• Didn't go out clubbing (I know of people who go out clubbing several days each weekend, spending at least £60 per time)
• Didn't go on holidays

The people who are really unable to save up are those who have children, currently rent and/or have low wages/zero hour contracts.

In the 1960s a third of the average weekly income was spent on food.
In 2016 it's just 15%
Just thought I'd chuck that in for good measure.

It's all about timing, and currently the timing for buying your first property is shit. It was also shit in 2007 when house prices (in areas that haven't seen the current levels of growth) peaked; I know a couple who are trying to move out of a crap little terrace up north and have had to put it up for sale for £30k less than they paid 9 years ago. Way more than they have paid off.

At 23, we bought a small 2-bed in 2008 in the South West, just as house prices were swan-diving the month before the crash, then spent 5 years in negative equity. We did this by saving for a year in a grotty mouldy flat, the existence of 95% mortgages, and only needing £6k deposit (123k house). The same house is now worth £160k and you need a much bigger deposit, so if we were looking now we'd have no chance. Our current house has increased in value by £50k since 2013, and that's in a market town in Wiltshire, not Bath or Bristol. It is crazy.

"we only had a banger, these days they all want nice cars"
is nonsense. More false economies that don't translate to modern life
Since the 2012 changes to the MOT, a "banger" costs you more overall than a newer car.
My dad drove a car that had a hole in the floor! you could see the road LOL! You simply CAN'T do that these days, it's not a matter of people nowadays being simply unwilling to.

kpo - yes, and you were also able to live with your parents.

I think there is an incentive LRD - I'm living in a house that would cost around £1100pcm in rent but my mortgage is £440pcm

Having said that, I only got here because I couldn't afford to rent in London so got on the property ladder then. It was going to be around £900 rent for a horrible bedsit so I looked at mortgages instead and ended up paying £750pcm mortgage for my flat in London. At the time my take-home-pay was only £1100 so the first few years were hard work, but when I see where I've ended up I feel lucky that I got on the property ladder when I did.

Incidentally I was 24 or thereabouts when I bought my flat just before the recession and I'm not in negative equity nor tied to a job I hate. I just had to make the decision to leave London when I got tired of living in my tiny flat and decided I wanted a garden.

I'm under no illusions that if I hadn't bought my flat in 2007 when I did, that I would be stuck renting like many thirty-somethings are.

Ok, probably moved on slightly but I bet (illcheck in a minute) that's there are 100s under 100k.

The post is trying to say that the majority of baby boomers did not have it easy.

That's not the point though, milenials aren't saying that it was a walk in the park for your average baby boomer, milenials are just saying that it was more possible for them.

And. It's not applicable to say "just cut back like we did", when the opportunities to save aren't as prevalent no matter how frugal you are

some people could cut back on lifestyle luxuries and manage to save a deposit in a few years. others would never manage asit is too far out of their reach. some don't want to manage as they want the lifestyle while they are young enough to enjoy it.

what gets me cross though is those who bleat on about poverty while spending a fortune on luxuries and can not see that they are luxuries. (takeaways, latest gadgets, nights out, more than one holiday a year, even things like not budgetting for the supermarket shop)

Dora lots of people could? Should? We are managing only because of the support network of friends/family we have living here on the outskirts of London.

And we didn't meet when we were young free professionals, it's not always as linear as that. I couldnt have foretold at age 21 as a pregnant single mother that I should move away from my family and job and start a life somewhere completely new because 10 years down the line it would be unaffordable.

There was something like 3000 hits for max 100k. So yes, maybe no longer as cheap as 75k but not out of reach for many people with zero chance of affording a home in the SE.

We have obviously lived vastly different lives, Wayfarer, or perhaps you only know all this from reading about it?

Third-level vocational courses and polys were considered inferior to university. They didn't confer a sense of entitlement. There was no expectation that any graduate would walk immediately into a well paid job.

What I remember most from the 15% interest rate days is living on lentils for over half the month. Was it good for tax relief? Probably - can't remember - all I remember is running out of money because everything else was so expensive.

I didn't give you any rubbish about expensive tastes of the young because I agree with you - things are vastly cheaper now. I was just remembering a skirt I bought in 1975 that cost £8.99 (high street) - quite a reach on the 23p an hour I was earning from my Saturday job at the time!

Of course boomers had a record player and Beatles albums, that was all they had. I had a record player and Bowie albums, and later a cassette player which was actually a birthday present from my parents as stuff was sooo expensive. My point was these memories don't alter much. I know stuff is cheaper now, and young people can easily afford it - it's just harder to get your head round if you've had to scrimp, hence the comments. I am not defending them, just rationalising.

INeed - oh, yes, I know that mortgages compared to rents are attractive. I just mean, I think so many of us look at the actual situations people end up in, and feel worried.

dora - ahhh, I see. 60k or 100k, it's pretty much the same, right? Your argument still stands, just give or take 40k ... because that's nothing?

Give the game up. You made up a figure. You don't even know within 40k of the actual prices.

And as a digital curtain twitcher, i.e. a reglular right move browser I can tell you with absolute certainty that the under 100k properties in my not-london town are all low lease cash buyer only properties.

If you HAVE money you can make money by buying a low lease dump, buying a lease extension, and decorating then flipping it

If you have scrimped together a deposit, those properties are not an option.

(since we're all decamping to rightmove to find uner 100k properties - look for leaseholds, if they don't say "long lease" - they're not for mortgage buyers. Not only that but a lot of houses are now leashold too!)

Maybe Tinsel but it was not possible for us to buy a better car. As we lived in an area with little public transport, and none to DHs work, we bought what we could afford. It cost £35.
I don't regret any of it. Not do I resent what others have.
We had a good time and a good life and still do.
I do appreciate how difficult it is for people today, nor am I expecting them to live by my example, but get fed up with those who assume we all had it easy.

Fair enough LittleWing but for me the absolute priority after university was getting on the property ladder. If I'd been on my own I would have taken a job 100s of miles from anyone I knew if that was what it took. I get that for some people being close to family once they have children is important to them but many people have many years of work before they're in that position. We worked with couples who thought we were mad to leave London and all it had to offer to live in dreary old Northerville. Yet we came back with a deposit and they were still renting. That meant that the naughties boom benefitted us more as we were further up the ladder.

I was basing it on what we looked at 2yrs ago when looking for a BTL. So yes, figures clearly out of date but not plucked out the air. Still, you said Manchester was expensive and I was disputing that. I still dispute that. Like any big city it will have cheap areas and very expensive areas. But it's certainly more affordable that the SE and there are jobs in the NW and Birmingham and Glasgow.

And I'll say it again, it's not that BBs had it "easy", but they did have "options".

The option to have to make do with a banger because it allowed you to have your own home isn't an option that's available to many Milenials at all

Also another point to the rightmove decampers: low leases aren't the only

These threads make me laugh so much. I have a second hand iPhone, we live in a rented flat filled with second hand and donated furniture, we have a tiny telly, we don't have a car.
I haven't been on a foreign holiday since 2009; DP hasn't been abroad for 15 years.
We do have a laptop each, a decent broadband package and pay for Netflix, but that works out much cheaper than going to the cinema once a week.
We take packed lunches to work, haunt the reduced section in Asda, batch cook and freeze meals. We think we're it because we've got a freezer, as in previous rental properties we haven't had one.
DP is currently supply teaching, which is precarious. No sick pay or holiday pay. I have three part time jobs, because I can't find a full time one. We barely see each other.
We're still only just breaking even each month. The idea of saving for a deposit is a fantasy at the moment.
Don't tell me I don't know about scrimping and saving or hard work.

dora, I didn't say Manchester was expensive - I said it was more expensive than Chester-le-Street.

You obviously don't understand why 60k and 100k are not the same amounts, so I can see why you don't realise the significance of that comparison, either ... but just think about it!

40k in house prices - or, buying in one area not another - could make a huge difference to what people can afford, and to what the job market is like in the area.

The bottom line is that more expensive places also tend to have more well-paid jobs.

Third-level vocational courses and polys were considered inferior to university. They didn't confer a sense of entitlement. There was no expectation that any graduate would walk immediately into a well paid job.

Er - nursing training? Teacher training? Accountancy (not chartered)? All examples of the non-university careers which, in fact, did actually get boomers jobs in the 70s which were in real terms better paid than young people can expect now. Young people who will have paid up to 60k to universities for the training that boomers took at polytechnics for free....

..the same polytechnics that all converted to universities in 1992 under the Major government. You think that someone studying a degree in education and a PGCE somewhere like John Moores University, Leeds Met or Sheffield Hallam and paying 60k for the privilege isn't aware that their parents could have done the same teacher training for free in 1975 at the polys, FE and diploma colleges they were then?

You think those kids think they are getting a sweet "entitlement" to a great graduate deal? No, they don't. They are f-ing furious at you all. I teach university students every day who know exactly what crappy deal they are getting. And they're hopping mad about it, and about Brexit, and about house prices, and they aren't stupid. All your "we hard it so hard! with our interest rates! and no microwaves!" rhetoric doesn't convince people in their 30s and 40s, and it really sure as hell doesn't convince people in their teens and 20s.

I'm afraid that it's you who are blinded by your historical position to the difference between the boomers' advantages and today.

One of my daughters had a very old car. It had a matte finish as all the paint had worn off.
To start it she had to sit in and rock it.
She somehow managed to keep it going for 5 years, by luck and judgement, despite being able to spend more than a minimum amount on it. She learned how to do simple repairs on it.
That was 5 years ago.

'Stuff' is a lot cheaper nowadays, hence why people have more of it. My dear old nan always marvels at how cheap baby/kids clothes are now compared to when her dc were young and their only option was a 'specialist' shop like Mothercare. Same with things like nappies. I feel lucky in this respect as it means I can buy a months worth of nappies for my 18month old for just over a fiver and that's a bloody good deal.

BUT I can totally see why people would rather spend a little money to have a bit of joy in their life when they know that even if they saved that money it would still take them years to have enough for a deposit and by that point chances are the goal posts will have moved again meaning they'd need to carry on saving for another few years - and so the cycle continues.

It's not so much about not being willing to make sacrifices but more about realising that even when those sacrifices are made it still won't get you any closer to owning a home. I am mid-20's and everyone my age who I know, that owns their own home got their with help, either from parents or via luck - one friends partner already had a good chunk of money saved up so when the time came for them to move in together they could go and buy a house without much thought. For the rest of us owning a home is a long way off and the majority are not living frivolously by any means.

My son is hoping to do an MA soon after working several years to pay off his BA.
I was looking yesterday with him at unis in the eu which teach courses through the medium of English.
Some charge no fees, others are very low. The Netherlands was up to €2,000 a year for his course.
Often the cost of living is cheaper in other countries.
Flights are usually cheaper than train fares to go 100 miles here. Where I live it costs £50 to go to London.
He didn't know about this and I wondered how many people here are aware of it.
Maybe I'll post this elsewhere also but like him others will have to get in quickly before Brexit.