Millennials in the house - what will entice you to save up for a house?

[AteRiri]

I read that millennials are all about experiences and not accumulating/owning things.

I'm curious...how can you be enticed to save up for a house?

I am actually really curious about what marketing tactics would work in order to entice this age group to save for a house.

I am aware salaries are low, the job market is hard, but how to entice to start saving. It does not mean they'd buy a house now, but how to get into that mindset.

A housing market crash

People not using property as investments

It's not about marketing, and you know it isn't.

You will find there's a culture gap. In some cultures young men have to buy a house before they marry (Indian origin, Asian origin, some Middle Eastern cultures) and parents will have saved cash especially to help them do this. When men marry young in those cultures they will have a house too.

We saved 15 thousand in four years on our wages we would have needed twice that for even the cheapest house in our area. I am now at university and childcare has taken most of that after the first year averaging £800 a month and that's with the university's subsidised nurser!

Camomila

I hope you get your house with garden soon! :)

Etymology23

So in that case, would you say peer pressure could work? If there's a service that lets you save up along with your peers, it would be more attractive?

JustKeepDancing

I'm not a DM journalist.

UppityHumpty

Sadly, not owning houses is the norm in my circle. We do live in a city though so maybe that's a factor.

CreamCheez

I'm like you. I'm probably going to purchase a house when I am sure I am in a place I see myself growing old in, though.

violetbunny

I also don't really know how true the research quoted in the articles are. Probably just in the sample group.

Whatthequack

Congratulations on your house! Well done!

NoLoveofMine

Goodluck in uni! :)

FunkinEll

Congratulations on the house!

Helenadove

I rent. :)

ninetyoriginal

I understand. Mortgages are really expensive nowadays!

Superpug

You know, you actually have a good point there. It must be the other way around then. Because experiences are easier to save up for, and quicker gratification...saving up for a deposit for a house you're gonna pay almost for the rest of your life does sound daunting.

I'm curious though...how to shift the mindset?

Well good luck finding an answer because even our government is giving up! They're encouraging build to rent not build to buy now:
www.gov.uk/government/collections/housing-white-paper

Agree with others - millennials don't all necessarily want experiences over things - it's just that housebuying is so unachievably far out of reach there's no point in saving to do so, so as a default spend their money on other things.

The only way to encourage it is to make it more achievable - if you knew you could share a grotty flat and budget for three years and would then have enough for a 10% deposit lots of people might do so. However if you could only achieve it by living at home for ten years then it's often too big a sacrifice or not practically viable.

Other issues are jobs - lots of younger people are on temporary contracts. There's little point in buying a house somewhere you won't be living in 6 months.

The only ways of helping people I can think of is regulate the renting market so renters aren't stung by huge fees for every tiny administrative task, and outsource more jobs out of london and the big cities/make it standard to work at home at least a few days a week so people can feasibly live in cheaper areas.

I live in a cheaper area and so know a lot of millennial counterparts who do own their houses but even so uppityhumptys experience of everyone they know over 24 doing so is very very surprising to me.

I'm curious though...how to shift the mindset?

Why does the mindset need to be shifted? In many other European countries, renting is the norm. I'm 30 and I don't feel the need to buy, because I am happy renting. As I'm not saving for a house, I am also able to put more into my pension, as well as having "experiences" not just for myself but for my children - e.g. this summer we're visiting DH's home country, which DD (5) has never been to. It will be a stretch financially and we wouldn't be able to afford it at the same time as saving.

It's an interestingly point that the government don't seem to understand why young people dont save up - case in point the recent help to buy isa which has been heavily pushed by them but in all the press I saw about it it never explained that you couldn't use the government 25% bonus on the deposit, only on the rest of the mortgageable amount. I know a few people who were stung by that, and it's ridiculous - it's the initial deposit that people need help saving, a £10 reduction per month on the mortgage is negligible to them - most will be have been paying more in rent per month than they will on their mortgage anyway.

What they want is stability, a chance to consider raising a family before they are too old, an opportunity to be able to retire in a house that is paid for instead of working til they drop, exactly what previous generations wanted. Only now that's called being "entitled". In the meantime don't begrudge them the odd treat, a holiday, a night out, these are the things were memories are made, and are handy distractions in future years when they will be stressed out and exhausted from all the "working their whole lives" they will have to do, which can't of course be referenced because they haven't had their lives yet.
I personally think we need to build a lot more social housing and affordable, actually affordable housing, affordable to people on low incomes not just average. Apparently that's a bit too radical though.

It's not about marketing, it's about market conditions that make it feasible to actually buy which of course you know

6 years ago I was on a small wage living in a city - not London. At the time the smallest shittest flat in the worst area would've knocked me back around 190k.
I was earning just 13k a year post deductions as a team leader in an unskilled profession
My grandparents in 75 had an income of 2.9k a year. They bought their 2 up 2 down for 8k. Around 3 times their income.
In the situation above I would've been buying for about 15 times my income.
If I'd bought a 2 up 2 down, so it would be like for like. I'd have been paying 230-260 depending on area.

Yes, but what I meant was, how to entice a millennial without much disposable income to actually start to save up for a house. It does not mean buy now, but save up to buy eventually. What marketing tactic would work, given that context.

In a nutshell....Baby boomers took all they could from the economy. Economy becomes poor. Prices rise, bubbles are created. Baby boomers patronise millennials for lack of ambition and drive and criticise them for not owning homes "like back in their day".

Irony right there. It's not lost on us, honesty it's not.

Oh and you're either goady or a journo.

There isn't a fucking marketing campaign to entice. How ignorant are you?

You may as well ask, "Gee how can we use marketing to entice people using food banks to shop at Waitrose instead? All we need to do is change their mindset!!"

It has zero to do with "enticing" or "saving." It's not some uncool thing like going to the dentist we need to be talked into. There is no magical "marketing" trick that can convince people *to do what they desperately want to do but cannot afford."

I don't know anyone who is not desperate to save to buy their own flat (not a house - a one-bedroom flat is the highest of dreams!) but frankly for most of us that's like being told we should save up to buy the moon.

I am incredibly fortunate that my parents own their home and I'm an only child. There's very little chance I'd ever get on the property ladder without inheriting. It is simply a fact that with my current job/career and disability status it is extremely unlikely I would ever be eligible for a mortgage. I had to lie and put a parent down just to be approved to rent a shitty 1-bed flat (the credit check for my current flat demanded proof that prospective tenants have minimum 3 months' rent in savings plus deposit plus first month's rent).

The average price for a studio flat in the area I have to live in for work and to be near my family and doctors is £150,000. And I could not live in a studio flat, I lived in bedsits for years and it damaged my mental health. But even a down payment for a studio would be more than my annual salary and I have to spend most of my salary on rent already so what am I to save? If I started earning much more I'd get hit with £20,000 of student debt.

I already save every spare penny, to be able to cover the (£2k) cost of moving which you often have to do regularly when renting, and to have a financial cushion if the work dries up or I get too sick to be able to work again. That's what the small amount I am able to save is saved for. Not for "experiences" or jetsetting.

And I'm doing really well, comparatively. I lived for years on £20 a week. Scrimping every penny. For many of us we could save till Doomsday, eat dirt and never go out, and still not be able to ever afford a home. If your salary barely covers your rent there's no marketing in the world that's going to magic up disposable income to put in savings.

I don't know anyone born up to 1993 who doesn't own their own house.
I don't know a single person born before about 1980 who does, apart from a couple who inherited.

I'm a millennial, still at uni. My degree (languages) will hopefully mean I'll travel a lot for work, so won't necessarily make buying a house my priority unless I had a windfall. I would still like to save and live within my means, making buying a house less difficult should I ever decide to put down roots. All very hypothetical at this stage though, and I'm not a usual case due to my choice of degree.

My son is 24 my daughter 20. Both of them are saving for a house as is everyone they know. This 'millennial aren't saving' thing is bullshit.

My DD is at uni and is already saving.
I think it's hard because there isnt the 100% mortgages like we benefitted from in the early 1990s. We didn't actually need a deposit.
Graduates generally are renting to find jobs so they have to pay rent and save, really difficult thing to do.

I'm a millennial and we have a house. It required 2 steady good jobs and a inheritance to save up a deposit. We were very lucky to have graduated before the recession - friends a couple of years later found themselves in zero hour minimum wage contracts and promised jobs had melted away. Average house prices here require 20k deposit plus fees. On top of paying 10% into pension, rents of 900-1200 pcm and student loans, I can see why it seems that you may as well spend an extra 50 on an enjoyable night out or towards a holiday as even if you manage to save 180-200 a month, that's 10 years of saving by which point prices will have risen again.

For a start, how about registering for a vote and actually engaging with those in power who could do something about the shit housing situation in the UK?

On the old side of 'millennial' and I've finally saved enough for a deposit. But that took:
a) getting a decently-paid and permanent job after a ton of fixed-term ones - hard to get a mortgage there
b) having a partner to save with;
c) inheriting some money.

For much of my 20s I didn't save to buy because I was renting and not earning much, so my saving priority was having a renting-is-shit contingency fund to cover the next time I needed to move, which always sucked up every spare penny I had. No extra cash to put towards pie-in-the-sky mortgage dreams. Nothing to do with wanting 'experiences'.