To wonder whether house prices/rental will ever return to realistic levels?

[worlybear]

Just that really.
House prices are escalating and there seems to be no chance of them ever stabilising.
I can't see how my family will ever be able to afford to live in their own places.
One son works in London and commutes from Kent -he earns a good salary in the city but cannot even afford to pay for a house share.
All his finance goes on travel. His job is not available out of the city so relocating isn't an option.
Financially I'm not able to help him and I just see his future getting more and more grim.
He doesn't want a mansion just somewhere to call home.
I know he's not alone in this situation but the fact that he is earning a decent wage but is unable to afford to rent seems outrageous- do you think the housing bubble will burst?
I know prices fell dramatically in the 80s and stabilised the market but tbh there are more people chasing fewer properties now.

Without something major happening, I can't see the situation improving in the short to medium term.

We need some big changes to the country for anything to change.

No I’m not convinced they will unless the population dramatically reduces. I do own my house but trying to move onto our second house is possibly harder than when we bought our current house 5 years ago.

At the risk of sounding like a total arsehole

YABU because they won’t. It’s not the same as the 80s in any sense...

Also your son doesn’t need to live in Kent i manage a large overfamiliar three of whom are 20 somethings earning between 26-30k. They all live in house shares in zone 2-3 living costs plus commute is between £500- £750 a month. Even with student loan they have a grand or so to piss up the wall...one is saving £500 a month the other two have maxed out their overdrafts by the 5th of every month

That should read

i manage a large overfamiliar Team, three of whom...

I also don't understand why he needs to live in Kent and commute if he's on a good salary? He should be able to do a house share easily.

Can he rent / buy a small flat rather than a house if he wants to live somewhere affordable. Maybe one in the less desirable end of town. I'm only 30 and I've nearly paid off my mortgage by living in the part of town that no one wants to live in. South Essex so still commutable to London.

House shares in zone 2-3 cost £500-750 when I was doing my PhD in the mid-90s. Where do they live that is that cheap????

House prices are not “escalating” that’s a fact.

pdf.euro.savills.co.uk/uk/spotlight-on/spotlight-residential-property-forecasts---autumn-2017.pdf

Wood Green. Our first house share was £415 a month including bills. For two of us. Working in the city. Saved a bloody fortune

Housing has always been expensive. We got used to expecting a house each but that was not the norm, Unmarried daughters stayed with parents, elderly widows moved in with married offspring. Adult sisters lived with you if parents dead and they were unmarried. Many children slept in one room - families of eight in three bed, no bath houses. Families frequently shared a kitchen and loo with several other families.
We want so much more now, (rightly), but it is expensive.

House prices near/in London are unlikely to come down because of supply and demand.

I also can't work out why your son can't get a house share if he is on a decent wage? The commute into London isn't that much.

There are half a million empty houses in the UK

There are over a million second and holiday homes in the UK

Housebuilders have planning permission for 450,000 houses they have not yet built

THere are enough empty bedrooms owned by pensioners to house every homeless person in the UK

But as rates bills do not penalise empty or underused houses
in fact rich people get discounts if the under use their home
then it will never change

if land taxes were brought in then the rich would stop stockpiling property and prices for people who need to live somewhere would fall

I lived in SW London (zone 3) in a house share 2 years ago and it was £650 inc bills - I’m sure he could share if he wanted to? Having said that, I wouldn’t do a house share again if you paid me

One is lodging in a two bed in someone’s spare room, one lives in what I would describe as a fairly grim single and the other lives with about 8 people. They are in the south east though which is much cheaper than north or west - new cross hither green and I can’t remebr the last place.

actually thinking about it I was living in primrose hill in a nice two bed (I had a double bed) for £600 bills included in 2006

Where the hell were you living for £750 in the mid 90s grumpy4squash???

the other lives with about 8 people

I'd rather stay in Kent with my mammy too.

Depends what you mean by realistic and what era you want to return to. Today I saw a house for sale in the local paper for £375,000 and I know for certain that the earlier owners bought it from the council for about £9,000 in the late 1970's, because it belonged to my best friend's parents.

Twenty years ago my house was worth about £50,000 and it is now worth about £250,000. My household income hasn't even doubled in that time.

My son works in an industry where they get paid fuck all (creative) and he could afford to live in London.

It's never going to happen until Right to Buy is scrapped.

At the moment councils are never going to build social housing with this scheme in place, which means that most people who need housing cannot get low cost housing. As these people still need housing, they have to turn to private landlords who can charge what they like as there are always people desperate enough to pay the high rents.

I'm in zone 6 and see both rents and sale askings dropping, the last 3 months in particular - and that's with a pitifully low number of available properties too. I think things will be a bit easier for your son in a year or two, as long as his job is stable

No, for 3 reasons :

1, Uncontrolled mass immigration has fundamentally altered the balance of supply and demand for housing.

2, It is politically impossible to build enough new houses to restore the balance of supply and demand to previous levels.

3, As we saw in 2008, the 'big 6' mortgage lenders are too big to fail. The government and the Bank of England will not allow a house price crash to happen, because this would trigger a wider economic collapse.

I think in toppy markets there will be some adjustment & prices will stagnate for a while. Also interest rates will probably rise (slowly).

When ftbs struggle to get on the market things slow & where historically we have seen rapid price increases the flats ftbs buy today for 450k+ are not going to be worth another 200k in 3 years. Also many of my peers have been helped by parents (myself included) but then again depends on growth & in the future social care provision.

In terms of other jobs markets I think things are changing there too. for example Birmingham’s financial sector is growing. Jobs do pay less but when you factor in higher costs of living plus commuting it’s not always as bad as first appears. Out of my circle 1 friend has moved to Edinburgh, 1 to Bristol & 1 looking at Canterbury. They all have budgets between 800k-1m but want more than a 3 bed terrace with tiny garden & no parking.

I think we will see big growth in other cities as more young people leave London etc.

He doesn’t earn a good salary then, or he’s being fussy. Plenty of my friends on £20k can afford a house share.

In-work benefits subsidizing employment costs in London and the South East along with low interest rates.