To wonder how the next generation will afford houses?

[Ieatcake]

Around where I grew up in the south east many of my parents friends could afford a nice detached 4 bed house on one average wage and take early retirement.

Now even if you have a couple of doctors that work full time they can just about afford a 3 bed ex local authority house. Two people on average wages full time can just about afford a small flat, but thats at their peak earning power - how can they bring up a family?

I know it's cheaper up north, but there are less jobs there and it breaks familys and people apart if they have to move hundreds of miles away from where they have always lived. I've know people move and then regret leaving everyone behind and do want to move back.

We live in a naice village in the north west, an easy commute to Manchester or Liverpool. You can buy a three bedroom semi here for around £150k, a terrace for £100k.

Yes the south is crazy, which is why we left 20 years ago.

Many of us won't own until our parents die and they pass on the house (if they own it), that's assuming they even decide to leave the house to the kids or that there's no social care costs.

I'm lucky in that I'm an only child so any inheritance I get won't have to be split, but I'm also quite financially socialist and uncomfortable with the whole idea of inheritance so not sure where that leaves me. Renting forever probably! My parents don't have any savings to help me with a deposit and I don't feel they should be obliged to do that anyway even if they could.

I'm in London and self employed and share a flat with a friend with very cheap rent but I can't save at the moment due to my earnings being unpredictable. Probably wouldn't get a mortgage as a self employed person anyway, even outside of London. Sure I could make sacrifices like not live there or get a permanent job but I don't want to. It's a shame that home ownership can only come to the younger generation if they make big sacrifices in other areas of life, and even then it's not a given they'll be able to save enough. I'd support a cap on house prices but that would never happens.

Generalising the south east is a bit silly. We live in the south east. You can get a one bed for around 120-150. A 2 bed house around 160 and so on. It isn't too ridiculous. Plenty of jobs. Just over an hour to London.

I suspect we will probably help our kids out but we received no help. Just saved up.

save every penny of money given to kids for birthday, Christmas, etc.

But this again assumes well off families. If I'd saved every penny given to the DC they'd have about £100 each (13 and 11) and have had miserable birthdays!

Just because I said it's not impossible doesn't mean there's 100 of the things on right move

Barnard Marcus (auctioneers) have at least 5 under 20k at the moment.
Most of the cheap areas in Wales (which will be the valleys, rct, etc) have houses that have stood empty for a while or need updating because it's not exactly a real estate hotspot, so it's easy enough to pick up a bargain if you've got a bit of money saved and know where to look.

That said, I've spent 5 minutes on rightmove looking at between 15k and 40k

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-63554413.html 26k(guide price so maygo for less or more, but IME the guide price is accurate enough) , looks liveable but in need of work.

27k
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-69667355.html Not an auction, looks ready to move in.

3 bed, 29k, guide price though.
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-52294659.html

Set price 29k 2 bed. Looks a bargain
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-63638665.html

I've steered clear of the ones with only one picture of the outside (makes me suspicious tbh) but some on there are as low as 16,000. A lot of homes are auctioned off in Cardiff because that's the best way to get interest. Most people don't bother going up to the valleys to find houses. I'm glad we did though.
It's no London, but if you're that fixated on owning you'll do what it takes to get that. It's not like previous generations didn't do it. (My parents did just that, London and Ireland respectively to Cardiff so they could get work and afford a home)

Unless people have a fairly well paid job or their parents help out I don't think they have a lot of chance of buying a house even in the less expensive parts of the country. I have been expecting a big drop in house prices for some time but it hasn't happened yet. And a lot of younger people aren't prepared to live a frugal life in order to pay a large mortgage. And in a way I think why should they.

slothface as you say, you don’t want to move or get stable employment or change careers. That’s your choice: plenty of other people (including me) would choose to do those things in order to buy. Most good things in life take some sacrifice elsewhere. Life is all about give and take. I have a property, you have a career you probably enjoy much more and a more active and rewarding social life.

LifeofClimb
Genuinely not! We bought for 30k in 2012. My sister in 2017 (October of 2017 to be exact!) though admittedly she was a cash buyer, we weren't.
A lot of jobs aren't actually that London centric. You can get the same in Cardiff, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds. Sometimes even in other places but buy for a fraction of the price.
As I said, we commuted because there wasn't local work that we could do (it was trades, mechanics, work from home, retail or pretty much nothing) but that 35 minute commute still saved us a fortune and a half compared to living in cardiff. (We commuted to Newport/Cardiff respectively).
If your job is London centric then well, you're screwed. But I can't say I've ever met anyone who's job is London centric. More like they can't see further than Kent on a map of the UK.

I found this property on the Rightmove Android app and wanted you to see it: www.rightmove.co.uk/s6p/63647074

Guide price of 17 grand

Not everywhere is hugely expensive. I live in a city that is commuting distance from London (50 min train journey) and you can buy a 2 bed flat or terrace house here for £140k. The mortgage market is also opening up with many lenders now offering 95% mortgages again.

In the SE lots of older people downsize and gift some of the equity to their DC to help finance a house purchase. This also helps to reduce their IHT liabilities if they are in that bracket. The cycle of downsizing to fund purchases is keeping the market going.

Owning a house isn't a red herring!! What happens when you retire? How are you going to afford to pay rent? At least if you own your house by the time you retire you've somewhere to live without any worry.

Also people who are given the deposit by their parents pisses me off to. I had to work abroad for a year to save for a deposit. I had to make a real sacrifice and most of the people in my family of my age have had handouts. I guess I'm jealous but also I wouldn't have had my amazing experience abroad if I had it as easy so all in all.... different strokes for different folks isn't it

Oh gawd, the whole 'South is expensive, bit don't want to move'.

That's not the crux of the issue. Yes house prices are silly (including lots of places in the UK, not just the SE) but people's expectations have changed. As other people have said, it is possible to buy without parental help but usually involves scraping by for a while and saving massively (no expensive nights out / expensive phone contracts / cars maybe), possibly buying something tiny in a crappy area, moving to another part of the country away from friends and family and working your way up the property ladder. Thats what i did (in my 40s now) but some expectations have changed - some (obviously not all) people are prepared to make those sacrifices.

There are very few jobs that have to be in London or SE and i know all of the above is overly simplistic but if house buying is not necessarily unachievable - its a question of what's important to every individual & their priorities.

You are right @sunnypier I wouldn't want to sacrifice my career or social life to own a house in a region I'd probably have no friends or employment prospects. Unfortunately my career is one that can only really be excelled in in London, I have lived in a few other UK cities but this is the only place I've been truly happy and had a decent social life. If I gave all that up I'd be utterly miserable and the trade off just to own a house isn't worth it for me. I've never been particularly bothered about owning just for the sake of it and I have moral reservations about the way the whole property market operates, a safe place to live should be an affordable necessity not a profit-making exercise. but I also don't expect the rental industry to get the improved regulations it desperately needs because so many MPs are landlords

Totally agree namedchanged

It’s very easy to say ‘come live in wales for 15k’... but what if that’s not where your job is?

So why aren't the jobs there? The SE can't steal all the jobs and then expect us to feel sorry for them because basic supply&demand is operating on housing costs.
Spread the jobs around and house prices will become normal again.

Owning a house isn't a red herring!! What happens when you retire? How are you going to afford to pay rent? The same way everybody who doesn't own their own home does, of course!

Maybe they'll realise that renting is, and always has been, a viable option and that insisting that only owning is a total red herring!
Exactly
The UK is a country where every person's goal in life is to buy a house. In most other European countries, renting is a very normal thing all the way through adulthood.

slothface I appreciate that you appreciate that! I have a lot of friends working in their dream (low-paid) careers who are out 4-5 nights a week, but complain it’s unfair that they can’t buy.

For me (I had a very insecure upbringing and little money/family support) a stable though dull career and my own home is important.

I’d support rental reforms, ending Right to Buy, longer secure tenancies, more housebuilding etc too but agree it seems unlikely.

@sunnypier yeah, I am aware that if I vastly changed my lifestyle I'd be in a different position financially, I'm under no illusions that the way I live is not conducive to property ownership!

It's not impossible, if they want to buy a house they need to understand the sacrifices needed to do that rather than have an attitude that the world owes them a living.

We will help ours if possible but would expect them to work hard, not waste money and purchase a house pre children.

But the places where homes are most needed can't really be built in.
Land is £££ if it's there at all and hasn't already been built on, homes are built, knocked down and turned into mini blocks of flats etc just to try and cram more and more people in. So it wouldn't help anybody.
Whereas there are places all over the UK where houses don't get filled?

Parts of wales I've already mentioned but I went to stoke on Trent with a friend a few years back and we drove through a few streets where almost every house had a "for rent" or "for sale" sign outside it. Some with windows boarded that looked like they'd been empty for a while.
I'm not sure if it's still the same but a quick rightmove search shows 10 3 bed homes up to 50,000.
I'm not sure how we'd do it but I'd like to see more HQs , government departments (HMRC etc) moving out to these areas to provide employment. Employment = money money = businesses.
Maybe offering grants or tax breaks to companies willing to do this would be a good thing?
Don't know, freely admit I'm out of my depth here though knowledge wise.

Very few children get enough at birthdays and Christmas to make it anywhere near worthwhile saving it for a house deposit. Even if they got £200 each throughout the year that only around £4k by the time they get to twenty. And nothing for their birthdays or Christmas for 20 years. No I wouldn't appreciate this. And lots of kids get much less than this throughout the year.

Yanbu I only bought my house recently ish at 36 and that was cos of a windfall!! And it’s still only a modest house we’d never have been able to afford to buy and we earn about 40k between us so not like we’re on min wage

So We aren’t rich (obviously) so can’t help the dc with buying they’ll be knackered and I do worry about them 😢 they’re pre teens so I dread how bad it will be in like ten-15 years

We are seriously considering over stretching ourselves and building an extension with the view that they can just live with us indefinitely ...I won’t want them wasting money paying rent being ripped off by some btl twat

It’s an absolute fucking disgrace the state of housing in this country

Yellow I agree that purchasing your first property pre-children is key