To think these baby boomers are missing the point?

[Hundredacrewoods]

I grew up in an area where house prices have quadrupled since 2000. I consider this an intergenerational equity issue. Whenever the topic of house prices and 'millennials' comes up with my parents' generation, all I hear is how hard they worked and how much they sacrificed to get on the property ladder. AIBU to think that they're missing the point? No one is denying that they worked hard and sacrificed. The point is that if they worked just as hard today, and made the same sacrifices, it wouldn't be anywhere near enough.

Everyone from London will just set up somewhere else. They already are... Manchester... high speed train... growth in many other cities. A spread of the work wealth, a bit like it was before the 'Boom Years'.

Join the exodus, get ahead of the game!

Move back in 20/30 years, when the whole cycle begins again!

So you had a cushty upbringing and didn't envisage hard times? I, a baby boomer, lived through hard times and planned accordingly. It wasn't the benefit of hindsight, it was the benefit of foresight.
That's the difference in generations
Yeah. You tell them.
Us baby boomers know what hard times are. We know what hard graft is. Life for us was soooo difficult. No matter what you 20/30s think is tough we had it 10000000000 times more difficult.
We didn't do no education. Some went to university but for most of us it was the school of hard knocks. And they were real hard. So hard.

Sure we had job security and a pension and reasonable house prices but that's nothing. We CHOSE to have gruel because we know eating gruel was character building. That's the difference. We COULD have had toast but then that's using what you have yo feed yourself. No. That won't do. We just knew that eating toast was extravagant. Why have bread when you could have gruel and talk about your hardships in decades to come.
Character is the difference. You younger folk know nothing about anything.

Eeeh when i was younger we'd take a mumsnet chicken and it would last us a month! Nowadays you come on here and people are pathetic saying it only stretches a week. Amateurs. You don't know the value of anything.

You lot sit with your plastic straws but we knew hardship and once we'd got 24 meals from the mumsnet chicken we would hollow out the bones for straws. Recycling thr good old fashioned way. Thr hard way. We know all about thr hard way because our life was hard.

The point is that average house price in 1980 was £22,600 - just under 4 times the average annual salary of £6,000. Yep, when many home owning households still relied on a single wage

Today average house price is £211,000 - which is almost 8 times the average salary of £27,000. Yep, when most households wanting to be home owners have 2 wages, fewer SAHMs.

What's that old saying about things expanding to use all available resources?

bib but the interest rates were three / four times what they are now.
Plus a couple could only take one salary into account. So your debt was just over three times your mortgage at high interest.
Now you can take twice the average wage into account - at low interest.

bib but the interest rates were three / four times what they are now.
Plus a couple could only take one salary into account. So your debt was just over three times your mortgage at high interest.
Now you can take twice the average wage into account - at low interest.

What I'm waiting to hear is the screams when interest rates eventually rise again

I'd hope nobody wants a return to the ridiculous levels of the 70s, but a decade of almost zero rates hardly seems sensible either; worse still, it's gone on so long that many have come to consider it the norm

It will probably be painful, but at least a moderate rise to something like the historical average of 4-5% might do something to adjust house prices

Yanbu. I'm in my late forties and so amongst the youngest to get a free university education and 'easily' affordable housing. I know I am lucky in that respect. My parents were both born just postwar and walked into jobs the day they left school so didn't experience hard times either.

Maisy You do know that neither you nor the others who try to explain how they had it worse make any sense at all.

Every generation has it hardships, and its opportunities.

I look at those who find not owning their own home to be almost the very end of their world and can only think "But what about the amazing opportunities you do have that previous generations didn't have in their youth? All that education, travel, wider horizons, communication that is almost instantaneous and worldwide, leisure, food, clothing and all sorts of commodities that are so common you barely think about them?"

The focus on home owning seemingly distracts from all of that. Maybe today's world is too throwaway so much of it isn't valued fully. Or, maybe it's just the new version of the Baby Boomer thinking!

By jove, I think maisy's got it!

I think your generation was sold a pup by Blair. He led you to believe that if you all got a degree then you would all be above-average. That was never going to work, was it?

In 1980, were the majority of British homeowners single earner? Households had different earnings potential. What's more, the interest rates were MUCH higher.

I just had a browse on Rightmove & found loads of London properties for under £170k. They might be houseboats or flats in areas with social problems, but they are still there.

Median household income (in London) is said to now be £39k. That will include a lot of people in social housing, of course. Resets the multiplier to buy a starter home in London to ~4.5x median income. Note that BoE interest rate now in 2018 is 0.5% ... instead of the 16% in 1980 (!!).

Anyone paying a mortgage in 1980 care to comment on what rate they were paying on their loan back then?

They didn't experience hard times? Seriously?
Your mum won't have been paid equal pay, and in some industries were asked to leave when they married! (Nurses)
Limited contraception so they were terrified of having baby after baby...
Limited education - I remember when girls were not thought worth educating..

My parents were both born just postwar and walked into jobs the day they left school so didn't experience hard times either Fuck! I actually have no idea where to start with that!

Yes, things were very different in the '70s from how they are today. So different that it's difficult to make fair comparisons.

The world was a different place. Most people did not live together before marriage, so they weren't usually forking out loads of rent whilst trying to save for a house deposit.

We had a much, much lower standard of living than nowadays. When DH and I brought our first house (which he moved into a few months before we married and I moved into after we were married), we had not a single piece of furniture. Nothing. Zilch. We picked up the keys from the estate agent and those keys were all we had. The house had no central heating and no heating of any kind upstairs. There was a coal fire in the sitting/dining room and a coke boiler in the kitchen that heated the hot water. It wasn't an old house; it was built in 1970 and we bought it in 1978.

When we were first married, we could barely afford to live. We dined on "bread steaks" (thick slices of toasted or fried bread) and baked beans as the end of the month approached and money was tight. We had no new clothes or shoes. I bought clothes from a 2nd hand shop, from jumble sales and from charity shops. I used to knit sweaters from cheap wool bought in the sale (knitting your own stuff in those days was much cheaper than buying ready made).

Relative to income, most items were more expensive then than they are now. Interest rates were high - and climbing, so the mortgage repayments kept going up and when we couldn't afford to increase them, the mortgage term went up. We owed more on the mortgage after 2 years of repayments than we had at the beginning!

Another issue is the banks are a lot stricter when it comes to lending & you need to have much bigger deposits. The days of borrowing 5x your income with 10% mortgage or interest only mortgages are gone.

Anyone paying a mortgage in 1980 care to comment on what rate they were paying on their loan back then?

14.8% was my highest - taking my mortgage payment up to 76% of take home pay.

Today average house price is £211,000 - which is almost 8 times the average salary of £27,000. Yep, when most households wanting to be home owners have 2 wages, fewer SAHMs.

Well duh, obviously; because unless the household has two wages, there's no way they're getting on the property ladder.

In 1980 a couple would have the option of getting on the housing ladder on a single salary. That is not an option for the vast majority of people nowadays.

Seriously people, bear in mind that comparison is the theif of joy.

^ aaah, thief not theif

lljkk My parents bought their house in 1982 for 60k, I think the highest interest rates they ever paid were 13%.

CuriousaboutSamphire
I was taking the piss.
All generations have their issues and challenges.
I've bought a house in my 20s. It's doable but only if you are fortunate enough to live in areas where house prices aren't ridiculous.

What annoys me about a certain type of baby boomer is the way they love going on endlessly about how bloody awful their lives were and how people in their 20s/30s would have their shit together if only they didn't go to university and stopped having a costa once a week.

(Plus lets be real, a reasonable chunk of people who go to crap unis and get crap degrees are only there because governments wanted to make the unemplpyment stats look better so thr more they can shove into full time eductard the better).

Curious I am talking about my own family which I will know more about than you.

We had a much, much lower standard of living than nowadays.

Well for some it is pretty rough.

'A 3 bed house will set you back £500k for which you will still need a £70k deposit.'

In what part of the country? £500k will buy a really nice5 bedroomed detached house in my part of semi-rural South Yorkshire.

In the past you could not get a mortgage based on 2 salaries. Banks worked on the assumption the women was going to have kids soon and stay at home, even if she had no intention of that.

I bought a studio flat in London for £45k in the late 90s. It was 3 x my salary then. Last seen on rightmove for £210k. My salary is not £70k now so, no, I wouldn't be able to buy now and the same applies to the house we own now.

We were fortunate to be buying before the market got ridiculous. But someone is buying the properties at the bottom of the market, hence there has been no burst bubble (yet).

I feel so sorry for the youngsters today trying to get on the property ladder especially as renting is no longer the cheaper option that it was when I first left home.