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.

I think that is the general lot of 20-somethings whatever generation they are from!

No it isn’t. My parents, and most of their friends and neighbours and similar-aged families, had their own houses or were at least saving to buy when they were 28. My parents had two kids and a car by then!

Things have changed and housing availability has changed for the worse. It isn’t ‘inter-generational screeching’ to point this out and think about solutions!

We rent. Income of £60k. Mortgage calculator says we could be offered max £270k, advisor said probably more like £250k. Probably couldn’t get a house here for that, so for a £250k flat we would require a £25k deposit and the repayments would be £1270 a month for 25 years. Rent here on a 2 bed flat can be anything from £800 pcm (grotty) to £1300. Houses are £1000-£1600 pcm, even more in the posh areas.Which makes it tricky to save any money for a deposit to buy a house.

I can totally see how people can afford to buy if it’s really cheap to rent and to buy where you live. When I was visiting relatives up north I was staggered to see you can rent a house for £300 a month, or buy a house for £100k.

I did buy once years ago and our deposit was £4K, we just sold our car and saved up for a bit and that was it, we had our deposit. Was easy to get a mortgage then too.

Next door have just sold their 3 bed detached, £470k. They bought it 12 years ago for £280k

Okay generalexpert, but plenty of people now are doing all those things and still can’t afford a house. Because houses are more expensive now.

Did you read a pp saying 67% of their income was spent on mortgage payments? I don’t think it is possible to even comprehend that

I can quite imagine spending 76% of my pay on mortgage payments if I'd tried to buy a house by myself, although of course that's completely impossible for most people these days who need at least two salaries to have a chance.

It's strange that you single out young people for "being horrible to old people", when it's primarily a reaction to many innumerate old people claiming over and over that they have made 6-figure housing gains entirely due to working oh-so-very-hard and young people now haven't "achieved" the same because they're lazy and spend all their money on caramel macchiatos. I'm pretty sure many rice-farming peasants in China have had a harder life of work than your typical boomer but strangely enough they aren't now sitting on a half a million quid worth of assets.

53rdway, i completely agree with you. What is the solution though?
All i ever hear about on political programmes and on the news is Trump or Brexit - housing is hardly ever mentioned or featured. It is splitting the country into 'them and us' ( the renting thread on here goes into that a lot more)but nobody seems to care or want to do much to address the issues that face a lot of young people right now. i dont have the answers either, but maybe more awareness on the news or radio might spark some debates?

The days of borrowing 5x your income with 10% mortgage or interest only mortgages are gone

Which in many ways is no bad thing

I realise it's not as simple as this, but at least some of the "housing price pain" might have been avoided, had it not been for irresponsible lending

FaFoutis I imagine there are other sides to those stories. Mmm, nope. It's about deciding that you have to have everything there and then, and not wanting to compromise on new furniture, on how your newly purchased house looks, running over budget on renovations and relying on bank of Mum and Dad to stump up cash and then not wanting to repay it, as there's another child on the way. These are people with degrees, supposedly with some degree of common sense, and with one of the partners in a profession with guaranteed prospects and a well defined career path should one choose to take advantage of that.

You know who has really surprised me on this subject?
Ben Goldacre. Mr Good Science.
He went on and on about it twitter. nothing nuanced about his stance.
ALL middle aged people had it easy wrt to housing and ALL younger people had it hard.
I love being lectured by someone who is pretty much the epitome of privilege in this country.

Nah no working class people ever struggled to get housing if they were born before 1980 and no twentie something can afford to buy a house anywhere.
Old people are selfish.
Apart from him. He is down with the kids.

Economic models I looked at maybe a year ago suggested the next dip in house prices will be around 2025. Idk if this will be affected by the train smash that is Brexit. I don’t doubt that house prices will drop and drop significantly at some point in the next decade.

You should visit housepricecrash.com, full of people who have been saying house prices are going to crash for nearly 20 years, and are in a worse situation than ever for having waited. The government (of whatever colour) seems intent on propping up/increasing prices at any cost, last time house prices looked like they might gently decrease they brought in the madcap "help to buy" scheme to hand out big fuck off government-backed loans so that more cash was available to bid-up house prices even more.

agreed The80s. I think we need more houses, more social housing, more job opportunities outside cities, more security in private rented sector. With so much wealth and people’s pensions tied up in houses it’s hard to see a rapid house price fall not causing chaos and fury - probably best we can hope for is for prices to level out and wages to start catching up.

Well do you really expect them to get it though. It's like a Harvard professor talking to a brick layer about how hard he has worked and expecting the brick layer to understand. They simply have completely different understandings of what hard work means. Likewise, baby boomers don't really get what modern hard work and sacrifice entails. They don't really have the same experience of the 24/7 work day re smart phones etc. They don't get that going for coffee once a week won't make any difference re saving up for a deposit. They don't get that it costs more to rent than to pay a mortgage so most of your incobe is swallowed up putting a roof over your head. They don't get that making a compromise on the house you buy no longer means buying a slightly small somewhat dated house in a less desirable part of London, it means buying a shoe box new build 1-2 hours commute on an expensive train in a new build housing development that is so poorly connected that you have to buy a car as well. You can't reasonably expect them to really understand the problem unless you explain it to them.

I’m generation X so I think I have the best of both worlds really.
I had free uni and my parents had bought their house in 1983 for £19k (now worth £500k) on a single income. This meant that they were able to give me money towards a disposit as their income had risen but their mortgage payments were about £150.

I have a great deal of sympathy for the millennials. House prices around here have risen considerably (I bought my current house for £160k 5 years ago, it’s now worth £250k).

I can see why boomers are harping on about them having mobile phones etc but they don’t seem to understand that having a phone and internet access is vital to getting and keeping a job.
What people forget too is that back in the 60s there was little in the way of cheap furniture. Before Ikea and to a lesser extent Habitat most furniture was much more expensive so yes people did go without and sleep on the floor etc, but you couldn’t buy a bed for the equivalent of £100 then.

Also I didn't have a mobile phone of my own until 2006 and no smart phone until 2010, in my late thirties well very few people had them then given that the first iPhone was launched in 2007 and the first android phone in 2008. I know. It seems a lot longer doesn’t it.

i totally agree, its shocking how its got to this - selling off council properties didn't help matters and ( in my humble opinion) split the country as much as Brexit has- just taken a lot longer to achieve over many decades.

The issues that face young people right now also face older people right now.

Interest rates are being kept low to boost spending and the economy (why save it if it erodes with inflation). This means many people are asset rich and money poor.

Brexit may be a trigger for interest rate rises - and lets face it, rates can pretty much only go up anyhow.

There is a tipping point somewhere much lower than in the 80s where interest rates will only have to go up a few percent and we will have housing problems like you would not believe.

When people have no savings to fall back on, have maxed out on their mortgage payments - what happens when rates go to 7% - not just to owners - but renters too.

The days of borrowing 5x your income with 10% mortgage or interest only mortgages are gone

And those who were of an age to buy when that was possible have now benefited from years of super low interest rates.

Being risk averse, not buying in the early noughties with a 100% mortgage is probably the worst financial decision I've ever made!

Surely in most areas people can recognise that houses are more expensive now.

The average price of a detached house here in January 1995 was £95,000 and in May 2015 it was £450,000. That's an increase of 376%

-moving 100's of miles away from my home town and family (bad unemployment)
-living in flat shares with 5+ strangers
-no holidays other than a few days in a tent
-ran the cheapest 10yr + old car I could
-worked in deepest darkest Siberia to make some more cash
-moved into a wreck of a house and spent years doing it up

You seem to have missed the point of the thread. I will explain it for you.

For most millennials in London what you describe (apart from buying a wreck) is called 'normality' not 'making sacrifes'. Only you don't get to buy a wreck at the end of it because living like that no longer allows you to save but simply allows you not to accrue debt!

When people have no savings to fall back on, have maxed out on their mortgage payments - what happens when rates go to 7% - not just to owners - but renters too.

Which is exactly why I have just switched to a 10 year fixed rate which will see me to the end of the mortgage.

As for the house price crash I remember us wanting to buy a flat when we lived in Brighton in 2000. The cost of the flat was £60k. We waited 6 months for the crash by which time it had gone up to £90k. We gave up and left Brighton.

eggsonhead, even if you do ' explain it to them' they still ' wont get it' i'm afraid! I'm not an overly intelligent person myself, but i totally get the problem, other people simply don't or dont want to,for whatever reason.
As long as 'they are okay' its sod everyone else.

Apparently in 2017 the average price paid for a detached house was £690k. Up from £450k in two years. It’s ridiculous

Olga81 Same here, I would be in my forever home which now at 1.8m are too out of reach.

we also have the situation of inflation being miniscule now... would be interesting if it went back up to the 15-20% of the early 80s.

Crikey 53rd I shall tell my grandparents, parents, myself, DSis, DH and his sibs, and all of the next generation that they all lived their 20s wrong!

I distinctly remember typing I think to denote my opinion my experience. It is so nice to be told, quite categorically, that I am wrong.

Does anyone have a time machine? I need to put right an historical inaccuracy

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

Au contraire. I think it gives (some) Baby boomers a great deal of pleasure to come out with such plums about how the millennials are snowflakes who spend all their money on coffee and don't work hard like what they did.

THAT is the attitude that's annoying and it is horrible and it's wrong and you hear it a lot in RL and on this thread. It's not whinging to say so.

It isn’t ‘inter-generational screeching’ to point this out and think about solutions! So go on... what is it that Baby Boomers should do?

What is it that anyone should do? What solutions are being thought about in posts like this?

I keep on pointing out that the hot air being blown on such posts is useless. I have now asked twice.. what should anyone do?

All that happens is that a bunch of people who have found a scapegoat come and moan about them. A debate starts and people get annoyed with each other... rinse and repeat!

At least I have offered a solution.. a simple one... just stop measuring your life's worth by your home owning status! Remember to acknowledge what you do have.