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.

Beyondthepage - good point.

Forgot to say, I’m the one in my former nuclear family, who voted remain. Boils my piss.

Yawn. It's nothing to do with generation.
You just need to buy a property BEFORE you have have kids and pay stuipid amounts of private rent - it's not rocket science.

You can't get through to people.

Why are people talking about massive deposits? We purchased our second house in 2014 with 5% deposit - our first house we barely broke even as purchased in 2007 with 5% deposit and interest only (despite spending lots doing it up) we saw the government initiative to gaurentee the rest over 5% and saved like mad for a year (despite paying childcare AND a mortgage) to get together a second deposit from scratch. My single friend bought last month with a 10% deposit. Baffled by this massive deposit nonsense!

Champagneandthestars
A small 1 bed flat in my town is £240,000 so a 5% deposit is 12,000 but obviously the interest rates are significantly better if you save a 10% deposit.

I guess its all relative if 12,000 is a lot to save or not.

I had enough for a small deposit on a one bed flat. For dd and i. I couldnt afford the monthly repayments.
I was single when i had the money. I relied on benefits to top up my income. I was working ft in education.
If i got a mortgage i would get no benefits so i couldnt afford it. I didnt see the point of suffering in a one room bedsit.

I now have a dp but we cant afford to live together. ( compkex) let alone save...so yes im very down.

When i got my deposit i did manage to get a slightly better job in the hope it would become permanent and i could get a mortgag but was bullied out ....nearly had breakdown.

£24, 000 for one person is a huge amount on 21k a year. You can't buy much for 240 in the area where i live. Its just the way it is, as i said before - my children will have to save and save ( one of them is and has small outgoings) and they will have to move out a bit, but still be close enough for work. It might be doable for him one day - he has about 9 saved up. I am not being negative, but its still hard going. I know lots of 27 to 30 year olds still at home with parents for same reasons. If your on your own it is much harder as well.
Moaning won;t do much, but it is a huge problem ( in my opinion). 12k is more realistic for a deposit granted, but, on his own, he couldnt then pay the other costs and bills, its not just the mortgage to pay for on a place is it? Those are all pretty huge too. No wonder single folk are put off!

Introducing CGT on homes as suggested upthread could cause an even bigger housing problem.
Many people won’t move house if they have to give a chunk of their equity to the govt as they won’t be left with enough equity to move on to another home. If less people are moving then we have even fewer homes available to buy and supply and demand means the available homes become more expensive.

I see, that sounds really tough, I hope you’ve managed to keep the cash and will get a permanent position soon.

As a self-employed person, I got a self-cert mortgage for my first flat back in 2000. They don't exist anymore. I don't know what young self-employed people do now, but as manager of 150 self-employed people, I know they're not buying houses without substantial help. % rates don't come into this.

Yawn. It's nothing to do with generation.
You just need to buy a property BEFORE you have have kids and pay stuipid amounts of private rent - it's not rocket science

Exactly, too many want the world on a plate but aren't prepared to work hard to get that. They want chidren, a stress free low hours job and for somebody else to hand them a house.

What if young people can't get on the property ladder before their fertility declines?
People are buying latet and later??

Many bb did have kids and had stress free low hour jobs...and a house!

YellowMakesMeSmile

Exactly, too many want the world on a plate but aren't prepared to work hard to get that. They want chidren, a stress free low hours job and for somebody else to hand them a house

I couldn't agree more. Such entitlement.

What if young people can't get on the property ladder before their fertility declines

Given you can have children upto around 45, if they are not on the property ladder by then chances are they won't ever be as they won't get a mortgage past retirement age.

If they can't then they just rent, it's not a right to own a house so if they don't want to put in the hours whilst they are child free they then can't moan they don't have a property of their own.

well...... I'm just greatful I don't have to pay 15% interest on my new mortgage and lucky that I managed to get on the housing ladder when I did.

Everyone has a point here but going back to the OP - it's like you want an apology or something? Yes houses might have cost 4k then but people were earning a lot less and I don't really think that's the main point but rather that the general standard of living was miles from what it is today.

I work almost exclusively with millenials (I'm mid 40s) I'm always hearing the whining about 'not being able to afford a house' but let's look at what's going on right now in my office that wasn't going on in the 1970s. This is based on conversations within the last week:

• 3-4 weddings a year that involves stag/hen dos to Ibiza etc. and new outfits
• gym memberships in central London
• Avocados and lattes and spending on lunch every day. I rarely see anyone bring in a sandwich
• Grooming - nails, hair, waxes, lotions and potions way beyond what that generation ever did
• TV, Broadband, Phone subscritions alone around 5-600 per year

I could go on. 98% of my office are also university educated and did not pay for that themselves.

** 3-4 weddings a year that involves stag/hen dos to Ibiza etc. and new outfits

• gym memberships in central London
• Avocados and lattes and spending on lunch every day. I rarely see anyone bring in a sandwich
• Grooming - nails, hair, waxes, lotions and potions way beyond what that generation ever did TV, Broadband, Phone subscritions alone around 5-600 per year

Clichéd bollocks.

Some bored people here looking for a pointless argument?

BrownLiver- that's the point of most social media, no?

BrownLiverSpot

Agreed

Yellow
Fertility declines substantially from 35 onwards. Hence the increase in ivf for older women. Baby boomers had their children earlier and for the most part were able to get on the property ladder.

Brown
Aren’t you a ray of sunshine.

Mairead
Did you read the part, where Goldilocks said these were actual conversations she had with her millennial colleagues? As in irl. Looks as if they live those cliches.

Can millennials afford to buy a house? Possibly yes.

Can millennials afford to buy the type of house, in the location they want in the condition they want without giving up all the niceties they've become accustomed to as part of standard lifestyles. Possibly not.

It may not be what you want to hear but its never easy to buy a house. I was a Gen X/millennial cusp so not a baby boomer but whilst friends went to uni (free!) Partied and ran up debts, I worked and bought a house and went to college in the evenings. The house was almost derelict in a very rough area and cost 3 times our joint income and we couldn't ever afford to go out especially after the interest rates went from 3%to 8% and doubled the mortgage payment.

Flash forward 20 years and those houses are now worth 5 times the value. It's just luck and inflation and oh I wish I'd held onto it now it's worth that much...

Yellow, there is not argument to be had. Property is less affordable now. All the Bb’s I know had kids in their late teens/early twenties, so claiming gen x could afford houses too if they didn’t have kids in their 20’s is a bit disingenuous. Very few of my peers have kids yet and we are 30. Most people I know who have waited until past 30 have struggled with fertility issues. I don’t think it’s fair to expect our generation to make a choice between having a family or a home? One starts to seem pointless without the other (if it’s a family you want).

I've contributed to these threads lots of times, pointing out the risks of losing a class analysis (i.e. the gap between rich and poor in each generation is much more significant than the gap between current living generations). I'll just say two things here. One is that I'm immensely sympathetic to younger people who will never, ever get on the housing ladder. it really is shit and they have every right to be furious about it. The other, though, is that the argument weakens when posters start saying that EVERYTHING is tougher these days, including free university education. Mass higher education is really recent - only 3.4% of the population went to university in 1950, 8.4% in 1970, 19.3% in 1990. So yes, free university education but most of the population didn't get it.

Mummyoflittledragon, I don't know who Goldilocks works with or how many people she's commenting on, but the 20 yr olds I know work hard, buy second hand everything, bring sandwiches to work and struggle to pay their rent. These are real, talented, motivated energetic young people. The only 'avocado people' I hear about are in newspapers or social media.

name changed for this as DSis may be on here......DSis and DBil have been getting fed up with DNephew and his fiancée (both mid 20's) moaning about never getting on the housing ladder. They rent a one bedroomed flat in a Scottish city and both have pretty good jobs, fiancé is a nurse and DN works in IT. They go abroad for 2 weeks and several long weekends a year, eat out often, go to the pub with friends, and generally spend money like water. DBil told them if they saved hard for a year, he would match their savings, with the proviso that the savings were for a deposit on their own home.

The 12 months were up in December and they'd saved £14K. They still went to Spain in the summer, out for a meal regularly, but they stopped buying crap and generally just started to pay attention to where the money went.

They are looking at buying a 3 bedroom townhouse (newbuild), and with their £14K, and DBil's additional £14K, they've got a deposit of well over 10%.

Now, while obviously this wouldn't work in the SE, it's perfectly possible in many other places in the UK - even without DBIL's generous donation they would still be able to put down a deposit of £14K and afford a nice 2 bed flat. And yes, there are young people who won't earn as much as this young couple (approx. £50K between them), there are a lot who will.

I don't really know any babyboomers who do this, but I don't know that many people of that generation well from the UK. I will say that my house was bought for £600 in the 60s when I believe there was still a busy industry round these parts. It was £132k when we bought it last year (and a bargain at that as it's seen as a rougher area!) I cannot believe that the interest and inflation can put me and that person on the same footing.