- to be fed-up of people thinking that my generation had it easy regarding housing?

[PUER125]

I often read comments on Mumsnet, saying that housing was affordable in a way that it isn't now.
If we take todays mortgage of £200,000 at 3% interest, a repayment mortgage would cost £11,376 per year. This equates to 42% of the average UK wage of £27,000.
In 1990, having left my husband whilst pregnant with my second child, and buying him out of the marital home, my mortgage was £40,000 and the interest rate 15%. Repayments were £6144 per year and the average wage was £13,760. This equated to 44.65% in mortgage costs.
And whilst I am having a rant, I am also fed-up of young people complaining that they will have to work until they are 67 before they can claim their pension.
With the majority of young people going to university, they don't enter the work force until they're 21, giving them a working life of 46 years.
My generation left school at 16/18, and we too shall work until we are 67. A work life of 49 years.
Earlier generations started work at 14/15 and retired at 65, a working life of 50 years, many of them worked in manual labour.
Each generation has their own difficulties and hardships. I shouldn't like to be starting out now; nor should I have liked to belong to an older generation.
Whilst being a single-parent, working full-time, was not easy, I coped; just as countless women before and after me have.
Can we please have a little more understanding of generations other than our own, instead of the resentment so often found on these pages?

I read somewhere that if wages had risen in proportion with house price inflation average salaries would be in excess if 70K . no way could we buy our 220k home now on a combined 30K salary.

Oliversmumsarmy it's not misinformation, where I live, you could NOT buy a house within commutable distance for 200k. Nowhere even close to that. Maybe 350k at best. So where do our teachers, nurses, binmen, etc etc etc live? Unless on a dual income or HA housing, they couldn't even afford to rent within 10 miles!

I'm 34, bought my first house last year. For us the big problem was getting the 10% deposit together whilst renting. Both my and my husbands parents have been quite sympathetic and have said it was a simpler process when they bought their first houses (80s presumably).

I'm sure every generation has its struggles though, I don't think it's ever been 'easy' to buy a house but as I say the deposit side took us years, and we got a standard terrace house, 2 bed...we could have got a bigger house according to our wages but saving extra money on top for the deposit would have took forever!

Was talking to someone yesterday who didn't get the price they wanted after 18 months on the market so they are now looking to borrow from that house to get a deposit for somewhere else whilst renting the original house out. Whatever they buy they will be mortgage free due to the massive increase in prices in the last decade. They're not even 50 and have a good job so why the urge to be mortgage free when they could just drop the price and get a small mortgage to pay off instead, without the hassle and expense of being a landlord? I don't understand the reasoning other than greed and they're definitely not the only ones thinking that way

Again? Weird! SO many absolute statements based on opinion and the perception that somehow life isn't fair!

The reality of all this inter generation angst is that some people, some newspaper, politicians etc love to distract themselves and others by blaming others for having been born at a different time

It is ludicrous, helps nobody and no conversation that includes such stupidity ever comes up with any ''solution' to the perceived problem, mainly because we haven't invented time travel yet!

There is a solution: stop looking to others to 'blame' for the effects today's financial reality has on you as an individual and concentrate on living as well as you can. Why make yourself miserable focussing on things outside anyones control?

Whilst each generation does have it's struggles, I do think things were much easier when I was 20 something, around 25 years ago.

I only had to save £3500 for a deposit and at the time was earning £30,000, to buy a £70,000 property.

Nowadays, to buy the same property you'd have to save around £50,000 ie 10% of £500,000, but the salary for a similar job now would only be £45/50,000.

So I do think my generation had it easier. Not through any fault of our own as we weren't to know how things would pan out.

The question we need to focus on is not who to blame for the situation now but how to improve it.

I think wages need to rise DRASTICALLY. I am shocked that what I was earning 25 years ago is still considered a good wage now. And the disparity of wages between the CEOs and ordinary workers is shocking. I read somewhere that CEOs used to earn around 20 times the wage of the workers, but now it's more like 120 times.

Companies need to be forced to pay their workers a better wage, which in turn would make housing more affordable. Although of course we need to build more houses (not £1 million pound apartments) but that will take time.

Curious - who is blaming anyone? People are just responding to a pretty provocative original post that was in denial about the differences in housing affordability for different generations. They've simply set out the maths to show that what the OP says isn't true.

TerfyMcTerface, my post wasn't intended to be provocative.
I was merely pointing out that life wasn't a bed of roses for my generation, and gave an example with the high interest rates, of some of the difficulties faced.

But surely some of these young people will also benefit from price rises?
For example I am in my 50's with 2 DC in their 20's. Last year my mum passed away and I inherited money (200k) from the sale of her house. This is currently sitting in a savings account to be split between DC when they want to buy their first house.
Yes I know some peoples money will be swallowed up in care fees and some parents will spend any inheritance on cruises and fast cars.
But sure a good proportion will pass onto their DC?
We also have to remember that not everyone lives in London. A 'starter' home where I live costs about £150k so my DC will only need a £50K mortgage which is easily affordable for a couple on below average wages.

Yabvu

We bought in 1989

We got a 100% mortgage. Our 2 bed house cost 68,000. We only need to save about 3,000 pounds for solicitor etc.
Today people need to save tens of thousands of pounds for a deposit and fees.

They have it much harder than us and I feel very sorry for them.

Puer I think you’ve demonstrated exactly the opposite of what you intended!
Seems like you had it very good indeed. So just be grateful eh.

Bought a house in 1980 in the north for £9000. My salary was £1080. So 8 times my salary.
Sold a few weeks later as dp got a job in London.
Bought another in 1982 in London. Cheapest studio was £17000 so 8times my salary.
Our multiples 3x dp salary around £2000 and once time mine meant we had to save up over 50% of the cost of the place.

All these people talking about average salaries in the 70s and 80s etc have to remember that for everyone who earned more there were huge numbers who didn't.

"and that milennials will be the first modern generation to have a lower quality of life than their parents "

That depends on where you live and your income group.

I grew up in Liverpool in the 70's/80's, the quality of life in the area that I grew up in, is a lot better. Even taking into account food banks, there isn't the sane level of poverty about.

Buying a house for many was an impossible dream, that's why everyone was easily convinced that buying their Council House was the best thing to do.

Oliversmumsarmy it's not misinformation, where I live, you could NOT buy a house within commutable distance for 200k

But you said you couldn't get a place for less than £200000 in vast swathes of the south East. But you can get places.

Apparently over 4000 places according to rightmove

Bought a house in 1980 in the north for £9000. My salary was £1080. So 8 times my salary.
Sold a few weeks later as dp got a job in London.
Bought another in 1982 in London. Cheapest studio was £17000 so 8times my salary.
Our multiples 3x dp salary around £2000 and once time mine meant we had to save up over 50% of the cost of the place.

With respect, those were unusually low salaries for that time. The average wage in 1980 was £6000 (and higher in 1982 and in London). And you still managed to buy.

I think attitude was quite different then.

I don't think I expected to own a house. If you had been working for a few years and started complaining that you couldn't afford a house people would have laughed at you.

Nor, whilst you were single, did you expect the luxury of your own rented property, you shared with others.

I worked in the NHS and could JUST afford to run an old banger, but didn't have foreign holidays, just stayed at friends'.

Although, not counting having my pension age moved later twice, which must have messed up their sixties for many women. Things were much better in later years, thanks to DH moving into management, and the rise in house prices, if you are fortunate enough to live in the SE. And who'd have guessed that pensions promised to people expected to die in their sixties will still be being paid in their 80s.
We are lucky, but no one expected to live this much longer. Actually at the time we were 20s 30s life wasn't That easy - it is now thanks to the reasons above. But we didn't know that at 20. So if we are told we've had it easy, we have, but the thing is we didn't know that at the time so probably worried about money like they do now.
We don't know life in their sixties/70s will be so bad for the young now. They think it is but perhaps in later life the fall in population will mean their 60s, 70s 80s is pretty good. Proper health care and nice elderly housing.

Birdsgotafly, I'm talking about the generation as a whole. Clearly there will be some exceptions but for the generation as a whole it's a fact.

Beanteam - it's nothing to do with people renting on their own (in fact record numbers of adults are still living with their parents) or going on holiday. It's how the market is, housing is just becoming less and less affordable for most. Maybe things won't be so bad for this generation in 30 years' time, but right now they have it comparatively much more difficult than boomers did in respect of housing, and it's not because they spend more on other things. That's just fact.

My mum is 67. She was a teacher just like me. She bought her 1st house with a mortgage on her own after 2 years pf teaching. She had enough for a deposit. After 2 years of teaching I had a lot of debt. She started working full time at 22, stopped at 50. I started at 24 and now have a 30 year mortgage at the age of 35.
She now owns 2 houses. It's not the same.

They do but I wasn't in London area in my 20s and early 30s initially so houses weren't overpriced and we still couldn't afford much.
In fact we moved to SE at the end of the 1990s boom, and had to triple our mortgage. Not fun.
But stayed their long enough to benefit from the rises in the early 2000s.

Share prices have fallen so perhaps there will be a correction in the housing market, it's long overdue. Not so much incentive for foreign buyers/ buy to letters if the prices are stable or falling.

Op, it's the deposit and salary to mortgage ratio required that is the sticking point. The first flat dh and I bought in 1992 with a £10,000 deposit was £110000 it is now worth £525,000. Your need to be on salary of over £100000 and have £60,000 saved to buy that flat now. Lots of London the south East and increasingly much of the south west are unfortunately out if normal people's reach .

These threads always make me chuckle.

People quote "average salary is £27k but property is at least £200k+ you'd never afford it"

You know that while this may be the norm in London/the south it's not for the necessarily true for rest of the U.K. right??

Where I live very few people rent, most people buy because property is affordable, so OPs point is very much valid in this part of the country!!

The “majority” of young people don’t go to university OP, that’s either badly researched or a lie

The average wage in my county (not SE) is about £20k. Average house price is £270k. It doesn't matter how many expensive lattes you forgo. Where we live, the housing market is distorted by (baby boomers buying) second homes and people downshifting.
Someone makes a point up thread about how future generations will eventually benefit from the housing boom through inheritance and that's true, for some people. It's been true for us to an extent and will probably benefit our kids too, because we come from reasonable affluent families. But that's the point. It perpetuates inequality.

I do t think we had it easy. I'm 46 and owned since 23. No uni worked from 18.
But I do think the younger gen have it much harder than we did for houses especially in my area. South east.