- 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?

The difficulty is paying off a mortgage. It's getting a mortgage in the first place. Renting cost even more than paying a mortgage-saving up a deposit is very difficult.

*isn't

I never think we get anywhere with these threads. Life is often hard for a lot of people over the course of a life. Deposits in the SE are quite high now (property is not expensive everywhere though the rented house my mother grewup in costs £50k today not too far from Sunderland - they could never afford to buy of course in her family, that was pie in the sky for the middleclasses only).

I have done comparisons with when I bought and it is very similar for my career and in outer London between 30 years ago and now.

Getting the deposit is very hard in the SE if you are in farily low paid jobs even with two salaries and even if you live at home (not possbile for many) or rent a shared room with your boyfriend.

Stamp duty is far too high although for some now abolished for first time buyers which will help.

In London: DH and I bought a 1 bed 2 recep flat for £28k in 1982, earning £9k a year between us. only had to put down £3k, which my dad gave us in lieu of a wedding reception.

Sold in 1990 for £75k, moved up to a wreck but 4 bed Victorian house with decent garden for £117k. Spent 7-8 years doing up and producing DD1; sold it for £365k. Cant remember our earnings for those 2 stages, but yes of course we were bloody lucky - both properties were wrecks, but DH had the skills to sort them out. There is no way our income alone would have allowed us to make what was a fairly normal progression for those days.

We moved out to the country; how our DDs will cope with housing in London if/when that's what they need god knows. Honestly, we had it really bloody easy.

Thank god for you Bluelady, I hope you have many friends of your age who think like you do.

Yolofish you ONLY had to put down 3000 in 1980. But that was 10% roughly. Quite a lot for most people.

My generation shat on those behind. How?

Unless you are on hell of a Machiavellian bitch then, like most people all you have done is live the life you were born into. Taken advantage of any opportunities that opened up and tried to avoid the pitfalls.

Are you a captain of industry? A major league banker? World Dominatrix? No?! Did you steal houses, money, opportunities? No!?

Then why the hell would you think that just by living you have done anything wrong? You have been emotionally blackmailed into thinking so!

I think each generation has its own difficulties tbh. My parents struggled with high interest rates, and nowadays they are very low. But these days, a decent house is so bloody expensive. I consider myself lucky - I bought my first home 15 years ago and was easily allowed a 40 year mortgage with no deposit. I’m also still benefiting from low interest rates, which have allowed me to make extra payments.

Curious noone is saying that living your life is the problem.

Of course our children will blame us for plenty - it's part of the reason that I try to do my bit for the environment and vote for those who want to do the same, because it is not ok if we live comfortably at the cost of the next generation having access to fresh water. Similarly I care for older relatives and vote for those who ensure we care for older people without funds for private care.

The problem is anyone - of any generation - failing to acknowledge the structural issues that exist for another, or just as bad, acknowledging them but shrugging their shoulders and saying 'well, not my fault I was born on third base'.

It is very important to put yourself into the shoes of your children and indeed everyone else and have sympathy for how things are both for the very old on a state pension only who turn off the heating and walk to the library to keep warm and young people but actually more importantly young families with small children who are pretty much caught in the middle and have now and always will have some of the hardest parts of their life with all the expenses of children and childcare and the hard work at home of having small children at home.

I do my best to encourage women to pick the highest paid work they possibly can and never give up full time work which alone tends to help them a lot and their own children and getting the best education they possibly can. Even if they do that life can still be hard. i also think people should consider the parts of the world I have family in like the NE and Yorkshire. They are lovely lovely places and housing etc can be much cheaper there. Also consider commuting for work - I had did it with small children - not easy but it is often the best compromise in terms of jobs and work and where to live.

beanteam actually I dont think our deposit was that much, but it was what dad gave us to cover other stuff as well, solicitors fees blah blah.

Oth we got stuffed over endowment mortgages and will prob have to end up doing equity release! c'est la vie, you might as well live it while you have it.

Also it is very hard to compare life now and 20 or 30 years ago. So many different things are there that it makes comparisons a bit pointless.
The first terraced house we bought in London 30 years ago sells for about £420k today.. 5% deposit ( yes you can still get 95% mortgages) whic is £21,000 deposit or about £10,500 per each of you in a couple. £10k is not that easy to save up even if you save for 5 years and sleep on your parents' couch but not totally impossible in some graduate careers.

No! You're still missing my point! I am probably not making it well, I keep getting side tracked, trying to defend/justify myself

The regularity and usual venom on many of the Baby Boomer posts is disheartening. Poster on each 'side' go on and on, that Monty Python sketch often gets a mention, and a lot of weird bile gets thrown at 'older people' and often back again.

failing to acknowledge the structural issues that exist for another yep irritating, but, as you acknowledge, it is done by many, not just 'Boomers'. And what real difference would it make if everyone who held that opinion stopped saying it? Would all world ill stop overnight?

I have asked before - what should the older generation do? One popular answer is 'Shut up. Stop telling us X or Y or Z' - hypocritical at best and who cares? It is words. Shows a truly small mind, a lack of empathy. Just as much if that is evidenced by 20 - 30 year olds, so I am not sure there is much 'casting of the first stone' to be done!

I don't deny ever generation is often targeted by the ones above and below. Sweeping statements are made by all. But why? What is the point? Moaning about it, getting upset by it does fuck all to change anything! But it does wind people up into nasty little balls of irritation... which does no one any good!

Shit like the NHS needs a united plan of attack... can we have that when the younger generation want Boomers to pay for their care yet still will their houses to them... older people want 'the Yoof of Today' to stop wasting their money on coffee, etc etc etc

Fuck, we can't even get the 2 different generations to agree that women don't have a penis!

I am disappointed... and fearful, of the repercussions of such sustained 'othering'!

I'm 27, so between genX and the millennial generation.

I went to school until I was 18, then took a year off and worked as a healthcare assistant in the NHS for a year on £13k. I lived at home, so saved about £9k of that. I'd previously worked from the age of 16 so had already saved about £5k.

I then went to Uni and was the last cohort to pay £3k a year fees rather than £9k. When I left Uni 3 years later I had £21k of student debt and about £10k in the bank. I worked 2 health care assistant jobs throughout uni on 0 hours contracts, hence I was able to save. I went to Uni is Wales so my loan covered my rent costs and my job covered bills and food.

When I graduated, my first job paid £16k a year. I worked my backside off to save up as much as I could (lived with DP's parents, he's now DH ) and after a year, I had a total of £20k in the bank.

I live in the peak district and bought my first house a year after finishing uni for £93k. Dp was on a 0 hours contract so we couldn't count his wage towards the mortgage, it was all on me. I put £18k of the £20k down as a deposit, so my mortgage repayments were low at £360 a month (ish)

I got promoted twice and then changed jobs in the last 3 years, so I'm now earning £35k, more than double my starting salary after uni. DH has a fulltime wage too, so in 4 years our HHI has gone from £16k to £55k and I've plowed every penny of the extra into the mortgage (better interest on it than in the bank).

We're now looking to move house out of our very low house price bubble (prices are low because of no train links/ it's in the middle of no where and a completely dead town) and despite doing everything right, we can't buy anything better than we're in at the moment in the area we need to move to for under £350k which is 6.3x our joint salary. I'm not after a mansion for that, we want a 3/4 bed due to future DC's. This new area is in the north so not SE or London. It's not far from where we are but it has the train station we need. We'll get a mortgage offer (hopefully), but it will mean no holidays, luxuries or £2.50 coffees for us for a very long time.

Even in this situation, I'm STILL miles and miles better off than 90% of my peers who have had to rent and are unlikely to ever buy their own home.

In contrast, my lovely Baby Boomer parents were both educated to PhD level for free and made an average of £70k profit on each of their house purchases. Neither entered the job market until they were 21, post PhD's.

They live in a house now worth around £500k and both retired at 55 after strong but not high flying careers.

Did you bother reading what I said? I didn't say me. I said my generation.

My generation had our university fees paid for us and grants. Blair (same age as me) pulled the ladder up. My first mortgage was 100%. Brown (same generation) pulled the ladder up. My generation is responsible for most of the problems the youngest generation of adults face.

Do keep up, Curious.

Also to labour the point, out of my cohort of 10 colleagues all paid the same or more than me, I’m the only one who isn’t renting/ living at home and it’s because I commute an hour and a half each way to work. We had this conversation in the office the other day, and the upshot is if your HHI is less than £60k a year you can’t afford to rent and save up for a house deposit at the same time. Some of them are paying £1000 a month for a house smaller than mine, it’s distressing.

@ZBIsabella plus £11,000 in stamp duty, which you need in cash.

I'd rather not share that hair shirt thanks.

Those were political expediencies, reactions to the too liberal changes made by the governing parties before (both parties). By sticking at just 1 political generation back you are simply joining in with the pointless blame game!

I do keep up... that's why I find all of this pointless angst irritating. It is wasted, it could be used far more productively.

my sis has a £50k mortgage . averaging her interest takes her payment for that £50k to £68K

We had a £50k mortgage back in the 80/90s averaging our interest takes our payment for that £50k to £116K

not all one sided.

Fluffy, stamp duty for a first time buyers on the £450k house - the first £300,000 has no stamp duty on it due to the recent budget change. Unfortunately my son who bought a year ago missed out on that and had to pay about £6k stamp duty. I agree our mythical couple would need to find not just their £10,500 each for their half of the 5% deposit but also solicitors' fees and what stamp duty it might be but that is not a massive amount extra because of the recent stamp duty changes.

However I don't agree it is easy at all.

Also different people are in different situations. When I went only 15% of people went to university so 85% of people did NOT get free university fees. They were working at age 15 - 18. Secondly I did not get anything like a full grant. I got £50 a year, rather than £900 and my parents had no legal obligation to do so but they very kindly made it up to that amount. My father in his day could not do his first degree choice because of lack of state help with university in the 1940s - he was helped later on when the rules changed and he married so my teacher mother's wages helped with university costs.

Curious, the morning after the referendum I said I was ashamed of my generation. You have the same effect on me.

And the generation before had to fight in a war.

I never understand the constant comparison.

I also think people can be unrealistic as to what they want to buy. Bil bought a house last year after 3 years of looking as he and sil wanted their first home to be their "forever" home with a long list of what it must have. 🙄

I think Curious is making a valid point. Who does it suit to pit generation against generation? Each generation has faced its own challenges and have had some things easier and some things harder.

Both sides of the political spectrum have something to gain from division. Babyboomers feel under attack so stick to the I've worked hard for what I've got rhetoric (probably favouring the Tories) and young people feel disenfranchised by the establishment (probably favouring Labour) - these are huge generalisation I accept.

There are problems being faced by this country such as the state of the NHS and Social Care, Education, plastic pollution, anti-microbial resistance etc. that need everyone focussing on them. We need a sense of common purpose not different generations at war with each other.

Baby boomers were a charmed generation, there will of course be individual exceptions to that, they were luckier than the generations before them or after them. But I do agree that picking fights generationally isn't helpful, they didn't choose the time they lived in any more than those before and after. It simply isn't human nature to accept that you have been luckier than others, it is much more normal to think it is your own unique abilities and hard work that have brought you reward, expecting acknowledgment of anything different is I suspect a waste of time. It would be more productive to try and get the generations to work together to tackle the many issues that need dealt with.