... To ask what actually is an affordable housing?

[OftenHangry]

It looks like everyone has a completely different price bracket in mind when it comes to properties for sale. Obviously it's affected by where people live. I know you really can't buy 3 bed semi for 60k in London. Maybe a picture of it...

What is your idea of affordable housing?
Me:
Nort West - under 100k

because with 5% deposit it would cost about 8k to get into the property.
But I keep seeing these new builds labeled as affordable yet they cost double that!

Plenty of 3 bed with garden houses around me for much, much less (60k-70k), but staying on the market, because they need bit of work, I guess?

I am busy today, so if I don't answer, I haven't run. I will come back

Yes caprisun that was my point. I felt it hasn't really been a good decision for them as my friends aren't getting progressively closer to owning their own home outright.

One friend inherited 10k but as the property had gone up in value since she bought it and she had started working P/T after the birth of her child it wasn't enough to buy back a chunk of co-ownership. Realistically she isn't going to come into any more inheritance in her life time and although she could work F/T she would be no better off financially as she would be paying out more for childcare and get less tax credits. It's just an example, but she's pretty firmly stuck in co-ownership and isn't happy about it.

I guess their alternative would be private rentals though and can’t really see what advantage that would have?

We can't afford to buy here. Brand new house is upwards of 190k. Help to buy on hardly any of them. And to get a deposit for the others we'd be saving for about 5 years before we could afford a deposit. By then the prices will have probably gone up.

I get why they stopped 100% mortgages, but it is annoying that the poor judgement of others screws up my life now. We could easily afford one of these houses, even on a 100% mortgage. But no bank gives them out. A mortgage would actually be cheaper than our rent! We manage when renting, can't see how we'd struggle when owning and paying less. But not given the chance.

Supply is not as simple as "baby boomers objecting to development". It's not in the interests of developers for house prices to drop, and they regulate the supply - it's been calculated that the number of unbuilt houses with planning permission exceeds the current annual houses built.

In our area, the need is for 2 and 3 bed "starter homes", but the planning permissions sought are for 4 and 5 bed detached houses, out of the reach of people working locally, so purchasers will be commuters adding to the already dire transport situation.

HereForTheLineEyes when i was ranting upthread about help to buy schemes i was going to mention something about the fact that 5 years into a first time buy (the point at which the repayment of the government loan bit kicks in) is likely to be the point at which a young couple might be coping with a reduction in income due to starting a family. Not the time to be trying to up your monthly mortgage payments, or selling up to escape debt.

(I didn't though because i thought i'd be shot down by posts saying how dare any young people these days even dream of trying to own their own home AND start a family )

We purchased our house using shared ownership. It was marketed as "affordable housing" and for a two bed semi, it was just over £160,000 four years ago. On the development they also sold the exact same house privately, and they were £180,000.

We purchased the largest share % available and intend to purchase the rest at some point. However, when we looked into it recently, the cost of our rent plus the mortgage is less than what the mortgage would be on the full value so it's actually cheaper for us to continue with shared ownership for now.

Down the road they recently built a new estate and their shared ownership "affordable housing" is £275,000 for a two bed semi 

RedBlu I have a friend in exactly the same position, the rental element is much cheaper to pay as rent than to mortgage it and repay monthly

Some Northern towns have had schemes where local people purchased old, empty properties like terraces for £1. I believe they had a decent price loan to do up the property and had to live there a minimum amount big years. This meant that previously unloved property/area/community, became a nice place to live. I would say any property under £50k was affordable and there are properties out there.

I'm in Scotland and I'd say around here its £100,000 or less. We paid about £90.000 for ours. Its 70's a 2 bed ex council terrace. Its not the middle class fantasy but its a nice cosy wee house with lots of green about and lots of storage. We could have afforded more but we liked this house and the mortgage and bills are so small we feel rich!

I do wonder why people buy over priced new builds. My husband and myself both grew up on council estates so perhaps it was easier for us to go for that option. I have some friends who are renting, they could afford a house like ours but want something fancier in a better area but can't afford it and don't want to compromise and others who have rooked themselves buying up to the very edge of what they can afford to get a detached new build. I can't imagine living like that but to each their own, the probably wouldn't want to live in my we ex-council house!

I live in an old house, renovation project, but liveable. New build houses a couple of miles away are double the price.

They are more likely objecting to a 5000 house estate on a floodplain with 15 "affordable" homes. The houses being built are very ugly, cheap with tiny rooms, no storage or useable outdoor space, but that's ok because every room has an on suite. They also aren't going to improve the local infrastructure, so there won't be more roads out of the town, more buses/trains, new schools or doctors surgerys because they got round that clause by paying the council to do that for them and so the money will go on other underfunded Essential services.

We have this were I live. There is a housing estate being built on the edge of our village but because we are on the county border (literally, my house is yards away), and the new housing is technically in the next county, we have no say. Also, the next county gets the council tax but our county council will have to find the school places, doctor places, public transport, road maintenance etc because the nearest town in that county is about 12 miles away.

And of course the "affordable" housing is anything but and yy to them being cheap nasty boxes just with naice potico's that make them look des res. I dont object to housing being built, we need it. But it should be social housing, or at the very least rent controlled.

3 bed ex council terrace Midlands £180ish
These will normally have drive, large garden and be spacious inside.

3 bed new build terrace £300
No off road parking, postage stamp garden and aren't big enough to swing a cat inside.

That's without adding in the extra schools, Drs, roads etc that don't get built to accomadate the influx of new people who get pushed into the rest of the town's services.

I dread my dc being forced to live miles away by the time they come yo buy because that's the nearest affordable place.

Talking of school places, there was a hoo hah a few years ago when people flooded into a massive new build estate a few miles away. No new schools were built and when they inevitably ended up last on the list for school places they all kicked off. It was pointed out that if you a buy a house on a new estate with all the nearest schools already oversubscribed you are not going to get a place in any of your choices. I know someone involved and she insisted that the amount of money their house cost should have guaranteed them a place at their first choice.....

I work selling new build houses in a reasonably affluent part of the north west. Our 'affordable' properties start at £110k for a 2 bed apartment (600sqft), £170k for a 3 bed semi (700sqft) or £210k for a 3 bed detached (900sqft).

These can all be bought under help to buy or the local council scheme - similar to help to buy but they give you a 30% equity loan. You would need a 5% deposit to do this. Everyone (well, 90% of people) we sell these to are FTB's, generally couples but a few singles too - recently had a single nurse aged late 20s buy a 3 bed semi and a single guy aged 30 who works in IT buy one of the apartments, both on the local council scheme. Most people who buy these houses are aged 22-30, so they're probably priced correctly for the area I'd say as we have huge demand for them.

Consider that twenty years ago wages were not that much lower in literal terms but that you could buy a terrace in almost any Northern city for £20k easily and even down south £100k would get you a very sizeable house. Yet people complained even back then.

Where did the 3x salary definition come from? My understanding was it was no more than 80% of local market value. Our joint income is reasonable at 75k so the times that would be a property for 225k our absolute wreck of a fixer upper cost over 300k, in good condition easily over 400k.

"Where did the 3x salary definition come from?"

It's traditional. If you're renting, the rent should not be more than a third of your net monthly income or you will have problems. If buying, traditionally the cost of the house should not be more than 3 times your annual gross salary.
Recently, the trend has been for 5 times the salary, which has left some people in hot water.

"Shared ownership schemes.

The purchase price is cheaper, but I guess you still have to pay rent on top of that. I guess it gets you on the property ladder though."

There was an article in last weekend's Sunday Times about the pitfalls of shared ownership. Most of it was similar to the issues around any leasehold - charges going up exponentially while repairs aren't done, etc.

I'm not sure about some of the maths here. The median UK salary is about 28k and it is much higher than that in London. Plus the 3x thing is from when interest rates were much higher. Okay there is an argument that they can go up, but that is always the case whatever they are and they have been low for many years now. When people were 'moaning' 20 years ago DH and I bought a terraced house in 2000 in a not particularly salubrious part of a market town in the south midlands for 84k but our repayments at the time were 650 a month for a 76k mortgage. We had joint income at the time of 40k and for young people had very good jobs and would have been way above average for our ages.

I'm not saying it isn't harder now as I believe it is, but we need to be careful to ensure the definitions of 'affordable' are realistic rather than 'ideal world'

And sorry meant to say there clearly are areas of the country with average wages of 21k but that would be below average for the UK as a whole. ONS has figures for all areas if you want to find out your own.

I'm in the Midlands and affordable for us is around 150k-160k.

Fortunately you can get some homes around that price ATM- 3 beds for 150k-180k, varying sizes.

I know a few people who bought shared ownership through housing associations, and none are happy, rent and service charge seems to increase hugely, all property repairs are down to the occupier, despite some owning only 35% of the property etc, it seems like a bit of a con to be honest and I can see how many people end up trapped. One couple I know had the rent a,d service charge element double in six years of living there, how that can be described as affordable, I don't see.

Affordable used to be 3x one person's national average wage, plus deposit, survey, other fees. There are still some properties out there at that price.

Not where I live, there aren't.