' A chicken would cost £50'

[stopitandtidyupp]

Leisurely watching ' The big questions'
discussing is London only for the rich?

One woman said if house prices were a chicken then a chicken would now cost £50. Now she meant in London but I wonder about the rest of the country.

I live in the NE and I am struggling to get on the ladder.

I guess my AIBU to be annoyed at house prices and is there an answer?

@WeWantJustice I was on about £16-17k (though I also earned about £80 extra a week doing deliveries for Dominoes) and the house was £150k, in the midlands. This was in 2013.

Obviously had I been earning the same in London then I wouldn't have been buying a property, but then that was the exact reason I was living in a more affordable area.

Stupid comparison since UK chicken prices are unusually low. I’ve seen chickens priced £40 in middle-range Swiss supermarkets.

Yes chicken used to be expensive. The price has dropped dramatically because of the way chickens are kept and treated.

And where I live house prices have risen but not dramatically. You can still buy decent small houses here for under £100k.
Many people also bought in the past because of 100% mortages, so no deposit was required. I know people who bought a flat in London on that basis, who would never get a mortgage today with the exact same wages and flat price.

You were only earning £16-17K and a bank lent you money to buy a house for £150K? You must have had a huge down payment?

It’s not nothing like chicken. Chicken is consumable and gone, house is an investment and long term necessity,

Food is a necessity. Shelter is a necessity. The only reason that houses are an investment is their prices increasing.

Bottles of wine are consumable, but old rare ones sell for thousands, because demand exceeds supply.

We have a massive issue with the supply of housing. Even when it's supposedly addressed, new builds are often pretty expensive.

Then, of course, you have the buy-to-let types who are further restricting supply to profit from the basic needs of others.

Hi OP, you say you're annoyed at house prices and are struggling to get on the ladder - how old are you and how much do you earn? Sometimes it isn't as difficult as it looks on paper if you tell us a bit more about your circumstances people might have some useful advise.

@NameChangeOhNameChange1 was it that you had chosen to live in a more affordable area or were you born there? Millions who are born and raised in London, where all of their families and friends are would not have had that opportunity. I'm afraid it sounds like more luck than judgement for you. Sorry if that sounds bitter, it isn't supposed to it's just you can't help where you're raised!!

In lots of parts of the north of this country you can buy a 3 bedroom house for 80k. Let's assume an 18 year old working full time can earn 16k after tax and NI. If they lived at home and limited their spending to £50 a week then they could buy a house outright and on their own by the time they are 24. I intend to let DD to live with me for free so she can do just this and start out in life better than nearly all her friends and without ever becoming dependent on anyone and without ever needing to get a mortgage. If she wants to do this that is.

The problem is, lots of people think they need to live in the south.

@NameChanger22 but again - it's not always about preference, it's about where you're born & raised!

We bought our first house in the mid 80s. At the time there were very strict government controls on mortgage funding. You had to have a deposit. I can't remember whether it was minimum 5% or 10%. You had to have been saving that deposit over a couple of years with the building society (rarely a bank) you were planning to apply to for the mortgage. (Not sure what happened in the rare cases where family provided the deposit - the good savings record was an important feature of the application.)

A couple could apply for an amount that was three times the higher salary and once the lower, or something like twice the joint income. I suppose there might have been specialist lenders offering more, but that was rare.

Because there were such strict controls on what could be lent, there was very low house price inflation and most people on average incomes could afford to buy a home.

Mrs Thatcher's government abolished those controls and immediately the housing market went crazy - and here we are now. In many parts of the country, buying a house or flat is out of the reach of most people on ordinary incomes, especially if they don't have family who can help with the deposit or guarantee a loan. What a mess.

My DP bought his first house when he was 24. He was/is earning £17k in an admin role.

Where was this though? The only places I've ever seen house prices this 'affordable' were in small northern/Welsh towns with high levels of unemployment and deprivation.

The cheapest place on Rightmove within a 30 mile radius of Birmingham (picked somewhere very central) that isn't a retirement property; 25% shared ownership or a caravan park is £120,000.

You couldn't buy that on a £17k salary!

Housing is long term investment, chicken is consumable.
Once you’ve eaten your chicken it’s gone, once you’ve outgrown your house someone else can live it.
You cannot compare the two.

I bought my first flat (Yorkshire) when I was 21 and it was just over 1 years salary . It was over 20 years ago but even so.
The mortgage was around £170 per month and my deposit was £2000, no help from parents needed
I don’t know how people get on the housing ladder now

16k? This doesn't sound right.

Hi OP, you say you're annoyed at house prices and are struggling to get on the ladder - how old are you and how much do you earn? Sometimes it isn't as difficult as it looks on paper if you tell us a bit more about your circumstances people might have some useful advise.

Thanks. I have a plan it will just take me a few years to save the deposit. I had to restart from scratch.

I bought my first house when I was 22. I had zero financial help.

My DP bought his first house when he was 24. He was/is earning £17k in an admin role.

Both of us were single at the time.

Translation: I bought my house a long time ago before the economics changed and I am not aware of how much this has changed. Everyone should do what I did, because I still live in the past and have no idea of the present situation.

Yes your post is incredibly helpful and enlightening.
And utterly devoid of anything relevant to 2019.

NameChangeOhNameChange1 whilst you saved for your deposit how much was your rent? If you were living at home then yes that’s family help

Flats have sold this year where I love on full ownership for £35k. In central England, I moved here because house prices are cheap.

Looktothewesternsky - it is about preference. Most people move from where they are born in their lifetime. I've moved lots of times for various reasons and my family are scattered around the UK and the world.

ThisHasPissedMeOff - why do you need to live within a 30 mile radius of Birmingham? There are lots of much cheaper houses a bit further afield. There are houses going for 30k in certain parts of the country. Nearly everyone could buy one of those.

abacucat

In what neck of the woods is that? Obviously don't expect you reveal exactly where you live!

Namechange do you mean you bought together so a combined income of ~£34k?

I'd also like to know what deposits these people buying houses on tiny salaries had.

And where they got these deposits. And how.

I got my first flat on a 13K wage, but I'd lived with my parents for 4 years after leaving uni: not everyone has that option so they can't save the deposit. Also my first flat was 40K, not the 300K similar properties now sell for and the wage equivalent is certainly not the 100K it would need to be to be in proportion.

Yes some people have to live in the south but OP says she lives in the north east.
House prices are affordable in the north east. The problems we face is negative equity and struggling to move to the next house, not getting on the ladder in the first place.

Well I don't need to live in a 30 mile radius of Birmingham. I did say I'd just picked somewhere central.

But people have to live somewhere and we can't just consign vast swathes of young people to old mining towns where there is no employment. (For example before everyone jumps on me for saying that...)

There is a limit to how far people can travel. There is a limit to where there are available jobs. It's not just as easy as saying, "oh well I'll move to X then" if your job is in Y 200 miles away.

Living at home is family help.