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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To think the current housing boom as totally distorted reality

69 replies

Worthygirl · 02/02/2019 14:18

I am priced out of the housing market. I earn 40k and have a 20k deposit and that is nowhere near enough to buy a house where I live. Granted I live in the SE (and yes I am looking to move etc but that’s another post and kids in school etc currently make it tricky)
But it’s the norm here to buy a 700k house that’s a semi or even a terrace in some areas. It’s normal here to have made £250k plus on your house. I feel like I live in an alternate reality where normal people earning normal incomes no longer exist.
The house prices here have made people who work part time massive fortunes and I feel like a child looking into a sweet shop but unable to remotely take part.
I always thought 40k was a good salary and 20k was a good deposit. Say 4x 40 is 160 which would be me maxed out mortgage wise. Down here it’s literally nothing.
Aibu to feel like house prices have distorted reality?
And yes, i know I can move to a cheaper area but that’s not my point in this post.

OP posts:

Prusik · 02/02/2019 14:22

House prices around here are absolutely crazy too. I wouldn't be able to afford my house if I was buying now and it's a modest mid terrace

Racecardriver · 02/02/2019 14:29

Housing does seem strangely expensive especially when you start looking at family homes. It might be a result of baby boomers living in large houses after children are long gone instead of downsizing. Government policy of allowing pensioners in care homes to retain their houses is also unhelpful. Then thing like Airbnb have made the ownership of holiday homes more common. Low interest rates have also encouraged second home ownership. Help to buy has screwed up pricing of new builds. Mixed housing policies have made nimbys more hostile to new developments. Lots of factors really.

Hugglessnuggles · 02/02/2019 14:35

That would buy a decent size terrace where I am. However, that terrace worth 120k, 15 years ago would have been 32k max. We almost bought a bungalow. Next door had a dorma so we knew that was possible. It was 60k. A lot a the time. We decided not too. Seen it for sale last year 495k. Life changed. I’m still renting, no hope now of buying. I still feel sick when I think about what we could have had!

CatsOnCatnip · 02/02/2019 14:38

I feel exactly the same. We live in Surrey and I honestly don’t know how anyone affords to buy around here, the houses in my area are getting on for half a mil for a bog standard family home. Myself and husband got priced out of even the renting market and moved in with my mother. Currently thinking of moving to Kent/Sussex area and buying a big house all together, because there’s no hope in hell of continuing to live here with a good quality of life.

Laiste · 02/02/2019 15:04

Help to buy has screwed up pricing of new builds

Def agree with this!

Affordable housing my arse. Up goes 20 or 30 flash 4/5 bedders with double garages and over in the corner maybe a few little one or two bed room flats; which are snapped up. To Let signs go up all over the place

3 of my DDs are in their early 20s and affording a home is a pipe dream unless they are prepared to look into getting on this help to buy bandwagon. But then they have to worry about the five year deadline for starting to pay off the 'help'. ''Oh just sell up within 5 years and pay it off like that'' we were told. To whom exactly? And to where? When you've already paid an over inflated price for what you're selling and which is no longer a 'new build' so no longer qualifies for anyone else's help to buy.

Moving further and further up north isn't really going to help matters in the long run. What's going to happen when we run out of 'further up north'?! We'll all be in the bloody sea! We ended up up here in 2000 because property was so cheap compared to London. Great for us - but 18 years on local kids can't afford to stay in their own villages and we were just part of the whole sorry tale weren't we? Buying a property easily because it was cheaper up here. The rot just spreads upwards.

KanielOutis · 02/02/2019 15:22

Can you buy a flat for that money? I live in Essex, where £180k would buy a 2 bed flat. It isn't a nice house, but it's would be your own home.

TheNavigator · 02/02/2019 15:29

Yup house prices are mental. When I got my first job I earned £14k. With my DH on a bit less, we were able to buy a wee cottage for £42K. Twenty years later the same job has a starting salary of £18K but the wee cottage would now cost over £180k. That doesn't add up!

Hotterthanahotthing · 02/02/2019 15:32

Older people are finding it hard to sell their large family homes and so there has been a big increase in equity release schemes .
How would these people improve the housing market,they sell a big house and down size to a house a first time buyer could have had.

KonekoBasu · 02/02/2019 15:40

The boom doesn't apply to everywhere in the country, some places haven't recovered from the 2008 crash.

explodingkitten · 02/02/2019 15:42

It doesn't work like that. If no one can afford a house then the prices go down till they start selling again. So moving to a cheaper area does work. 18 yo adults don't have to be able to afford to stay in the same village. It's fine to move to somewhere else. Lots of people do.

NotSuchASmugMarriedNow1 · 02/02/2019 15:46

Unless your very wealthy it isn't possible to buy after you've had kids, you need to buy before. Affordibility factors now introduced into mortgage applications will deduct a lot for childcare/dependants etc. Also, it's more difficult to save a big deposit if you're paying for kids/private rents/finance cars.

NotSoThinLizzy · 02/02/2019 15:48

Where I am you'd get a 4-5 bedroom with garage and close to school and beach for 160 k but no real jobs here just your basic retail work

Laiste · 02/02/2019 15:49

It doesn't work like that. If no one can afford a house then the prices go down till they start selling again.

When is this due to kick in then?

isseywithcats · 02/02/2019 15:51

Blimey where i live 770k would buy a whole street virtually, we are house hunting at the moment and 120K buys a nice semi detached 2 bedroom house in a decent area

NameChanger22 · 02/02/2019 15:52

Older people are finding it hard to sell their large family homes and so there has been a big increase in equity release schemes.

Mostly because they are asking too much for them. Almost anything will sell if you put the right price on it. I would stay away from silly schemes, lower your price and stop being greedy. They probably only paid a fiver for the house in the first place and now they want half a million for it.

MereDintofPandiculation · 02/02/2019 16:04

I would stay away from silly schemes, lower your price and stop being greedy. An older person downsizing knows that that money has to last them possibly 30 years, with no chance of getting a job and increasing their income should they run short. So of course they're going to hold out for a good price.

When you look back at the way the world has changed between 1989 and now, it's really scary to try and predict what you'll need for maybe 30 years more of life.

TonTonMacoute · 02/02/2019 16:09

I am on the Devon Cornwall border and they are building tens of thousands of new houses down here, in both counties, but many of the people who are in need of a house down here cannot afford them. Many of the so-called affordable new homes are more expensive than other local property for sale.

I don't really know who is buying them all, although there is always a local rumour that the new houses going up have all been bought by Birmingham Council (or sometimes it's Manchestber or Liverpool) who are going to ship out all their worst social tenants to live in them . As far as I can tell this isn't true at all, it is some weird urban myth. However, it seems that a large number of houses are being bought by people who want them as an investment, rather than to live in, and this is what is distorting the market and keeping prices up.

I can remember the 80s, when I was in my gtwenties and thought I would never be able to buy my own place, then the market crashed after Black Wednesday which evened things out again, although many people lost their homes as a result.This should have happened in 2008, but the government intervened to prevent it.

Bluntness100 · 02/02/2019 16:10

Where exactly are you in the south east that you can't buy for less than seven hundred grand, I'm sorry but that sounds like a massive over exaggeration to me.

HowardSpring · 02/02/2019 17:19

"Greedy" is neither true nor helpful. It is no more greedy to want £XXX for your 3 bed house than it is to want a 3 bed house as your first time buy and only pay £xxx for it.

I agree that housing is expensive in the SE though. Jobs are too city-centred as well so that affects peoples' ability to buy further afield.

scaryteacher · 02/02/2019 17:21

Racecardriver Government policy of allowing pensioners in care homes to retain their houses is also unhelpful. If they can afford to pay for their care and keep their homes, for which they have paid, then it's not the bloody governments business is it?

TonTonMacoute My mum is having conniptions about the prospect of another 1000 houses being built in Tavistock, and the new ones being built up the road between the banks, where local planning have refused permission on the grounds that it floods up there, but this has been overturned.

I can't see in Tavistock where extra infrastructure is being put in to cope...will be there another Doctor's surgery, bigger schools? It's the same at St Anne's Chapel, seems more like a building site each time I come back to see my house.

Yes, people need places to live, but only if the infrastructure is in place to deal with it.

Onandonandons · 02/02/2019 17:22

Where are you? If you're in London you can move a few miles away to a cheaper London Borough.

NoArmaniNoPunani · 02/02/2019 17:27

Im in the south east and my 3bed house is worth 260k

donajimena · 02/02/2019 17:27

I live in Cardiff and they are building 4500 hòuses near me. Starting price. 450k. In fucking Cardiff. Its a beautiful city but have you seen our salaries? I got quite angry when I saw the developers advert saying 'Bringing much needed housing, prices from 450k'

bibbitybobbityyhat · 02/02/2019 17:41

I agree that house prices are awful in London and the south east. But I also think it's unrealistic for your first time buy to be a family house. Those of us who can afford those sort of prices usually started off in a shabby 1 bed flat in a grotty area and gradually traded up over 20ish years. I know that's not helpful when prices are as ridiculous as they are now, but the principle still applies.

TonTonMacoute · 02/02/2019 17:51

@scaryteacher That is exactly where I am! Our village is minutes from St Ann's Chapel, and I have a good friend on Calstock Parish Council, who gives me a lot of inside info.

The Tavistock situation is utterly ridiculous, your mum is right that they are not proposing any new school or doctors places, plus they are closing the New Lauceston Road for 14 weeks, to put in drains etc, because it is so far out of town.

To cap it all, the Council are going to invest millions in a new hotel built on a car park. It's just insane.

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