To think the current housing boom as totally distorted reality

[Worthygirl]

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.

Prices are stuck here. Herts. At least I’ve noticed prices of big houses coming down and stuff isn’t selling. Family mid size homes a bit easier to sell if good school catchment but things have slowed.

Sadly not enough to make any difference to a FTB though

It’s just supply and demand though.
Should sellers take a lower price than they could get?
Should buyers offer less on the gamble that others won’t outbid them?

Should people be limited to owning only one UK home? (If so what happens to all those privately renting who would not qualify for a mortgage?)

Prices are high because homes are desirable. Unfortunately the days of ‘I’m from here/we have kids in schools here - so we should be able to buy here’ are long gone!

If you have kids/put them in school before you own a home in the area it’s really on you to understand the risk that you can’t predict property inflation and may end up stuff renting long term - not on the market to not grow until you’re ready to buy x

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-77891321.html

Move up north

we are house hunting - makes no sense whatsoever. Same road and one house is 500£ per square foot and the other is 600£ per square foot. How the fuck do you justify that?! How can there be so much movement in the same road?!?! Totally dislocated and on the way down

But I also think it's unrealistic for your first time buy to be a family house

I'd agree, and particularly as a single person. I doubt many can afford a family home as their first purchase. The aim is to get on the property ladder and as your salary increases, trade up.

The three quarters of a million thing is just daft. I've lived in the south east on and off for nearly twenty years, and that includes expensive areas of Surrey and I've never seen one yet you need to buy for a quarter of a million.

It’s just supply and demand though.

It really isn't. If it was supply and demand there would be no need for all the Government props to keep house prices high, such as Help to Buy, low interest rates, favourable tax laws for BTLers, lower taxes on housing profits than actual earnings (Capital Gains Tax etc), bailouts of banks, housing benefit propping up landlords investments etc. Take all these away and prices would fall rapidly but the Government doesn't want to lose the votes of all the boomers who have become millionaires simply buying property years ago and living in it. Stupid really because at some point all the younger people priced out are going to vote for radical policies, be it from Corbyn or someone even more extreme.

Whichever party gets in next there is going to be a switch from taxation of earnings to taxation of capital, either a land value tax or mansion tax or something else because there are less and less workers to tax (and they are already being squeezed) and there are loads of people who have illiquid assets that can easily be taxed (you can't move your house abroad). The Government needs money and it will go after immovable assets and tax them yearly like in the States.

be it from Corbyn or someone even more extrme.

Aye, cause him or someone even more extreme are likely to get into power, he's not lost the youth vote at all

🤪

We won't stop taxing earnings, that's not a proposal. A land tax is being looked at, but as a replacement for thr council tax.

*TonTon8 Have Pmd you, as it seems my house can't be that far from where you live.

I think a Premier Inn in Tavistock (I presume it's that) would be no bad thing, as apart from B&Bs, Wetherspoons and the Bedford, no where strikes me as that family friendly. At least with a Premier Inn if it's a Dartmoor day, you can curl up with a mug of tea and watch the TV.

A parking alternative could be a Park and Ride at Pitt Cleave, the industrial estate the Mount Kelly side of Tavistock.

I bet all those who use New Launceston Road are hopping mad, but it was this one my Mum was talking about:
www.dwh.co.uk/new-homes/devon/h768801-embden-grange

I used New Launceston road every day after dropping ds at Mount House, then legging it back into Cornwall to get to my school!

Have just got a mortgage and purchased a house. First time buyer. In the South East (Kent). It's a three bed for 180k. The current owners are an elderly couple who are downsizing to a retirement apartment in a neighbouring town now their kids have grown up and moved out.

Although I was looking through the paperwork recently and it said that the couple purchased it originally from the council for 12,000 and it's original market value at the time was 20,000.

If the last 40 years is anything to go by, where there’s a boom, a bust will follow and everyone will be up to the armpits in negative equity.

From a PP: 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 think the key is "over 20ish years..." The house prices have been doing crazy ( government supported growth) for decades. My DPs had modest jobs and could afford a house no one in those jobs could now get ( unless inheriting or winning a lot). It is not earnt property wealth. The rise affects the young ( and just helps give money to banks and the government in stamp duty). I think property wealth should be taxed more ( eg a form of land tax).

Oops here DPs means Dear Parents.

Houses inflate to the extent money is thrown at them, and there’s still a lot of monopoly money in the system. Cheap credit is the main reason we’ve entered the twilight zone. And yes, greed. One only has to look at the Market Info tab of Rightmove for example after example of cheekiness.

It doesn’t help that once you’ve bought, you have a vested interest in house price inflation. I almost have to laugh when I read how worried people are about the pound falling due to Brexit: you don’t think it’s already been decimated when you see how little house it now buys?

To those saying it’s unrealistic for a first time buy to be a family house – you can’t expect increasingly older and children-laden FTBs to shoehorn themselves into traditional FTB properties. Plus they’ll then have less and less time to climb the idiotic “ladder”. I say idiotic because nowhere else I’ve lived do people think you should have to climb a ladder to end up in decent housing.

I think a lot of people forget with house price increases, is that the value of money decreases, for example, I've just turned fifty and I can remember you could by a bag of crisps for a few pence. What's it now. Sixty, seventy pence? So of course when your talking about thousands of pounds, then yes it's going to seem a huge increase. And that's before you factor in demand, invement, and a house is only worth what someone will pay for it. It's thr market that decides the level.

As for boom or bust, yes this happens. And yes people who struggle to afford their homes may lose it, and those who can't ride it out, may also lose their home, the rest typically ride it out. Because there is no law that says you've got to sell it if you can afford the mortgage payments.

Does the government try to control it, of course, no one wants a situation where vulnerable families face repossession due to thr state of the economy.

I think you have to lower your expectations for a first purchase. I earn 45k and bought a spacious and beautiful 2 bed flat 2 years ago with a 20k deposit. It was 300k as we are SE also (new cross rail stop) but it’s lovely- was never even looking for a house as it’s just not affordable. Hoping to upgrade to a house next year.

I will say though- I could not have bought without my OH who earns the same amount. This to me has always been the scandal of the housing market- it is nigh on impossible to buy alone. I have friends desperate to buy but they are single, and need 2 salaries for a place. To close the door on home owning unless you have found someone to buy with seems very unfair when really it’s just luck.

I’ve been eyeing this house up for years - it’s a state outside but it’s a mile down the road from me in a much nicer neighbourhood.

It was finally for sale.

www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/48596929

When the price of a near-derelict house in zone 3/4 is over 750k you truly know the market is fucked.

We purposely didn’t stretch ourselves when we upsized because we didn’t want to be fucked over.

Frankly it all makes me feel sick.

This to me has always been the scandal of the housing market- it is nigh on impossible to buy alone

This is absolutely and utterly untrue, there is plenty, absolutely plenty of properties at 180 and below in the south east, even in expensive Surrey and commuter belt.

This is within the ops budget and she can buy alone. And many of these are lovely properties. Yes they may be one or two bed flats, and not a family home, but as a first time buyer, that's a normal first step and has been for decades.

To Bluntness100:

Merry, are you having a laugh? That is a fantastic four bedroom house in Wimbledon it is no where near derelict. Yes it needs updating, but it's certainly not derelict and is in one of the most sought after areas in the country.

I dont think its ever been exactly common to have several children and then get a mortgage as a single parent. Everyone single I know who's bought a house did so before they had children and then had lodgers for years to help pay the mortgage - or bought small flats.

What Bluntness said, no way is that house derelict. What on earth do people expect?

The boom's over here, they had to reduce a house down the road from us by over 30% to get a sale and it took the best part of two years.

I thinl i live near you merry! And yes that's a crazy amount for that house i think. It's not wimbledon it's raynes park (which is still a nice area but not as posh) i fantasy redevelop it too haha

That would buy a 3 bed semi here, 4 if ex council. Prices very so much around the country. Up where my friend lives there's 3 bed terrace houses on the market for £40k