To think that house buying is the norm in my world?

[Friendly1234]

NC’d for this, I was reading an article this morning about how ppl are finding it hard to get on the property ladder these days and I realized that literally every single one of my friends and family have been buying houses with relative ease for the past 10 years (I’m in my early 30’s!) so from what I can see it’s the norm to buy (and build houses) at around 24-26!! I wouldn’t say my friend have particularly high powered jobs either, most are nurses, teachers and have apprenticeships. A few even work in retail!!

Surely it depends on priorities. Some will prioritise going without and saving hard for a deposit while others will choose to have multiple children, nice cars and holidays etc. It's not surprising the latter will then not be in a position to save for a deposit, or it will take a great deal longer.

What’s so hard these days for young people is the fact they are paying so much for rent (often much more than a mortgage) that it’s very difficult to save.

Also some can get 95% mortgages although you pay a higher interest rate for those. So on my son's £325k Chesham house that means a couple needs to raise £16,250 or £8k each which is not impossible to save in the SE if you share a room in a shared house for a few years.

That’s what I think too @Freddiefox

Same in Wales OP.

Freddiefox * sums up OPs OP precisely. This is achievable - we are young and we own a house therefore anyone who cant afford one is obviously feckless and lazy and have no one to blame but themselves.

Everyone I know has had some help to buy. In Hampshire, nothing below £300k, detached start at £500k. Not sure what average salaries are, but below £30k I expect? No London weighting, public sector workers have had about 15% real terms pay cut since 2008, Help to buy schemes only seem to push prices up, and if wages don't increase at a reasonable rate I'd imagine people taking out the HTB loans are going to struggle.
We were very lucky to have an inheritance and be close to family who have helped with childcare. I know we could move away, but family is nearby and we want to stay close.

Thing to consider is that regardless of your circle of friends, nationally home ownership is falling and it's a significant problem because private-renting legislation means people are very insecure in private tenancies and council houses are like hens teeth. Lots of people are unable to save because of rising rent and standards of living are falling. 1 in 5 children in poverty, I'd imagine many as a result of the housing crisis.

Also I think mortgages are more expensive than they were some yrs ago if your a new first time buyer.

Watching all the Londoners on this thread huffing and puffing is quite funny. The op is quite correct - there are large swathes of the country where young people are buying houses just fine.

Friendly1234 you've misunderstood my post. What I meant was you can't possibly know that your friend who had help from their GP is the only one who had that sort of help. Your other friends may have had parents help them out with a deposit etc but choose to keep that to themselves because it's no one else's business.

OP, your sharing your experience of a more affordable area of the uk where it sounds like 2 people on normal wages (teacher, nurse etc) can afford to buy a house. Where I live affordable housing is £385k for a two bed flat. We bought current house for £250k 11 years ago(I was 24) , now worth in excess of £500k. We have spent some money on it though. Our wages haven't doubled in that time though and we couldn't afford to buy our current house now if we were looking.

My sibs in a cheaper area all bought first houses between ages of 21 and 24 too but paid about £110k for equivalent of what we bought (3 bed semi) around the same time (11 years ago). One is still in negative equity and the others would be lucky if property went up 10k in that time.

I just want to pipe in about the uni and good wages thing. The best paid people I know didn't go to uni. If you are good some trades seem to pay way more than most grads that age would get😮

A lot of my friends have bought too. I am struggling to get a deposit together due to a low income and no family support.

The people who have bought have bought relatively cheap properties (Wales) on the Help To Buy scheme with good credit ratings.

Me? My credit rating is trashed for at least another six years, I have a low income so even if I could manage to save a £5-10,000 deposit for the scheme, I wouldn't be eligible for repayments, and all those I know of have been employed for many years on a full time basis or have a partner who is.

Different circumstances for different people in different locations and all.

IME it’s not even the deposit that’s the issue, although it’s extremely difficult to save one with rents as high as they are.

We live in the south west, wages aren’t particularly high here - our neighbours currently have their two bed terrace (same as ours) on the market for £290k.

That means you need an income / joint income of over £50k plus more than £30k in savings to borrow enough with a 10% deposit, if you can find a lender to lend at that LTV. And if you have big expenses like childcare that enables you to earn more, that’s taken into account too and impacts your borrowing.

We have our own business so our income is variable and much of it is dividends and we could only borrow half that much even with over £100k as a deposit.

Many of my friends are stuck in a situation where they’re paying £800-£1100 a month in rent and having no trouble paying it every month for years, yet they can’t get a mortgage with repayments of more than £500 a month because they apparently don’t earn enough.

If you live somewhere where you can buy a house for £150k or less, I’m sure it’s much easier. Here you’d struggle to get a tiny 1 bed flat for that.

I don’t think it qualifies as ‘huffing and puffing’ to point out that for roughly a sixth of the population live in the capital city, it’s not easy for young people to get on the property ladder.

I find it equally humorous that people want a pat on the back for being able to afford a 150k house up north. That’s great. If property was that price in London, I’m sure most people would be home owners.

Yes OP, you really don’t know how much help people get. No one needs to tell anyone, no matter how close, their financial situation.
I wouldn’t ask nor expect to know either.

That means you need an income / joint income of over £50k plus more than £30k in savings to borrow enough with a 10% deposit, if you can find a lender to lend at that LTV.

Why couldn't you find a lender? Nearly every lender does 5% deposit for FTBs, many now even for non FTBs.

Our first home was £230. So not cheap.

Two hundred and thirty quid?

You could've bought a nice handbag instead...

I live in the South East and I'm very surprised that a lot of young colleagues are buying houses not even flats in their early to mid 20s without parental help.

I think deposit wise you still need a hefty deposit but it's not quite as bad as it was around 5 years ago when you needed up to 25%.

The people that I know who are buying are all in couples, I don't know any single people buying, they all lived at home before buying so no rental expenditures to contend and none of them went to university full time so don't have student debt.

*VenusClapTrap

Watching all the Londoners on this thread huffing and puffing is quite funny. The op is quite correct - there are large swathes of the country where young people are buying houses just fine.*

Why is it funny? What a strange sense of humour you have, similar to the op’s smugness.
What’s funny about not being able to afford to live in an area where you grew up? Or where your family live? Or where you are part of a community.
( I don’t live in London btw)
But home ownership is part of such a bigger picture and it’s not done to hard work and saving.
There is so much more at play, the education you received? How much money your parents have, whether they could support you in your education choices.
Your sex, class, race, all these things impact on your earning potential.

I also think & this is South centric that many people have moved up the ladder because of huge gains equity all boosting the property market & having knock on effects to other areas. This seems to have slowed in many parts & it’s much more difficult to climb the ladder if your relying solely on income changes.

A quick perusal of Right Move shows that the cheapest property available for sale in my bog standard Zone 4 suburb of London is a tiny studio for £255k.

It’s not Blackburn or Hull .

There may be a ‘housing crisis’ in London & the South East of England, but property is still very affordable in many other parts of the country, eg

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-80014307.html

The media, which is almost entirely based in London, is of course completely oblivious to this reality.

It’s also does annoy me & i’m a homeowner that it’s fine for people from Cornwall, Bristol, etc to have a moan about not being able to afford a home where they live but people seem to forget there are loads of born & bred Londoners who also would like to stay near family/what they know. If we all just leave because it’s too expensive it just moves the problem onto the locals in those areas.

Oh! Freddie filled my North : South bingo card instantly.

OP - that's what I mean. Because you have read an article and it doesn't match your experiences you have been nasty and have said we are young and we own a house therefore anyone who cant afford one is obviously feckless and lazy and have no one to blame but themselves.

Many of us out here in NotLondon have a similar disconnect with such articles. It isn't in any way derogatory to want to say that and even to discuss it. That there is a huge disparity is obvious, has existed for centuries and probably isn't ever going to go away. But there is no reason to shut the fuck up and pretend you don't exist just because you don't live the life described in such articles.

Like mummyshark we own a house that hasn't risen much, if anything, in value in the last 5 years. That's pretty much the norm round here. Only new builds on hitherto untouched farm land are expensive... and are rarely bought by local people. We're 120 miles from London., supposedly 2 - 3 hours by train or motorway. Nobody believed it would happen but almost 60% of the officially 'affordable homes', about 1500 and rising around a small market town of just 8000 occupants , were bought by people workng in or close to London. The rest is HA/mixed ownership, lived in by other non locals.

You might imagine the local opinion of the continued developments.