To think most property owners don’t understand how hard it now is to buy a house

[Boredfromboredshire]

DP and me earn 40k between us and our rent is 1200 a month for a 3 bed house. We don’t have rich relatives, we are in our early 40’s and circumstances (ill health) meant that we didn’t buy a house before. We can’t save a deposit & houses are expensive by us. We have stable jobs & our kids are happy so moving in the current uncertain time’s isn’t an option. Life has happened to us & some of it has been out it control.

Cue well meaning friend (who bought their house for peanuts) asking me why we couldn’t afford a house when we could get a house in a cheaper area for ‘only’ 400k. I’m so fed up of it. We really want a home of our own & we would move but in the current recession, it’s not a good idea to give up a job. And we can’t afford to save. My friend (whose deposit was 12k can’t understand it and looks on pityingly while telling me the house they bought for 120k is now worth 700k.

For many of us, the housing market is closed for ever. I’m so tired of the pity and the complete cluelessness- I quite often feel utter despair about it. It makes me feel such a failure for no real fault of our own. Some people were lucky because they happened to buy at a particular month in time & then some of us couldn’t & it’s over.

I don’t think people who own really understand what it’s like. Low interest rates, cheap mortgages, everything weighted in favour of owners while renters are treated like the Victorian poor.

Aibu to be sick of it. We are a normal family in normal jobs.

It’s always been hard to get on the property ladder, to be honest, not a new thing

I think that's true. People tell me how lucky I am to have been in my 20s at at time when you could get 100% mortgages and buy a terraced house in south London for £20k-30k, and they're right.

But they're not as right as they think they are, because they forget that £5k was a good salary then, so even a 100% mortgage was only a help if you were earning a lot, and that interest rates were well into double figures. I had to have lodgers for 8 years before I could actually comfortably cover the mortgage payments.

When I came to the end of the 2nd fixed period of my first mortgage, the best deal I could get was 13.5%. Imagine how much the average SE England FTB mortgage would cost today at the sort of interest rate? And then imagine how much it would cost when the base rate hit 15.5% and mortgage rates were typically 1-2% above base?

Those high interest rates led to a lot of unemployment too, it was over 10% at one time. So many homes were being repossessed that Croydon County Court was, at one time, dealing with hundreds of possession applications every day.

It was proper grim.

Most home owners without help really struggle and sacrifice to get on the ladder. I had been in a profession for 10 years and bought via shared owner ship. It was 70% of my salary for 12 years. I was skint but played the bigger picture. Making huge sacrifices are necessary. It was tough seeing friends with parental help etc but you have to be rigorous with your finances.

Totally agree.

Friends mum has a three bed semi detached house. Beautiful long garden. Not too far from train station leading you to Central London.

And she is very judgemental towards DP and I renting still with two small children.

We both work. She has never worked. Husband is a self employed gardener. They have only just afforded to justify the cost of buying double glazed windows after 30 years (just adding this for perspective of wage).

If they were born in my generation they would not have afforded the house they have. Yet they are so snobby about the fact we can't provide our DC with a lovely big three bed home and garden.

For those who are saying that people can move to other areas, live in tiny properties Whilst saving etc are missing the point...Which is that the housing market is vastly over inflated. We shouldn't all have to undertake crazy life acrobatics just to get on the ladder.

This is true, but, given that there won't be a structural change soon, the OP can either move somewhere cheaper or put a lot of effort into getting a better paid job. Or play the lottery and hope.

@malificent7🍷💐🧁

I feel like you’re getting a bit of a hard time too. I’m not sure the market can be propped up to the levels it has been for much longer. This isn’t me wishing bad luck on anyone, just pointing out that I believe the current situation is unsustainable. I hope things work out for you.

I also suspect that the government know this too, which is why they’ve been gradually making things harder for buy to let landlords. I do wonder if paying back the corona bailout package may be the excuse they need to say that they can’t prop up the housing market anymore.

i needed my support network as a single mum
That still a choice. An understandable one but a choice. I was hours away from my family when I became a single mum and had no support at all. Hard, certainly, impossible, not at all.

Could one of you retrain for a higher paying profession? That way you could eventually save the extra earningS or be able to get a keyworker loan towards a property depending on the profession

we could get a house in a cheaper area for ‘only’ 400k
They seriously think that people just afford those "cheaper" house just like that?

@AlexisCarringtonColbyDexter

No one needs 50+ houses. The person who mentioned him never said he should give them away. However it would make more sense to sell them. Then you've got 50 ish families in their own homes rather than one guy owning them all. It's not like he needs the income from 50+ houses. If you go on an average of £500 per month per house, he's making over £25,000 a month for nothing. That's insane. I don't get how anyone can think that is morally OK. He can legally do it, but he's an utter scumbag for doing so. He would still have a ton of money from selling the majority, and if he really so badly needs an income after selling say 45 for £250k per house (£11,250,000), then he's got 5 ish left over for a monthly income. It's beyond greedy in what he is doing.

You have hit on a bigger moral issue here OP (several in fact). Shelter is a basic human need, like food and water, but has instead been turned into an investment vehicle. How can it be right that someone with a full time job cannot afford a roof over their head? To suggest that you should go out and find an evening job is obscene. The wider impacts on society (some which will hit further down the line) are manifold. How many parents will now have the choice for one parent to stay at home to raise the children if that is their choice? Not many. How many thousands of worthwhile and rewarding jobs are now deemed undersireable because they don't pay enough salary to meet housing needs? Instead we are pushing our children harder and harder to aim for high paying jobs that they might not want or be suited to, just so that they can have hope of some security in life. That we have collectively allowed this situation to develop is a national scandal. Then there is the issue of 30 year mortgages. Who will be the main beneficiaries of these? Not the property 'owners' who will be likely slogging their guts out for decades to pay for them. Houses should NEVER have been allowed to morph into investment assets without strict regulation. Thinking that the problem is due to a housing shortage is akin to thinking that there is starvation in the world due to food shortages. Unless we change our cultural mindset to housing things are only going to get worse but I can't see this happening anytime soon.

As a saver suffering many years now of extraordinarily low interest rates, the fact that rates have been kept low to prop up the market you’ve bought into means money has been taken from my pocket

I could get quite bitter about the way that I paid a mortgage and had debt all through the years of high interest, and that by the time I got my mortgage paid off, have nothing on credit and a few quid in the bank, interest rates are next to fuck-all and the value of my savings is being eroded by inflation.

@CHIRIBAYA yes, absolutely and your post is at the heart of what I was trying to say.

And to those asking me to disclose loads of details about my DP’s health, no, suffice to say that he has a long term health condition and spent time on disability benefits.

We shouldn't all have to undertake crazy life acrobatics just to get on the ladder.

As a homeowner who was apparantly just lucky that is exactly what I did 15 years ago. I moved a 2 hour drive away from friends and family. My brother moved 3 hours away.

Whilst it is hard for today's youngsters, if you are early 40's I can understand your friends confusion as to why you don't own. It was much cheaper in the 90's, I bought with a £2500 deposit a few months leaving university on a single very ordinary income, it was cheap then. I'm mid 40's. My brother did the same, early 40's.

Lots of people say they can't entertain the idea of moving far away from family. They say it would be too hard and isn't feasible. Yes, it is bloody hard to do it, but it's also bloody hard to be in rented all your life and for many it really is one or the other.

Some seem to think it's a ludicrous suggestion to move away. They point out that they have children who need to say GP or GP do childcare or they have a support network of friends or they have jobs or.... But it's keep those things or be able to afford a property. If you value the current things more and can cope with the idea of renting very long term (because that is probably the cost of staying) then fine, as long as you're aware that this is the cost of staying.

And for many in their 50s or 60s now who still rent, or in their 40s too - they are feeling the costs in terms of still renting. They have had 20 or 30 years of being near family and living in an expensive area they couldn't afford to buy in - so in a sense, they have had the thing they chose. Others who moved in their 30s and are now in their 40s, 50s 60s had the 'cost' earlier on of leaving family and the difficulties of establishing themselves in a new area, but now have a property they own and have established a new life. They bore the cost earlier and have the benefits now.

A lot of this is about taking the long view. It really is about sacrifice innthebshort term for gain innthenlomg term. It isn't as simple as going without take away coffee (although all the little sacrifices add up) but making the bigger sacrifices now and being willing to make them, such as leaving an area you love or having family 2 hours away. I think lots of people massively struggle with this longer term concept and need much more instant gratification and can't cope with longer term sacrifices. In short, lots of people want everything with no sacrifice or cost. They live in expensive areas on low or medium wages and want property (sometimes a family property because they are a family) but can't quite see that the figures don't add up and are not goingntonadd up even inna few years time. Because they've always lived in that area they cannot even begin to imagine somewhere else and because their parents have spent their whole lives in one area, feel they should be able to. But this 'should be able to' is at the heart of there are no 'should be able to have a family house wherever I want to live' realities and we are deluded in thinking there always have been. It might have been true for the post-war generation who grew up in the south east and then managed to buy in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s and make big gains, but it wasn't the case for people before the 50s. It's only been a tiny window where most families could afford to buy in all areas. We are now back to the norm if you like. Adjusting to the reality and deciding to live within it, rather than feeling annoyed about what it is seems to be the first step towards actually making progress and realising there are hard choices and consequences whatever you choose.

There you go 'can one of your train to be a higher paying professional'!! Maybe a brain surgeon? Why SHOULD they? Check out 'The New Builds Are Coming" - that was based in Oxfordshire. A NURSE married to a PARAMEDIC living with her parents because they couldn't afford a home? & you think this is acceptable? Maybe all the nurses and paramedics should just move up North or just accept they will be renting forever so put up and shut up.

@malificent7

On mumsnet i have been told to totally relocate away from my support network, get a better paid job and eat just beans on toast for years to get on the ladder as though these things were as easy as breathing...*

Nobody said it was easy. If anything the home owners are trying to tell you that that is how they did it to make it possible. For most it wasn't luck or big monetary gifts but bloody poverty.

It's so difficult for minimum wage earners, I get that. I bought 2 bed 2nd floor flat in around 2003, in my early twenties, earning well with no help by scrimping and scraping for 2 years to get a 7.5% deposit. Which was tough. I rented out a room for income, which wasn't great, then sold and bought a mess of a house on one of the worst estates in the southeast, think Shameless levels. I was a single parent by then, I had very little equity, and no help at all.

I made £100k on that property in 4 years by way of urban improvement affecting area prices alongside a lot of slow and painful DIY, and the equity enabled DH and I to buy our forever home for vastly more than I spent on the first house.

So I do understand the struggle, but I do also think a lot of couples want to buy the dream home and don't realise an awful lot of us started very small with a huge struggle. When I bought my estate home I got a lot of negativity, and yes, it was a crazy couple of years, but it was a sacrifice which paid off. I still wonder about chucking it all in and going somewhere super cheap with no mortgage. DH earns very well remotely so it's feasible but I prefer being close to elderly parents.

How can it be right that someone with a full time job cannot afford a roof over their head?
Many 1 bed flats will be affordable to people working ft even on a low income. Certainly on two.

What is not affordable is a three bedroom with a garden on one ft job only. Yet thats what families seem to considered themselves entitled to.

Noone is entitled to a house when one parent gets to stay at home and raise three kids. This is a luxury.

@CHIRIBAYA

Good posts.

Apart from not all of the North is cheap. South and West M/cr, big chunks of Cheshire, around Harrogate, popular Lakes towns are pretty expensive. I think when people say move to “the north” they mean places like Blackpool and Barrow - these places are cheap because of the lack of career prospects and social problems.

I just looked on an estate agent website
My 4 bed detached house with very big garden in the North would get me a one bed flat in oxford
I could not afford to live in Oxford

DarkenedTimes I was thinking exactly the same as you. Everyone saying “We didn’t have a car” or “we cycled/walked to work”. After redundancy a few years ago DH and I moved back to my home town as we could buy a house outright. We had lived in the SE but in a cheaper area and once the mortgage had been paid off after the sale, we bought this one and still have a decent amount of savings.

However, it was over a year until I found a full time, permanent job (DH took his pension). It is 30 miles away and shift work so I need a car. Public transport does not run in order to get me there on an early turn or home on a late turn. I cannot walk or cycle. I’d love a job nearer to home but there aren’t any; apart from (in normal times) care or retail. Neither of which I want to do or indeed would be able to as I have a shoulder injury that prevents me from lifting much. I did work in retail for a time as a temp over Christmas when we first moved here but it’s low paid and hours aren’t guaranteed outside busy periods and I still had to travel to a nearby city for that. I was having physio on my injury at the time but as soon as it stops, the pain comes back but I can’t afford to keep paying for it.

Many people who buy in cheaper areas are then faced with a long commute to get to work and this is also an added expense. Second hand furniture can also be an issue if you don’t drive/have a car as many sell it that you have to collect yourself. I got my sofa and footstool for less than £300 as ex-display pieces, had to pay £30 for delivery. Got my (second hand) table and chairs for less than £100 and the blokes at the warehouse took pity on me and dropped me and the stuff off in their van!

Crazy life acrobatics is a good phrase for what most people have to perform in order to become owners. And many always have done those but a lot feel they are somehow entitled to an easier ride to ownership - perhaps because some people get that easier ride, or perhaps because having to make big sacrifices generally doesn't sit easily with them for anything.

Look at what people from the commonwealth or from Easter Europe did in terms of acrobatics to given their families better lives. Are we above making such choices?

How can it be right that someone with a full time job cannot afford a roof over their head?

If they save and live cheaply, most people can - they just can't necessarily buy in the area they want. And many people don't want to make the sacrifices that are necessary in order to own property. It's evident from the answers on this thread.

People choose to believe that home owners only got where they are because they received help from their parents when that's evidently not the case. Lots of people scrimped and lived in house shares for years in order to save up enough money to buy. They moved to less desirable areas, lived without furniture or carpet for a time because all their money had gone on a deposit.

Not everyone wants to make those kinds of decisions. They'd rather rent a nice home with a garden right away - which is fine, but that decision does mean more of your income goes on rent whereas others have more spare money which can go into savings.

So many people on here that have brought houses and are giving advice were feeling the same way as the people who can’t buy once.
I spent years saying it was impossible for me to buy. I even used to do internet searches about house price crashes too 🙈 Non of that ever got me a house and there was a house price crash right in the middle of that 10/15 year period of wanting one - yet I didn’t buy.
One day I decided I really wanted a house and implemented a plan. It was that plan that got me here today. For the first time ever I stopped moaning/ wishing/ dreaming and began to actually do something.
A lot of us have been in exactly the same situation, we had all the same feelings. Yet when we offer advice here we are now “privileged”
Get a pen and paper out.

Get on Rightmove and look for the shittiest house/flat that you could tolerate living in. Write that figure down.

Work out how much you can borrow on a mortgage calculator.

Whatever that difference is. You have to save.

Now theoretically go through your direct debits and spending and see what would happen if you chop every single thing you can. Netflix, sky, etc.

Work weekends. Loads of jobs you can pick up 12 hr weekend shifts. More than £100 a day even on minimum wage.

If you cut everything to the bone and worked weekends extra for a year then I’d say it should be easy to save up 12k a year at least.