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.

Do you work office hours and could have an additional job in the evenings weekdays in a bar , supermarket, bank staff care assistant.

We should not have to brake our backs for somewhere to live.

@Rockbird don’t!! We have been renting this house for 10 years. Needs rewiring, new kitchen, bathroom, carpet, conservatory roof needs replacing, 2 of the windows have condensation inside, but we don’t have the money to do it (and would rather put that money towards a deposit) and landlord won’t as it’s not essential. It’s got to the stage now where I won’t have anyone around the house because I’m so embarrassed of the state and age of it all. If we owned we could do bits as we went along/ do it ourselves.

Well you could move to a cheaper area, that's what we did.

I understand that it would be really disruptive and that's why you don't want to, but you could do it if owning a house was that important to you. We all have to choose what to prioritise in life.

I think before people would buy a small house early on and move up. People are waiting longer now so want to jump 3 steps on the ladder and buy the forever family home with a big garden near a good school but without having built the equity in the 1 bed flat and then the 2 bed terrace doer upper. I feel this is nigh on impossible to do, no matter how many evenings and weekends you work delivering takeaways on top of a full time job.

I'm better off than my parents but my dad was a minicab driver, my mother a housewife, they bought a 4-bed detached [admittedly on the cheap side of a northern town, but still] when my dad was about 32 yrs old, something like that. Younger men doing that job nowadays rent without, I should think, exception, or else maybe if their OH works own an ex LA 2-bed place.

@BlueGreenYellowRed we would if we could but we are about to go into the biggest recession in living memory- an academic on channel 4 news earlier said likely a Great Depression- so changing jobs doesn’t seem a good idea now

Back along people could buy houses on 1 wage. House prices have now risen that even people on 2 wages can’t buy.

@ToothFairyNemesis

Yeah it’s so frustrating

Mortgage payments are actually cheaper than my rent in most houses here. But we can’t get a mortgage as we can’t find the funds for the deposit

IME it's the small houses that have had the biggest jump in price. It's the starter homes that were taken up at first by buy-to-let landlords and it's only relatively recently that semi-detached and then even bigger houses started to be rented out.

YADNBU, op, except it needs to be acknowledged that this has been going on for over 20 years now, since Blair really gave buy-to-lets full impetus. It affected people on low wages first - what are now acknowledged as keyworker jobs - and no one gave a damn until it started affecting the rich middle classes too.

@Merryoldgoat when my eldest was a baby/toddler that’s exactly what I did, which is why I am suggesting it.

It's awful, isn't it? Especially in the SE where it's so expensive.
I own my house but we first bought decades ago, and have been able to move up here and there. I'd hate to be young now.

My DS just bought a house at 26, BUT he lives in a cheap area, could live in very cheap accommodation while he saved up, had the forces' help to buy scheme, and we gave him some money, too. Most people don't have that helpful set of circumstances.

Where do you live that rent is 1200 per month?! Rent here is 550 for a house like the one we bought for 100k. Could you not move to a cheaper area to save up?

What makes you think most property owners don't understand? Most property owners are probably capable of reading the papers, looking in Estate Agent windows and have a feel for the Zeitgeist, I would have thought.

@Boredfromboredshire Your op should read AIBU To think most property owners don’t understand how hard it now is to buy a house without making sacrifices that they didn’t need to

I’m a homeowner. I really feel for those trying to get on the ladder. The only reason I was able to was that I managed it young enough. Had I not taken that window of opportunity I would never have been able to. I could not afford to rent the house I have a mortgage on (mortgage £1000 rent would be £2000) in fact I probably couldn’t rent at all in this area. It would have prevented me from having a family I would think. So yes I really feel lucky and I do feel for you OP.

@Nottherealslimshady as I have said, no, we can’t move at the moment given the crisis. We live in Oxford & have decent jobs. OP works at the uni

It is really difficult if you already have a family because then you need your first property to be a house, rather than starting with a flat (or a flat each as in the case of many couples) and getting a bit of equity. If you can't borrow money off family it is virtually impossible.
You might be able to do a combination of saving a bit of deposit and buying a new build via Help to Buy which effectively provides a 20% deposit. Unfortunately new build prices are 10 to 20 percent above the second hand market so unless you move to a cheaper area this won't work.
The system is 100% rigged towards home ownership in the UK. I've done the maths and over a long time period it is way way better financially to own than to rent.
However it's not all bad. There are some advantages to renting.
You can move house whenever you like, with minimal fuss and cost. If a terrible neighbour moves in you can just leave. Once you've bought it costs 10k+ in stamp duty and legal fees etc just to move house. It really restricts your freedom and makes big life decisions quite difficult if you have to sell a house.
You don't have to pay to repair stuff. If the roof starts leaking or the boiler conks out, not your problem!
You can live in a better area than you would if you bought somewhere.

People shouldn't have to move to the other end of the country to buy a house. It's ridiculous and unfair.

I feel for you OP - my husband and I have been so lucky with help from family to be able to buy - no way would we have been able to otherwise.

@ToothFairyNemesis I’m not sure i understand what you mean? Are you saying we haven’t made enough sacrifices? My DP was really ill for a long time so we have had to sacrifice many things. We just can’t work 5 jobs

Oops just seen your post about the Help to Buy 😅.
We moved to a different area so we could do the Help to Buy because there weren't any HTB properties in our area

It's no better on the other side. We own our house, or at least the bank does. But it's tiny and there's no way we could afford to move into anything bigger. I'm very tempted to sell and rent. I bet your house is a lot bigger than ours, grass is greener and all that.

This sort of comment proves how little some people understand.

Why do you think someone else's house is bigger than yours, just because they rent? That makes no sense. But it does feed nicely into the ignorant perception that everyone who rents is careless with money.

FWIW, OP, I think some property owners are very aware and others are oblivious - like most things really.

I admit I only discovered how much it costs to rent a house here recently. We (very luckily) bought almost 20 years ago. A good friend who for various reasons has never bought asked me to look for a place for him to rent and I was amazed how much less house you get here for monthly payments higher than our mortgage. It's made me aware how hard it is to buy once you have a family and need a family sized home. This is Somerset btw. House prices aren't astronomical here but rent prices appear to be!

Area dependent. It's all relative.

Depending on when and how long you both experienced ill health, when you met your partner and when you had your children may make you slightly unreasonable as in it could be through the choices you made, rather than it being a lot more difficult. Not sure if I have worded than in an understandable way.