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.

Have all the people suggesting living in a one bed house & having two or more jobs, when you already work full time & have kids, done it themselves? They should write a 'How To' book - it'll be a bestseller!
You know that it's all your fault, buying posh coffees & stuffing you face with all the avocado you can get.
We are relatively lucky to have a mortgage on a not-great house because of the time we bought. I don't think that our kids will ever be able to afford a house, not unless things change beyond all recognition.

Oxford is eye wateringly expensive. My friend lives in a tiny house off Cowley Road and its worth the same as a 6 bedroom house where I live.
And OP, YANBU

After reading all the comments, I conclude that a lot of people are advocating getting on the housing ladder at all costs including buying at historic high prices. I too bought last year at historic high (2 bed London flat), but I wouldn't dream of asking someone to make a silly financial decision (it was an emotional decision for me and also out of my own unique circumstances). OP is lucky, she hasn't bought at historic highs unlike the rest of us homeowners (mostly, esp if you bought between 2015-2019) and hopefully she would be able to buy after this crash.

There are going to be quite a lot of tears when the housing market inevitably crashes. Everyone ha s idealised owning and that's dangerous because it means that people would do anything to get on the ladder including using emergency savings and getting more unstable, worse paid jobs. This would come back to bite them during the recession.

A property crash is totally irrelevant to the majority of homeowners for whom a property is somewhere to live, not an 'investment'. It's only relevant if you cannot service the mortgage or are selling without a concurrent purchase.

@Cinderella66 exactly! But if you do major life acrobatics to get on the housing ladder, you might be placing yourself in a vulnerable position potentially. If you moved to a poorer area to access affordable housing, usually these places are not as economically vibrant and have fewer jobs. Thats less of an issue if you still have a job. If you don't have a job, thats a big problem. And if you end up on beans on toast for months on end because you bought, probably you raided your emergency savings and don't have a year's expenses saved up.

On a separate thread, there was someone who was choosing between Woking and Scotland to buy a house.. chose Scotland but is in a lot of pain now due to Job instability. If he had chosen woking, house prices/rent would be a lot more expensive but would still probably have a job.

Everybody and their "boohoo wipes tears from eyes we understand we did it too, now we're in a starter home and all it cost us was our entire twenties and half our thirties." It should NOT have to be that way! And if your advice is "just move to a less expensive area and take a second job as a barmaid" - do you not see that this is half of the problem? You move into "less expensive" places and bump the prices up? While taking their jobs? Thus rendering those below you in the pecking order, in the "cheap areas", newly priced out? As if I believe even one of the "second job got me a home-ers" on here actually did anything like they pretend. Maybe they decorated garlands for etsy i dunno.

Have all the people suggesting living in a one bed house & having two or more jobs, when you already work full time & have kids, done it themselves

We did a f/t job and worked every evening and weekend for a year because despite the fact you could get a 100% mortgage it was only 100% if your multiples added up to the cheapest place on the market so we had to put down a huge deposit to make up the difference to be able to buy the tiniest studio flat in the area.

I do have 2 friends who brought up their families in 1 bed flats for several years
My own dd and Ds shared a tiny room with bunk beds until ds was 12.

Oxford is a very expensive area and whether you buy now or wait till everything has settled maybe do some research on living further out.

Abingdon, Didcot type areas of even going as far as Banbury or Bicester

Somewhere you can get a train into Oxford Station.

Dp worked in Oxford years ago and we lived miles out.

Not all house owners. We bought our first house at 20 years of age, so almost 30 years ago, it wasn’t easy but definitely do able. We’ve just helped our eldest daughter buy a flat, she’s single in a well paid job but the deposit, on her own, would have been imoossibke.

Oxford is a very expensive area

Absolutely! Oxford is supposedly just after London and Brighton. The OP's combined income means that they have very little left after paying rent. I really agree with Desiringonlychild about the dilemma between moving to a cheaper area and being able to find a job. If nothing else, the coronavirus should have taught us that a lot of the ideas suggested on this thread like taking on an extra job, such as bar work, are no longer feasible at the moment.

The posts that resonated with me were the ones highlighting the differences between average wages and average house prices at various time points. House price inflation is so much higher than wage rises so it is becoming increasingly hard to buy a house. The other one that really moved me was the poster who saved and saved and delayed TTC belatedly discovering she had fertility problems. Yes, many people have worked incredibly hard to buy property and made many sacrifices. Sometimes that's not enough.

@nettie434 it's not just the lack of availability of low.skilled side gigs. A lot of younger people may be tempted to wfh now that it has become more of an option. Facebook is now saying that it would cut salaries for those who choose to work from home from a cheaper location. I suspect companies in the UK would probably take a similar view and adjust accordingly. This may be good enough for some people but what I suspect is that a lot of people may not want to take the salary cut and inevitably this means good jobs are still concentrated around London and the SE. Esp for higher earning jobs, salary cut means less pension even if your mortgage is lower.

I hadn't realised that about wage cuts DesiringOnlyChild. Yes - there are going to be some big salary cuts. Just for example, so much depends on us having broadband in terms of wfh or heatings costs in winter but HMRC limit what you can claim to £6 pw. It is definitely going to get harder

My bil and wife left Hampshire where prices are high. They had only managed to save £16k after saving for over 7 years. They moved to Birmingham where they could afford a house. They rented for a year whilst they both got jobs. During that time spent £4k before getting a job. They bought two bed house for £160k. It was small and needed some work but had a garden. Mortgage was cheaper than rent had been so able to save more. After four year they improved house and garden and sold. Bought three bed house by remortgaging and adding their extra savings. They put off having children for eight years and only had camping weekend breaks no holidays. They did not go out much either. They took a risk moving with no job but it seems to have paid off.

@caringcarer I would be pretty bumped if I didn't have holidays for 8 years, saved so much for a house that I bought at the peak before covid, then couldn't travel because of covid, and then saw all my friends buying cheap houses in my dream location cos of covid while I am in a city I didn't necessarily like..I would probably see many of my peers buying London flats and houses at 20% discount but at least I can comfort myself with the fact that I did go on holidays when I was saving for my flat, and at least I managed to stay in London in a good location. At least I am not stuck in Watford forever just because I wanted to get on the housing ladder at the worst possible time. In East Finchley at least, I know that no matter how much the prices dropped, I cannot afford a 3 bed house as the 3 bed house is £800k-1 million. Maybe I could have afforded the 600k tiny terrace but it's not significantly larger than the flat and they rarely come onto the market anyway.

I could perhaps have afforded a flat that is currently selling at £500k but frankly it isn't much better than my £400k flat which also has a communal garden.

Regarding ordinary people working in ordinary jobs, a house of their own is a dream. Something went very wrong when private investment property seem to spring up overnight. Those who could bought property to rent out and pushed the prices up. The government/s did nothing to stop it and the social housing was sold under Right to Buy schemes, which while helping some on to the property ladder, took away affordable social housing which enabled people to live in a decent home whilst saving for a deposit, if that was their goal. There seems to be no control over private rents and I think there should be a Minister for Fair Rent, I am sure that I read about Rent Officers in the 1960/70's. The whole situation is so unfair and as someone else said, their is no correlation between average wages and average house prices. Landlords should be taxed to the hilt and if the market was flooded with property when they sold, ordinary people who worked hard would stand a chance of owning a home. I don't know the answer but I think when the Chinese curse has subsided, people should Lobby MP's, form pressure groups and make being a landlord who charges exorbitant rents a criminal offence. People matter and society needs to be fairer to those who just want a home. Councils 'could ' buy back the social housing as it comes on the market when the second generation sell their inheritance, that way affordable social housing estates could provide homes for those who need them. Social housing rents have traditionally been much lower giving people a chance to save for a deposit. The money to buy back the social housing could come out of the foreign aid budget, Charity begins at home.

@Petlover9 new York and Berlin both have rent controls. I have rented in London and Berlin, and I must say ,I prefer renting in London even if it was a lot more expensive. Cos for Berlin, there was such a housing shortage and landlords were Uber conservative as it was super difficult to kick people out. We had to queue for a viewing, I remember vividly going to a viewing and there were 20 other young people following the estate agent around like puppies. We had to supply so many documents; it was either 3 months payslips or a guarantor and also had to have a deposit.

I'm going to be a bitch here and say it, £40k combined income is about as low as it gets in the south east. People on the lowest incomes have never been able to buy, except perhaps through huge discounts like right to buy.

It is so difficult. In other countries where renting is the norm, the propert marker is much healthier. My DB and DSIL were derided for buying a house before they had children, as being hopelessly middle aged! Where they live people rent and some buy when they have a family but renting is what most people do always.

And as someone who does own a house, I would love the market to crash because my house is not an 'mvestment' and I would love my children to be able to buy but I don't see they ever will it bless they move to Italy where property is peanuts but there are no jobs 🙁

www.idealista.it/immobile/17556167/
I know not remotely realistic, but can dream....

Yes the the earning to price ratio. When I was earning 24k in 1990 I bought a large 2bed flat in SWLondon for 67k -perfectly affordable and was able to have a great social life/car/holidays etc.
The job I did would probably earn about 30k max now and that flat (which I o longer own) would sell at about 400k.

Unfortunately even if you somehow get your deposit together you can’t afford to own in oxford on your salary. So your choice is own a house or live in Oxford- you can’t have both on your salaries. We moved out of our nearest city for the same reason, we couldn’t buy there.

It’s shit but your salaries aren’t high enough to afford the luxury of living in Oxford

Which is another reason why the generation above me who did that and are now retired on good pensions having studied FOC can easily say 'let's stayed locked down to protect us oldies' and the burden is all on the under 45s (who are not at risk of CV)

I really feel for young people. They are fucked re jobs, property, education debt, good knows when they will be able to claim pension. Some sat at home without their friends, no education and often a loss of fledgling independence. Those who had jobs are some of the worst hit in terms of job loss. We really owe it to them to make things better.

Can I also say, spare a thought for single people. It is hard for people in op’s position but at least with two of you, you have two salaries and more flexibility for career progression, extra hours, a second job and if you have children it is easier to work around caring for them.

I only managed to buy my own home as I moved out of London to South Wales where housing was more affordable at the age of 32. I knew if I left it any longer I would never be in a position to buy.

The whole situation is so unfair and as someone else said, their is no correlation between average wages and average house prices. Landlords should be taxed to the hilt and if the market was flooded with property when they sold, ordinary people who worked hard would stand a chance of owning a home

We have already tried to tax landlords to the hilt and all that ended up doing was to put up rents to compensate the landlord for the loss of income and those that couldn’t then get the income flipped them over into Holiday/Airbnb type properties because then you could put your income against all of your outgoings
This resulted in rents being driven up even more as the long term housing stock available to rent became less.

Whilst it was a nice idea that landlords would then sell up and all their housing stock would be flooding the market it didn’t so it was a lose lose for renters and potential ftb’s,

If you choose to rent in one of the most expensive cities in the country as opposed to living further out and being inconvenienced by a commute of 45 minutes-1 hour then you have to take with it you are not going to save as much.
If you want to buy where prices are £300,000 and can’t afford that amount then you look further afield where prices are more like £200,000.

The reason we don’t have a rent officer anymore is because we are free to choose how we spend our money.
Living in a house that was part of this rent controlled era I can say it was an unmitigated disaster.

All it ended up doing was people lived in dreadful accommodation that the landlord didn’t have or chose not to spend the money to fix up or fix things that went wrong.
The rent officer was just to make sure the rents remained cheap. Not to force the landlord to repair anything.
You did have cheap rent but would you want to live in the place was the question.