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.

Taz is right about Manchester. The state imposed an annual tax on properties held within a company - ATED for those worth over £500k so not surprisingly foreign investors moved from London to places where they could be under the limit for that new tax.

On the ethnic diversity point I mean you can get that in spades near Halifcax and Huddersfield where we have family. Also my older son's first house in Chesham cost £325k in 2016 ( we still own it - his brother now owns it and lets it out) and that has a mosque etc very near by and is also on the tube (just - very long journey into London and expensive so not that great for commuters but doable as a compromise) and my zone 5 (not that far from Watford) is in a borough where I, being white, am in a minority (my son was the only white boy in his class at one point and that is a fee paying school).

Anyway I think we all pretty agree - if your children want to buy a property and are brought up somewhere where prices are high (ie not most of the country) then they need as teenagers to pick high paid careers and marry a similar partner and buy before they have a first baby.

Chocolate above is very happy renting that is great too. Our family always rented (too poor not to) - most of them - I have traced back most ancestors to the 1700s and they were most in England but some were in Ireland and Scotland. Most did not own any property although one miner had risen to being an mining overseer and proudly put on the 1851 census that he was now an "owner of houses" (near Sunderland).

The data from next year's (2021) census will be very interesting as usual. I am glad we keep up the census England has done since 1841.

ChocolatelyAsFuck but then why pre lock down even in the depths of winter are the streets still busy even in non touristy areas if no one lives there.
Or are you saying that the whole of London is occupied by visitors

I hope there is a huge exodus as I would like to live much closer in than my current zone 6 abode

@Oliversmumsarmy when I say commuter town,I mean a town in the home counties (generally) which is possible to commute to London for a 9-5. This generally means an hour commute to a central London terminus. The journey can look brutal esp from Hampshire and Brighton. But it is often done at great expense by ex londoners.i read somewhere only 6 out of 10 London first time buyers buy in London, 7 out of 10 of ex Londoners buy in the south east which usually means commuting.

I would say 50% of my colleagues and dH's colleagues are commuting. Many of them own. The season ticket often exceeds £4-5k but people are able to afford it somehow. Destinations of people we know irl include borehamwood, Watford and orpington, but there is also reading, Marlow, Milton Keynes, Hatfield, St Alban's, radlett, Hampshire, hitchin, Stevenage,Hemel Hempstead, Brighton, Oxford etc

Oliversmumsarmy stop being disingenuous, it’s so goady. I clearly said “areas of London” and it’s pretty shitty (and a maaaaaaaaasive stretch) for you to turn “houses in certain areas are owned primarily by foreign investors” into “the whole entirety of London is completely deserted.”

There are plenty of streets in London that are not busy even at the height of summer. Besides tourists and others are allowed to walk down streets they don’t live on. It’s weird to assume people on the streets = occupied properties, considering London attracts visitors from all over the world.

ChocolatelyAsFuck

I wasn’t trying to be anything. I was responding to people saying that there has been an exodus from London, that parts of London are ghost towns and foreign investors have bought a lot of properties and left them empty.

By the description given I was querying why the place is getting busier and busier

DH and I have a two bed flat in SE London which we bought in 2002. We would not be able to buy it now. Flats are £450k to £800k. Houses in my postcode top £2m and more.

A friend who inherited his house in a West London reckoned to me I could buy a house near him for the same price as the flat. Looked on Zoopla. Found out I needed four of my flats to buy one house in the same postcode as him. I think he lost track how must his biggest asset is worth. He didn't believe me until I showed him the evidence.

Once our child has moved out we are moving away from London to get the garden we want.

London is a big place. The parts that have been bought up by foreign investors are not getting busier and busier. It makes sense that other areas are now getting busier, since more people are now squished into them. The area I live in has seen a huge explosion in building development and in population, and it’s because it’s historically a much cheaper area (a traditionally black and working class area) which is in the process of being gentrified and has seen a mass influx of people who, like me, have been priced out of other parts of London.

The fairly middle class area of London where I was born and raised is now too expensive for me, because the relatively affordable housing has been bulldozed to make way for mega-mansions. So now I live in a cheaper, traditionally working class part of London. But I also know that lots of people who’d lived in my new area for decades have had to leave London completely, because what used to be a working class/cheap area has become much more expensive.

It’s a horrible cycle and I don’t know where it will end.

I am in mid-forties.
I worked my arse off (still am) to save and save for a deposit- I worked in a low paid job, but could do as many hours as I liked and didn't have living expenses as the jobs had accommodation with them.
I definitely missed out, I have no career despite having a good education, but my whole goal was security. I couldn't afford to be an unpaid intern which my dream career required even over 20 years ago.
I did finally buy a house in a much cheaper area, and will probably live here for the rest of my life, until I go into a nursing home.
It's not what I imagined, I thought I would move up the ladder and have a lovely aspirational home by now, like my parents and grandparents had.
But my bog-standard home is my sanctuary, I am single and I have lodgers so I can afford to run the place as my mortgage is high (not as high as rent) and I hope to build an extension which will hopefully add value to the house and mean I can have the financial security to adopt a child, as having children was one of the sacrifices I made to having the security of having a roof (my own, not rented) over my head.
It's tough, and I would say having a salary of £40k between you is not enough for the Oxford area (I know it well) unless maybe the cheaper council estates?
If you already have a child, then it's going to be even hard to save while they are young and need childcare.
You both need to try and get better paid jobs, you both earn below national average for FT work, house prices might fall, but then the banks will be even more reluctant to lend to you if you have a tiny deposit.
It's not fair, but you could move locations to cheaper areas if the country, but obviously that would be a sacrifice. But in your situation you are going to have to make lots of sacrifices- like I did- unless you have a rich, generous relative?

It may also depends on family background. If your grandparent lived 10 people in 3 rooms in NE England and always rented then you never feel things are unfair if you don't move up some ladder. My parents did buy one house (in which they died, literally, in their 70s in NE England).

in the 1930s this area of outer London (Metroland they used to call it) was build - tons and tons of terraced and semis and a lot of people were moved out of the East End slum tenements and some bought or rented out here. The person who looked after our children in 1984 had parents in law who were in that position and then under the right to buy a council home (one they carefully tended with a front and back garden by the way for decades) their son helped them apply under the council right to buy new legislation and they bought the ex council house but part from that right they would never have bought nor their childcare daughter in law nor her low paid security guard husband. The only reason they bought was the state gave them a massive discount and that was the starting point, the launch pad. My parents bought because they passed the 11 plus exam and became a doctor and teacher and did not have babies for 8 years whilst they saved up to buy a house so in their case it was education and career choice and luck of IQ I suppose. My older son who is in low paid work has bought because his mother worked full time and went in a sense the career choice plus luck of IQ and I chose to help him to buy his house (by which I mean his first house in Chesham). I don't help the children with later purchases. it is a one off thing - I pay for their education and help them all with the same sum for a property whether they are on £10m a year (they aren't ) or £23k - they all get the same.

I hear you op really gets my goat. We are in same
Position as you albeit houses are cheaper in my area but with young kids and childcare we haven’t much left for saving deposits. We got offered a housing association house last year and bit their hand off but had friends of friends saying with rent that cheap you’d be as well buying etc etc and I lived on beans on toast to allow me to buy a house (didn’t mention parents gave her a whack of cash) I’m sorry but I’m not knocking my pan in at work to eat beans on toast and not take the kids out at weekends and potentially have it sold off anyway. We are putting bits of money away though even though it’s probably going to get even harder now

People on here are just moaning now, you've been given direction, on how to buy a home and you've chosen to ignore it.

You can protest, protest and protest some more, it won't change anything.

If you're actually serious about buying a home, move out of London to begin with...

Birmingham and Manchester, offer similar opportunities to London, without the hefty house prices and cost of living.

Hose prices percentage wise, are rising faster in these places also.

Buy a house in Birmingham for 100-200k, pay down the mortgage aggressively. Then go and buy the home you desire.

What you'll find is, that eventually you'll be priced out of Birmingham and Manchester also.

While you are here moaning about house prices, I've bought, sacrificed and will be buying that house by 40, which you dream to own...

If you're actually serious about buying a home, move out of London to begin with

The op is in Oxford and it sounds like she doesn’t see why she should move 5 miles outside of Oxford to where she could afford because she wants something she can’t afford and is waiting for the housing market to crash by 50%
If she won’t move 5 miles she certainly won’t move 50 or 150.

I think there is a form of snobbery in that her dh works for Oxford university and that trumps everything even though they both earn really low wages

She also says there are no shared ownership schemes in Central Oxford which is true but a couple of miles away there are.

But again a couple of miles is too far.

@Xenia DH was just telling me that everyone he knew growing up lived in a semi detached house (or at least a terraced house) in Hendon and Finchley (zone 3) by the age of 30. He just turned 30 yesterday and we own a 2 bed flat in East Finchley. He says he is grateful he owns but growing up, he never realized it was so difficult as everyone he knew was not rich but had those houses by 30. They probably did all start out with flats though.

I don't know if Hendon and Finchley were much poorer areas then. I don't think they are especially wealthy either, just average. Middle class in parts but not super posh or nice.

Before The inter-war period, working class people lived in London and rented. During the 30s lots of housing was built which increased supply hugely and was relatively affordable. People marrying in their early 20s in the 40s, 50s, 60s could save hard for a couple of years and afford a terraced house in zone 5 - they often had to live very frugal lives and not have holidays or eat out and make their own clothes etc...all considered pretty normal then. They often moved to the next house up after a few years and so even normal families,molten with just one male earner bought the semis and detached houses which might be worth upwards of £750,000 today. Often they had moved out of Uta of inner London where slum clearance was happening. Their children who bought in the 70s and 80s saw huge house price growth which is why lots of 70+ year olds who had very average jobs are now sitting on properties their grandchildren won't be able to buy.

It does feel worse if you look at the previous 2 generations and feel disappointed that you won't have access to what they had. But, in lots of ways they were the blip generation and today's 20s and 30s fit the long term trend of most renting or only being able to afford in the less expensive places. Things are polarised again and home ownership in London is for those with backgrounds which gave them education, high paying jobs and gifted deposits. But home ownership elsewhere is still possible. The difficulty is that people expect something they can't have and most could never have except for in a 50 year window. It will never be that all areas are affordable for minimum wage earners and the highly paid.

Getting on the ladder has usually been hard. Grandparents might tell us how they darned their clothes and didn't have holidays or central heating. They see the young now having electronics and disposable clothes, takeaways and cars on finance. But they didn't face paying back student loans and a delay to setting up home which can mean 10+ years of expensive renting. Unless you have parents to give you a hefty deposit it's very hard. The reality has always been that those who plan ahead, save whilst young and follow the stages of life in a particular order and are pragmatic about jobs and where to live have more choices. It has always been thus. Some people have a harder hand to start with and things like health issues and ties to family who are in need can be big barriers. But people also don't like to take responsibility for choices they have made which had consequences....the areas they chose to live, when they had children, if they chose to live innexoensive rented accommodation. People talk as if these things all just happened but actually they are results of choices. And yes, how dull to need to always have an eye ye on the future and to consider consequences and plan ahead from early adulthood, but it seems to be the path to security and the idea that all choices are equally valid and entitle people to arrive at the same destination is actually a lie.

Have you considered Aylesbury. The houses around Berryfields are getting cheaper all the time. Or one of the villages between Oxford and Aylesbury?. What about Kidlington?. That way your husband doesn't have to change jobs?

Good points from Wombat, although only 15% of people went to university when I did so it wasn't that you didn't have fees. It was that mostly you were very unlikely to go. Only a few went from my class at school. Plenty didn't even go into the sixth form.

i agree it is very hard in the SE to buy a property particularly where wages do not reflect housing cost differences. Eg my doctor sibling (a consultant) moved back up North in part because of cheaper house prices. My teacher husband and his colleagues found the london weighting even in 1983 was a joke as it did not represent anything like the huge difference in London housing costs compared with elsewhere. You really needed double or treble pay rather than £1k extra to make up.

I agree about Aylesbury. My son's house in Chesham was bought from a couple with a child who moved from there out to Aylesbury to get more space in a bigger house.

People marrying in their early 20s in the 40s, 50s, 60s could save hard for a couple of years and afford a terraced house in zone 5

This

But the sneering about zone 5 on here means everyone wants what the older had but aren’t willing to do what the older generation did

@Oliversmumsarmy

If you're actually serious about buying a home, move out of London to begin with

The op is in Oxford and it sounds like she doesn’t see why she should move 5 miles outside of Oxford to where she could afford because she wants something she can’t afford and is waiting for the housing market to crash by 50%
If she won’t move 5 miles she certainly won’t move 50 or 150.

I think there is a form of snobbery in that her dh works for Oxford university and that trumps everything even though they both earn really low wages

She also says there are no shared ownership schemes in Central Oxford which is true but a couple of miles away there are.

But again a couple of miles is too far.

Well she's obviously not serious then...

If she will not compromise, by a several miles.

Just having a whine, even if house prices crash by 50%, sounds like as if she wouldn't be ready, to buy then either. A 50% crash is a pipe dream, 5-30% in different areas max, if the government doesn't do everything in it's power, to prop up the market.

spotlighton makes a really good point. The idea of the “property ladder”, ie that once you own property you can easily or relatively move up the ladder, feels like a very old fashioned concept that doesn’t apply to many of us.

There’s a real risk and fear that if you scrimp and save for years to buy a crappy “starter” home in a horrible but cheap area, that you will end up trapped there.

The other thing that some (not all!) of the older generation don’t realise is that certain fundamentals of the economy have flipped upside down since they were young. It used to be that big/essential things like housing used to be relatively affordable, while luxuries like holidays, and TVs were relatively expensive. Now, things that would have been considered high priced luxury items a few decades ago are dirt cheap, while housing and education prohibitively expensive. Sometimes members of the older generation see younger people spending money on luxuries and get very judgmental, because it’s such a cultural shift from what they were used to.

OP I totally agree, I we have only just managed to buy a small place for an extortionate price (late 30s) when it felt like all of may friends bought 10-15 years earlier for bargain prices. Some things that helped us (I hope this doesn't annoy you) have you done a budget to work out exact incomings and outgoings to see if you can cut back anywhere. Did you survive on one wage when you had DC?
Outside of that, 20k salary seems below average if you live in an expensive area. once things pick up after covid, is there any chance of discussing pay rises/ promotions? I ended up moving jobs for a few K pay rise and put the rest straight into savings.

There is an explosion of shared ownership properties within a bus ride of Oxford. Plenty of people who work in Oxford commute.

I htink the ladder was only briefl.y a thing or only for those in professions where pay goes up and up by large amounts - trainee solicitor £40k in London, in some firms £80k to £100k when you qualify etc similarly doctors if they do well and add private work etc. My parents weren't on a ladder. They bought one house and lived in it and died in it. My father's parents who had a house like this in Bishop Auckland £65k today ( a bit like this one in the same road, with cellar) www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=56137671&sale=8899777&country=england sold in 1972 of £3700 when my grandmother died. That is £49k taking account of bank of England inflation calculator so in that part of NE England if you reflect the fact women and men both work more now than in 1972 and that interest rates on mortgages were 8.5% not the more usual 2% today I would say arguably that house is cheaper in all real terms in 2020 than in 1972.

If we applied a 1972 London price to a 2020 London price it would be a totally different thing I suspect although someone with my and my husband's 1984 careers can buy the same house we did in 1984 in zone 5

The ladder has always been a thing if you want to climb it.

Just because someone chooses not to move doesn’t mean they couldn’t afford to get a better place.

It is choices

Ds is saving for his first property and would have already been well on the way to getting something if this virus hadn’t hit

He is hoping to buy his first before his 19th birthday. For cash, at auction probably 200 miles away. Then he will go up there to do it up between work commitments and then sell it then buy his 2nd then 3rd etc etc. Slowly edging further and further south till he can afford a place in London.

That is his plan to get on the ladder

To be honest, this is the reason I want to teach my kids the importance of getting a career that pays well. It just makes life so much easier. I'm not saying it's your fault OP, but 40k is not a lot in London. I think there needs to be more emphasis on encouraging kids (especially females) to aim for higher paying careers. Maybe not the whole "you must be like your dad and be an accountant" but I think it's important to educate kids on just how expensive it is to buy a house, and to get ahead in the world and why earning a decent income makes life easier. Maybe that would just result in higher house prices, I don't know. Whenever salary threads come up on here I'm always saddened how many women earn small incomes. It makes for such a struggle.

Oh I see you're not in London, it does sound expensive though!