To think there is a serious problem with the housing market in this country

[Kitchendisco21]

I was just about to buy my first home having spent 10 years saving a deposit. Thanks to the stupid help to buy intervention, the houses I was able to buy are now 50k more expensive so I am completely priced out. I am so utterly sick of it.

And no, I can’t move elsewhere/ get somewhere smaller/eat fewer avocados! I have been saving for a decade.

Aibu to be so fed up. I read last week that 98% of keyworkers couldn’t buy a home in the uk now. When will people actually wake up & see what a major problem there is? I am so angry.

@Ginuwine wonderfully put. Signed, a frustrated Cassandra.

@Kitchendisco21 have you considered shared ownership? We did it seven years ago, purchased 60% of our house with a 5% deposit (I don't know if that is still possible right now though) and a couple of years ago stair-cased to full ownership so we now own the house with a "normal" mortgage and own the freehold.

We now have £40k of equity in the house which we could use for the next step to a bigger house.

However, as you mentioned - house prices have gone stupid - thanks to that ridiculous stamp duty removal - house prices here have shot up (so no one is saving any money on stamp duty as the house is more expensive than it was before!!) plus lots of second homes are being purchased here and many people are moving here from big cities due to home working being the new normal. It means for us to make the next move - it's another £150k we we cannot afford! So we are on the housing ladder, but now stuck unless we move to a cheaper area.

@JeffTheOracle

I wonder if the people who view BTL landlords as the scum of the earth feel similarly to property developers who buy wrecks, do them up and make a profit when they sell them?

Why would they? Most ftbs couldn’t afford to do up a wreck and a lot of them wouldn’t be mortgageable.

The scheme in Liverpool where people bought wrecks for £1 from the council was excellent.

The scheme in Liverpool where people bought wrecks for £1 from the council was excellent.

Well excellent and not excellent.

Badly handled at se point, but most importantly it showed how many houses do councils have which they let fall into such a disrepair they are giving them away for a pound. Some had trees growing in...

While everyone is arguing about btl being bastards our councils own tens of thousands of properties, often in location with good transport links, they keep empty.

My grandson has been living with his girl friend at home while they both have saved for years. At last they have a really good deposit £50,000. However, it is heartbreaking to hear of what they have found or not found for £350, 000. One place was perfect but although they offered more than another couple as the owner found that the other couple had family connections to a friend she felt duty bound to let the other couple have it. Then there was a one bedroom tiny house with a garden that had to be accessed by going out of the front door. Another very old cottage so small as to be impractical. Another described as a bungalow but turned out to be a converted garage between two houses. It is heart breaking.

@murbblurb

As usual, fuckwit anti landlord lot with no actual answers. I bet if you were eligible for help to buy or right to buy you would take it - who wouldn't? Life essentials are not free.

Too many people for the infrastructure. Higher taxes needed.

If you are Eligible for right to buy - quite right, you would be silly not to take it. It’s an effective lottery win thanks to the inflated prices.

Eligible for help to buy in the same bracket though?! It’s a scam and gets you an overpriced shoebox.

I’m “eligible” for buying a house for cash, but I wouldn’t do it because they are grossly overpriced and there are better places that I can convert £ trash into to invest

An unpopular decision perhaps, but what about buying somewhere as a BTL in a cheaper area and then use that to offset rent elsewhere? Especially as you don’t want a flat (everyone starts in a flat or dodgy area, or both!) - buy a flat that is a good rental, be a decent, kind landlord, and use it to offset your rent. It’s not the most efficient way, but if you can’t move and don’t want a flat, it’s the best option.

We have put off having kids until our mid/late 30s because of needing to get our housing sorted, so it’s certainly a crap system.

This thread is going the way all these usually do. One group saying that they are frustrated and that the system works against them and that they have tried everything to get in the property ladder. Another regroup repeatedly saying that they have been there and managed to do it, even mildly hinting at ways to do it. Yet the first group still keeps saying but oh no we can’t do it. You can moan or ask how mothers did it without help.

@Notanotherusernamenow

An unpopular decision perhaps, but what about buying somewhere as a BTL in a cheaper area and then use that to offset rent elsewhere? Especially as you don’t want a flat (everyone starts in a flat or dodgy area, or both!) - buy a flat that is a good rental, be a decent, kind landlord, and use it to offset your rent. It’s not the most efficient way, but if you can’t move and don’t want a flat, it’s the best option.

We have put off having kids until our mid/late 30s because of needing to get our housing sorted, so it’s certainly a crap system.

Why is it that in the UK, the go-to investment is always housing?

Why not stocks, crypto, commodities, gold, or just plain old taking advantage of tax relief and putting it in a pension which is an instant return?!

@sst1234

This thread is going the way all these usually do. One group saying that they are frustrated and that the system works against them and that they have tried everything to get in the property ladder. Another regroup repeatedly saying that they have been there and managed to do it, even mildly hinting at ways to do it. Yet the first group still keeps saying but oh no we can’t do it. You can moan or ask how mothers did it without help.

And I get most of the smarmy group are ostriches about their retirement. Probably most will have less than < 200k in their pension. Good luck.

The announcement of help to buy absolutely caused prices to go up. Prices are primarily a function of credit availability. The stamp duty rise was yet another example of this (because you couldn’t borrow the payment - that had to be paid in cash). That much should be obvious to even the most myopic housing cheerleader. But most are obviously clueless, and think it’s their own genius that got them a house rather than it generally being in large part due to their birthdate or parentage.

I'm no one's cheerleader. Not for the right but definitely not for the left. I use my common sense, and my economic masters degree.

The government has tools that can somewhat influence the housing market. No government can increase the prices though. It's the market that makes prices go up and down.

There is no way for prices to come down while we have increased pressure on the stock because of population growth. As I said, you cannot build your way out of this. The more you build the more the demand will grow, until that bubble bursts and we are left with huge run down estates plagued with all sort of problems. People are mobile. The immigration bubble will burst when all the spare space in built on and there is no more demand for cheap construction labour. They will go back home to their houses and flats in their home countries , because most already immigrants have housing in there. The one they need here is their second home.

We are creating two huge bubbles, one with growth in population and in construction.

The way to deal with this is to deal with the low wage economy. Everything stems from there.

@ChardonnaysPetDragon

The announcement of help to buy absolutely caused prices to go up. Prices are primarily a function of credit availability. The stamp duty rise was yet another example of this (because you couldn’t borrow the payment - that had to be paid in cash). That much should be obvious to even the most myopic housing cheerleader. But most are obviously clueless, and think it’s their own genius that got them a house rather than it generally being in large part due to their birthdate or parentage.

I'm no one's cheerleader. Not for the right but definitely not for the left. I use my common sense, and my economic masters degree.

The government has tools that can somewhat influence the housing market. No government can increase the prices though. It's the market that makes prices go up and down.

There is no way for prices to come down while we have increased pressure on the stock because of population growth. As I said, you cannot build your way out of this. The more you build the more the demand will grow, until that bubble bursts and we are left with huge run down estates plagued with all sort of problems. People are mobile. The immigration bubble will burst when all the spare space in built on and there is no more demand for cheap construction labour. They will go back home to their houses and flats in their home countries , because most already immigrants have housing in there. The one they need here is their second home.

We are creating two huge bubbles, one with growth in population and in construction.

Give back your degree because it’s not fit for purpose.

We no longer have a free market, thanks to economic and monetary policy. If you have a masters, that much should be entirely apparent, but it clearly is not. You’ve swallowed theory without any form of critical thinking as to the effects of how credit money works on the real economy.

@ChardonnaysPetDragon

The way to deal with this is to deal with the low wage economy. Everything stems from there.

Nah, The way to deal with this is to abolish the Oxford PPE and let engineers deal with economic policy rather than people who don’t have a clue.

Sure.

I'll go back to my copy of Das Kapital, that'll might me more to your liking.

@ChardonnaysPetDragon

Sure.

I'll go back to my copy of Das Kapital, that'll might me more to your liking.

I’d recommend reading Friedman rather than Keynes.

how can it be just that I can't pay off my own mortgage but can pay someone else's

This argument makes me laugh every time I hear it.

Do you think that you should be allowed to live in somebody else’s house for free? If not, then what’s it to you what the owner spends the rent income on?

Do you think that only people who own houses and flats outright should be allowed to rent them out? That way you could be sure that the rent you pay isn’t “paying someone else’s mortgage”.

Oh wait, how can you be sure that the landlord won’t use their own income stream from their own house for a purpose the tenant disapproves of? I know. Force them to disclose what they spend their own money on, and tax them more than any other group. That will serve them right, the bastards.

Although I agree that house prices have gone up faster than wages, I also think that more recent generations have higher expectations of living and higher living expenses. Our first house was a rot-ridden shithole in a crap area with no indoor plumbing. We 'camped' out there for 2 years while we did it up. How many of today's generations would be prepared to do that?

It is all of the baby boomers who are fleecing entrants to the market. It is outrageous that some people, by the accident of their year of birth, should be rolling in free money while others need to save decades to be unable to afford even a basic home. It means that unless you inherit you can never buy anywhere decent

Where did this free money come from?

@Bythemillpond

It is all of the baby boomers who are fleecing entrants to the market. It is outrageous that some people, by the accident of their year of birth, should be rolling in free money while others need to save decades to be unable to afford even a basic home. It means that unless you inherit you can never buy anywhere decent

Where did this free money come from?

Central bank policy

I sound like a landlord apologist. I’m not but some of the daft arguments are hard to deal with.

I wouldn’t invest my money in property at the moment either. I have a house that I live in and I couldn’t give a stuff what it’s worth. My spare cash goes into pensions and ISAs. It should be obvious to anyone that house prices are nearing bubble territory. All the signs are there: too much cheap money, banks getting laxer about LTV criteria, people taking on mortgages for 30 or even 35 years (madness), people campaigning for more mortgage lending because at current rock bottom interest rates they could pay a mortgage so obviously that’s going to be the case forever over the life of the 30 year mortgage they are avid to take on to buy an overpriced house.

I always say that Homes Under the Hammer doesn't help matters either. That bloody programme, all those depressingly (cheaply) finished homes for rent and talk of yields. Ugh.

@Bythemillpond

It is all of the baby boomers who are fleecing entrants to the market. It is outrageous that some people, by the accident of their year of birth, should be rolling in free money while others need to save decades to be unable to afford even a basic home. It means that unless you inherit you can never buy anywhere decent

Where did this free money come from?

I wish someone would tell me where it is, let alone where it came from. I’m a boomer and I’m not rolling in “free money” - whatever that is.

I always say that Homes Under the Hammer doesn't help matters either. That bloody programme, all those depressingly (cheaply) finished homes for rent and talk of yields. Ugh.

On that show, people are at least making near-derelict homes into something liveable. How much worse would the housing shortage be if nobody did that? Do you think that they should do it for free? Of course not.

@BadgeronaMoped

I always say that Homes Under the Hammer doesn't help matters either. That bloody programme, all those depressingly (cheaply) finished homes for rent and talk of yields. Ugh.

I love that programme. The likes of Location Location, Location and Escape to the Country are the programmes that give people a false sense of what is available and what they can realistically afford as first time buyers.