To be incredulous at much property prices have risen in the UK!

[TwistyKnickKnocks]

Looking at buying a house and saw a 3 bed terrace for sale. bog standard 90s build box, tiny garden, no garage, needs work at £430k. It was sold 20 years ago for £105k so an increase of 300% or £16k a year.

20 years ago the average wage was £18k and it is now £29k, so an increase of £11k. Although where we live a managerial salary is less than £25k. Most jobs are advertised at around £20k and quite often want a degree! It’s quite a deprived area too.

How the actual fuck was this allowed to happen?

I agree with you. It really bothers me. Our house goes up an astonishing amount each year and I don't derive any pleasure from that because it feels so unfair on those "left behind" and on the next generations too.

I would like to see legislative change to improve the protections for renters for a start.

It is complete madness, we lived in a 1 bed flat with our son for years as we couldn't afford a house to live in. Round here bog standard 2 bed terraces go for £325-350k. We eventually managed to move but could only afford a small 2 bed when we really need 3. Plus we're now mortgaged until we're 65!

Average people can't afford to buy average houses in a lot of towns :(
Feel like our only option for more space and a lesser mortgage is to move hundreds of miles away from our friends, family, schools and jobs.

It's not everywhere in the UK. I sold a house last year in the north-east at the same price I'd bought it for ten years before. Prices have risen a small amount in some parts of the area, but very many people are in the same position as I was. When you're in that position, hearing of all the other massive price rises elsewhere stings a little...

It does vary from area to area but in some places it’s nuts.

We live in a 3 bed Victorian terrace, small garden to front, yard at the back. £300k three years ago. Just had it valued at £360k. The only work we’ve done is a new (cheap) kitchen.

You’re not wrong. We’re currently house hunting for a 4-bed and Rightmove is full of absolute bollocks: one yesterday where bedroom 3 is only accessible via bedroom 2, and bedroom 4 is the converted garage downstairs. So basically a two bed, needs work, ugly as fuck, main road… £550k. Even a year or two ago before the mad Covid space race and stamp duty holiday it would have been £100k cheaper (but still overpriced). I’ve no idea what the solution is.

@abbey44

It's not everywhere in the UK. I sold a house last year in the north-east at the same price I'd bought it for ten years before. Prices have risen a small amount in some parts of the area, but very many people are in the same position as I was. When you're in that position, hearing of all the other massive price rises elsewhere stings a little...

My home has risen a lot in price ...but so have the houses in the next bracket in the area ...so I'll only make money if I downsize about 30 miles away from where we are now.

My question is, what CAN be done? If a vendor is offered £500k for a house he bought for half that, should he refuse to sell?

A neighbour bought his house 4 years ago for $245k, spent about $40k on renovations, and recently listed his house for $399k. It sold, quickly, for $502k. Lucky him... was he suppose to refuse the unexpected profit?

The only half-reasonable idea I've heard is to inroduce a capital gains tax on profit, but that is fraught with problems as well.

It's not just the UK. It's worldwide.

I live in London. In my neighbourhood that 3 bed house would cost around £1.1million.

People often shout 'London weighting' but in my professional post degree job with 5 years exp I earn less than £30k.

House prices are insane.

We went to view a house a few weeks ago seller bought it for £70k in 2019 and has managed to sell it (not to us) for around £120k

Yep it’s insane. When I bought my house in SE London zone 3/4 in 2013 there were many 3 bed houses under 300k, now you can barely find a 1 bed flat for less than that.
Where to start with blame: not enough home building, too much money pumped into the big cities, allowing foreign investors to buy property for their portfolios and leave them empty…..

Just viewed a house, valued at £270-290k… it sold for £335k. Mad. It’s just mad. House prices can’t keep increasing at this rate exponentially. Housing is a right, not an asset.

Don't think it's just the UK. My house has gone up by 32% in the 6 years I've bought it, at a conservative guess. Not sure I would have been able to get a mortgage for it if I bought it today!

Agree with @abbey44 it's a stinger hearing these figures when you make nothing on a property in years because of certain parts of the country.
I sold my lovely house in the north last year to a southerner who sold a crap terrace with no garden for twice as much as they bought my lovely 3 bed semi-rural home. I sold for £20k more than I paid almost 20yrs before but I spent more than that on the renovations when I bought it so effectively made nothing. What pissed me off more was that the people who owned it before me made £25k in the 2yrs they owned it and did no work on it.
My DP had the same when he sold up a few months before I did. He made sod all too and his was in a very sought after part of our area.

Unfortunately the house we bought together after we sold up was overpriced and has a mountain of hidden issues so we're in the same position of it never being worth more than we paid for it.

It's definitely global. Governments have been printing money and keeping interest rates low for 15 years. So anyone who has a bunch of money, too much to spend, has been investing in tangible assets in order that they won't lose money through inflation. So, property - and especially since pandemic, domestic property because commercial property is less certain now - plus gold, artefacts etc. Plus bit currencies have screwed with the notion of what money is worth.

There are additional factors that encourage securing wealth through property ownership - wide and widening gap between rich and poor, deregulated banks, poor tenant protection, no property tax. All of these apply to the UK.

The wealthiest people have become far more wealthy since pandemic, so there's lots of money available to buy houses and the terms and conditions for those who do are favourable. They'd be crackers not to.

@CanadianJohn

My question is, what CAN be done? If a vendor is offered £500k for a house he bought for half that, should he refuse to sell?

A neighbour bought his house 4 years ago for $245k, spent about $40k on renovations, and recently listed his house for $399k. It sold, quickly, for $502k. Lucky him... was he suppose to refuse the unexpected profit?

The only half-reasonable idea I've heard is to inroduce a capital gains tax on profit, but that is fraught with problems as well.

Denying mortgages for BTL landlords would be a start.

We bought our house for 144k five years ago

Spent 60k on an extension and renovations
Valued at £310k

Denying mortgages for BTL landlords would be a start.
No second homes, no holiday homes, no weekend cottages, no AirBNB too

People often shout 'London weighting' but in my professional post degree job with 5 years exp I earn less than £30k.

Agree, jobs with 'London weighting' get paid a % more but its not like 350% more, or a comparable amount to the ratio of property prices.

My parents bought their (pretty standard) suburban semi in outer London on 1 very average wage, in the early 80s. Now houses in their road are selling for over 650k

We have been trying to buy for nearly a year. It’s horrendous. Regularly seeing very average houses come up for sale at £100k more than they last sold for in last 5-6 years.

We are NW England. In a deprived town but nice area of the town. Our house, on zoopla, has gone up in valuation by 50k in 3 years. It is 5 bed and bought for less than 200k.

In my deprived area of the S. E. a cheap 3 bed ex council house went on the market for £550k. It's on an ex council estate where people buy because they're priced out of erywhere else. Insurance for house and car is 25% higher there because of the anti social problems. So homeowners are hit twice for living in a deprived area. My kids don't stand a chance of ever owning their own home.

Denying mortgages for BTL would be catastrophic unless combined with additional strategies to help renters who have no way of getting on the housing ladder.

There is currently a mass shortage of rental properties due to LLs selling thanks to legislation introduced in the last five years to 'protect tenants'.

We bought a 4 bed new build 4 years ago. Our house 'model' is now selling on our estate for £90k more than we paid for it and a lot of people in the previous release phase paid £20-30k less than we did. Some of the smaller house models have had an even bigger proportionate price increase. Every time one goes up for sale it seems like £10k has been added to the price of the previous one that sold. Houses here are being snapped up overnight - nothing is on the market for longer than a few days. A lot of people aren't even bothering with estate agents - they post on our estate FB page that they are selling and there's usually multiple messages on their post saying "PM-ed you" or "my friend/mum/cousin is interested".

Since we moved in our household income hasn't increased. We wouldn't get enough mortgage to buy our house now, nowhere near it - I think we'd struggle to get a 3 bed on our estate unless we went for one of the much smaller semi detached / terraced models. It's bonkers. We moved here because it was much cheaper than the city we lived in about 15 miles away and we couldn't afford what we wanted there. Now we wouldn't be able to afford it here either!

What I can't work out is that surely you need new people entering the housing market to drive demand...and FTBs must be struggling, you'd think? So if there aren't a lot of FTBs, and people who already own houses are just moving around the market, why is it so crazy? I know in certain areas you'll have investors / second homes etc but that is unlikely to apply where I live. What am I missing?!