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?

@EmpressSuiko

I also forgot to add in order to rent a property for 1,200pcm you need to be earning 36k!

The mortgage on our bungalow is just under £500 a month. That outskirts of Brum.

It’s crazy. We bought a standard 3 bed semi detached ex council house in 2014 - if we put it on the market right now (still needing a fair bit of work, it was a fixer upper!) I suspect we’d get £80k more than we paid. We’ve done about £30k of work to it, so it’s risen £50k in that short time. If we finished doing it up (we do as we intend to live here long term) I suspect it’ll be worth £150k more than we paid for it. It’s really crazy! I worry for my children buying houses down the line.

That’s mass immigration for you.

@Fr0thandBubble

That’s mass immigration for you.

Where ?

Not enough homes..occupancy rates in the rental sector are also too high, as there aren't enough homes. This means it's hard to move out quickly to good quality accommodation, so landlords have the upper hand.

NZ banned foreign buyers - but their property prices increased hugely even so.

We all agree we need more homes but the planning system enables NIMBYs - even where the development is brownfield (like on a car park!).

@MorningStarling

+1 for supply and demand. Houses go for what people are willing and able to pay for them.

If there was a maximum wage of say 16K per year, with anything over that going to the government, prices would fall because people couldn't afford to buy at current prices.

If there was a hard-left government who deported/murdered millions of people, prices would fall because there would be fewer people chasing more properties.

The situation is how it is because we live in a free society where people are allowed to earn more if they work hard and educate themselves.

What on earth does a 'hard left government that would deport or murder people' mean?

The kind of 2 bed Edwardian maisonette a dd was looking to buy in 2010/11, in an area of SW17 that was certainly not the most ‘sort after’ - - as estate agents often put it (it still isn’t!) was then priced at around £250k, or up to about £275k if nicely done up.

They are now routinely priced at £500k+ - I’ve recently seen one identical to several we looked at at the time, just next door, exactly the same layout - for sale at over £570k.

Back in the 1990s you could pick one up for £90-100k - they’d probably have needed a lot of work, though.

I agree OP. I will never be able to afford to buy a house. Some of my school friends left at 18, got a basic minimum wage or entry level office job, got a mortgage a few months later as a couple for a terrace at £50-60k, & have since traded up a couple of times. I had a gap year to earn money because my parents told me they couldn't pay my university living costs, went to university, & 4 years later house prices had basically doubled in my home town & I was priced out. Even if I had a partner who was earning similar to me - at rather more than minimum wage at the time - I couldn't have afforded a mortgage, or I'd have needed a really good deposit, which I couldn't manage because prices were rising faster than I could have saved up for it. This is in a northern county BTW, outside of London daily commuting range.

It's really rubbish & I imagine a lot of people around my age are in a similar situation. DH & I are fortunate as we eventually managed to get social housing, but obviously not everyone is that lucky. If either of us had sufficiently in demand skills we'd have emigrated years ago - we seriously considered it but TBH it just wasn't viable. Housing in this country is ridiculous. I'm chronically ill so having the NHS is a good thing but TBH I don't see that lasting much longer either, quite worried about ongoing prescription costs when it collapses.

My house cost £5000 in 1970- bought by a teacher with a non working wide. Male teacher earned about £1600. So affordable

In 2006 it was £570 k. Teacher earned about £30k I think

Now £1.1 million. Teacher earns about £35k.

So salary gone up x 22 but house gone up x 220

Stop letting the wealthy contiue to hoover up property.

People say without VTL there would be no homes for renters.

If the wealthy stopped hoarding the properties and driving up the prices, they would be more affordable.

They also need to take into consideration peoples renting history. I dont know how a Bank can say that I cant demonstrate paying a £900 mortgage when I've been paying £1500 in fucking rent.

I completely agree. In my area a 3 bed semi with one bathroom costs £450k. I'm nowhere near London either!

Stop letting the wealthy continue to hoover up property.

Can't see that happening. What was plan B ?

@DGRossetti

Stop letting the wealthy continue to hoover up property.

Can't see that happening. What was plan B ?

Sadly, agree.

Let banks take renting history into consideration for affordability.

It's all down to supply and demand.

Houses in my area (SE) are sold within hours. Often they never make it onto estate agent's websites as the EA's have waiting lists of people wanting properties. At the moment there is only one property for sale in our village, it needs modernisation and it's up for over £1.5M.

The market has been pretty much that way for a couple of years. I wouldn't want to move at the moment as you'd sell easily enough but probably have no chance of finding anywhere to buy.

There is massive house building projects all over the place so hopefully things will get moving soon. I doubt the prices will drop by much though.

I think that there’s got to be a connection between family money/inheritance/ bank of mum and dad and house prices.
I didn’t have any of the above but saved and saved, worked full time office job and did bar work at the weekends to buy my first house ( 2 bed terrace in an okay location, northern city outskirts) for £50k 20 years ago. That same house has just been sold ( not by me!) for £350k .
It’s become clear to me that most of my friends and acquaintances have had family money in the background & that’s how they’ve managed to buy decent family (3-5 bed) family homes in this area. No way that they could get the houses they have on what they earn. When they sell, it’s to people in the same position and if people are willing to pay so much they’re hardly going to refuse, are they?
It means the gap between the haves and have nots in terms of family money isn’t just increasing from top to bottom, it’s also broadened to include more people at a certain level - thy probably don’t see themselves as well off but they are. Not least because having a big lump of money towards buying your home means a lost mortgage and more disposable income.

A lot less mortgage debt and more disposable income

We bought our house in 2015 for 185k (in the Midlands), zoopla reckons it's now worth 314k - we wouldn't be able to afford it if we were buying it now. We've talked on and off about whether we would move or extend in the future if we want more space, and I suspect that in reality moving may be unaffordable.

There is massive house building projects all over the place so hopefully things will get moving soon.

"Massive" - not really.

Look at London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester (etc).

Millions of houses built in the 30s and 50s.

A couple of holiday lets for lego families isn't really the same thing.

Totally YANBU. DH and I earn decent professional salaries in a more than full time role, no kids, and currently we can only afford a tiny 2 bed in our area because it's become a desirable place to live with good schools. My parents bought the same size house in the 80s, one low-ish salary, mum was a SAHM and yet it was paid off in 20 years. We never had much money growing up or holidays, but DPs also had DFs final salary pension to rely on now they're old. We're paying a ludicrous amount for a mortgage on a small place, plus towards defined contribution pension schemes (and private health now the NHS has gone to shit), and our lifestyle and mental health is still worse than what our parents had.

l agree it's not everywhere. Prices have stayed the same here, roughly (black country). You can still buy a new build one bedroom apartment for about 80k.

If teenage me (who had just seen parents buy a 3bed semi for 85k) knew that in 20 years time I'd be looking at houses for 500k She'd have been picturing a mansion. Sadly the reality is that the budget stretches to a more nicely proportioned 3-4 bed house but nothing exceptional.

Village outside of Bath, bought our bed cottage 4 years ago for 300k, now valued at 400k and told to expect multiple offers of 425k within days of listing.

Not going to sell, but if we did, whether moving up or down sizing, other properties have seen same level of increase. Staying put doesn't affect us, other than giving us leverage with rates on remortgages because of LTV.

It's FTB getting on to the ladder, must be very difficult young couple moved into our lane in the summer, paid 360k for a smaller 2 bed cottage.

It will be interesting to see what happens if inflation stays up somewhere near 5% for 2-3 years and interest rates move up a few %. With luck that may take some air out of the market

*3 bed

@Beck30

It will be interesting to see what happens if inflation stays up somewhere near 5% for 2-3 years and interest rates move up a few %. With luck that may take some air out of the market

Interest rises will be awful for those that have budgeted to their maximum, like many have had to recently to be able to buy, with the low rates as of late.