To wonder how the next generation will buy a house

[macaronitoni]

Surely there needs to be a massive overhaul of the system. A new build home with two bedrooms on a new development nearby is £315k. Not London. Midlands. Who’s going to be buying that? Too small for a family with more than one DC but way out of budget for most first time buyers.

Without significant family help, how will today’s children and young people manage to buy a house? Something has to change!

@Eyerollcentral "You are completely deluded or utterly naïve to think ‘boomers’ lived in a halcyon time of milk and honey, unless your only means of measuring it is a narrow view of middle class southern English people."

Well said,

I have wondered this . We have a new garden town starting to be built but with the spiriting build costs having to be rejected in the asking prices who can possibly afford them .

@Eyerollcentral - I know what my grandparents lived through & none of us would like that. I have empathy for those people. Not sure I am naive as you think I am , pretty sure I am not - but if based on a post or two make your own judgment. I know very well what those older than me lived through. My grandparents , my father's parents great aunties and uncles - I have spoken to them whilst they were around. Of course I empathise & I know a great deal about my grandparents and extended families history but the thread is about DC's buying houses. Can we call a truce ?

Then I fail to see why you would have posted such an ignorant comment and doubled down on it. There’s no need for truce, I just disagree with you and yes your posts do make you seem naive. I object to people parroting things like ‘evil boomers’ especially when they know from their own family experience that the reality is much more nuanced. I know it’s a popular past time for some people to mock those older than them but personally it’s akin to bullying to me.

where did I day evil boomers ? what was my ignorant comment ?

I don’t know how our kids will ever afford it 🤷‍♀️ As for myself and DH, there’s no way we could have afforded it until we got together (ours is a second marriage) As a single mum to my daughter, I hadn’t a cats chance in hell of ever owning. He’s got two boys and didn’t have a chance either. This was despite us both being able to easily pay rent (without benefits) on a family sized home. It was the rent paying that was stopping us saving a deposit. The classic rental trap I guess. Getting together and having the two incomes was the only way to escape it.

In my early 60s. We were the first generation of our family to own our own property. My parents were born just after WW1 into (particularly on my Mother's side) abject poverty. By current standards I was brought up in the 1960s in poverty too (outside loo, coal fire in living room for heating, bath in the kitchen, few possessions etc.) but it didn't feel like it, we never went hungry, and my experience was absolutely nothing compared to that of my parents' generation.
I got on the housing market aged about 25, cheap shit flat, but it was mine. I had a mixed experience including a 40% loss in value on my second flat following the 1988 crash (17% interest rates etc), but was eventually able to buy myself out of the loss, largely as a result of wage inflation, and move again. Current house is paid off.
Our two sons are both in the arts. The grotesque house price inflation of the last 20 odd years means that neither are likely to be able to get on the housing market until we are dead.

A series of Tory (or Tory-lite, Blairist) governments have fueled house price inflation, in no small part driven by amateur speculators buying shit property to fleece private renters. Unless any government is actually willing to tackle housing and put proper controls on the rental market, (or if there is a long overdue substantial housing crash) a generation of our children are fucked.

To me the really sad thing is that the kind of social mobility that I've experienced in my life seems to have become a thing of the past.

Your whole post targeting previous generations was ignorant. I didn’t say you had said ‘evil boomers’

A really great post 👏🏻

I’m in my 60’s as are most of my friends and this is exactly what we have all done.
DD and her partner ( both 25) recently moved into a house similar to the one you described.

As at April 2022: 8.7% of land in England is of developed use, with 91.1% of non-developed use and the remaining 0.2% being vacant. The top 3 land use groups were 'Agriculture' (63.1%), 'Forestry, open land and water' (20.1%), and 'Residential gardens' (4.9%). 6.8% of land within the Green Belt is of developed use.

Something will have to give. Currently the housing market is propped up by bank of Mum and Dad and the tax payer through housing benefit and UC.

The change where UC gives the individuals their rent to pay will start to cause massive issues as rents rise because the rent part of UC is capped (I believe and rightly so). The tax payer needs to stop paying private landlords basically. It needs to become unattractive to rent a house out like this.

I think the people who are caught most are those who earn more so don't get UC but don't have parents who can afford to help - basically the working middle class.

Housebuilders are slowing/stopping building due to rising costs, there is actually little margin in house building. Construction is normally first in and last out of a recession. Lack of supply will continue to be an issue so it might not just be affordability but also there's just nothing to buy esp if you live in the south.

Simple. They will just not buy the overpriced new builds. In most country houses are still affordable, especially if you discount new builds.

I do worry about this tbh for my 2 dc. I would love to move up the ladder but the house prices at the minute are insane in our area plus mortgage interest just wouldn’t make it worthwhile. Out of curiosity i did a rough estimate of what we’d pay if we have to remortgage at the min ( we don’t we have another 2 years but) and it would be at cheapest- £150 more a month! Stuck where we are for now I think

I'll never own and without a house to sell when I pop my clogs, I expect my dc's won't either.
My family on both sides are from council housing stock, and probably the workhouse before that was a thing.

I am so embarrassed for you. Do you have no critical thinking skills? When you read the Daily Mail/telegraph/social media bollocks.
How does it work your logic? A little Google will tell you there are about 11 million 75 year olds (so one year of boomers) and last year was the highest number of asylum seekers (85,000) for decades. Assuming they all are given leave to remain (they won't) and all buy houses (they won't) that is less than 1 percent of asylum seekers to boomers.
Not even worth a mention. Unless you like spreading racism, xenophobia, and picking on the most disenfranchised.

Fuck me, as GenX, divorcee, I'd struggle hugely to pay £315k. Even getting a mortgage is going to challenge me. So I won't pay that, I'll go for something a lot lot more modest.

New builds are almost always overpriced compared to older properties.Around here (outer SW London) not so long ago I’ve seen new build flats of 54 sq m on a busy road, selling for the same price as nicely done up Edwardian maisonettes of 70 sq m, only a mile or so away, in much nicer roads, with outside space and on-road parking thrown in. The new builds would have had hefty service charges and ground rent thrown in, too.

I dare say the shiny, everything-new show flat seduces people into buying them, but I do wonder who on earth would prefer them. Unless of course they’re foreign investors just looking for somewhere to park their money, not even bothering to rent the place out. There’s been plenty of that in London and I dare say elsewhere - high time there was a clamp-down.

We've used property to build "wealth" for a generation at the expense of our children and grandchildren. It's a disgrace.

No 'we' haven't.

Most of us have simply tried our hardest to buy a suitable home to raise our children.

Stop blaming people who have only ever tried to provide for their families, exactly the same as you are trying to do.

not so long ago I’ve seen new build flats of 54 sq m on a busy road, selling for the same price as nicely done up Edwardian maisonettes of 70 sq m, only a mile or so away,

Imagine what would happen to the market if it turned into continental selling based mainly on sqm not just on how many bedrooms are there😂
The cheapest new build 3 bed within about a mile here is 70k more than my 30s-40s 3 bed but!!!! Footprint is smaller. It's nearly 1m less on depth and width of the house. Because they stuffed ensuite etc in, they can't even call the rhitd bedroom bedroom on plans so it's "lifestyle room"😂

Fuck new builds

I think it will be a big problem. They are predicting more of a split between those who have a bit of family money largely made from previous housing booms and those whose parents and grandparents who rented. But I will say that I live in an expensive bit of the country and everyone does live in small homes ( of my age) i have friends in the midlands and they have bigger houses. I was slightly amused when they were house hunting and they would dismiss things as pokey/starter homes and not suitable and they were what we all raise families in here.

The only thing sustaining the current housing market is family helping their DCs or DGCs to get on or move up the housing ladder. Many are in a position to do this because of inheritance or by downsizing themselves taking some of the huge equity they have built up to give as early inheritance. I'm not so sure that this model is sustainable as when I retire my pension is minimal compared to what my DPs and PIL have. It may be that my equity will have to help fund my retirement and not DCs future properties.

@Sugarplumfairy65 exactly right! The boomers will die and the next generation will inherit a tonne of money / property. This will sustain the property market as is for a generation. Sad. Those who don't have parents with money are stuffed. Like we've gone back in time

A combination of using inheritance money, saving up and buying a more modest home / cheaper area to start with. My dd is saving currently, she needs £20k deposit she reckons (not London but is SE cheaper area), she's buying with her boyfriend