Are things harder for millennials?

[squidwid]

Many of my friends don't own houses and they're in their 30s. They did everything that society asked of them and still they're not making headway.

I know so many elderly people that live in 4 bedroom homes worth £400k plus. Obviously there is nothing wrong with that but families should be able to afford those houses so things can move on. No one can afford to buy them...

And they then get told if they didn't have a coffee every day they could buy a house.

Ignorant assumption.

I agree with you. Then they say it's because we live extravagant lifestyles, but it's not that, when house prices are 10x the average annual salary.

Everyone I know who has bought, has had significant help from the bank of mum and dad.

I'm 37.

The question does not mean anything unless you tell us about house prices where they live. If they live London, it’s a different story to if they live in the northeast.

Avocado on toast you mean. ;)

It’s hardest for those without generational wealth

Well if you are looking at home ownership then obviously. You can’t argue that it isn’t in good faith. Average salaries vs average property costs are more expensive multiple times over than they were decades ago. Even when you consider previous interest rates.

We live in Wales. We had help too, and I'm also 37.

Yes, but I’m glad my parents have a nice home we can visit. I don’t think the boomer generation of middle income people were the problem, it’s the super rich like Rishi Sunak. It’s convienent to them to have us blame people who worked hard and it paid off. Now we are working hard and it’s not paying off because they robbed us. That’s the robbers’ fault not the workers.

Some things are cheaper now compared to 25+ years ago eg electrical items, food, travel - some older people will claim spending on these is why those in their 20s/30s can't buy houses but really it's because they cost so many more multiples of income now. The house I grew up in is now worth £450k. My parents worked as a factory supervisor and a part time teacher. Absolutely no way could people in their early 30s in those jobs afford that house.

Oh definitely not the boomer's fault. They need to get on board with the narrative though. Many think we're lazy as they managed following a struggle during their early years.

There's too much assuming going on about house affordability in the NE. Yes, in the London/Bristol areas 3bed semis are over 1mil, obviously that's insane to someone in the NE, but there does seem to be this thought on Mumsnet that if you move to the NE you can get a 3bed semi for 80k.

Which you absoloutley cannot. A typical 3bed semi in a generally nice area (good schools, a nice little high street, good transport links) is 300k plus.

Compare this with city centre London/Bristol - looks cheap. But it isn't actually cheap at all.

You'll shortly get lots of Boomers and Xers coming on to tell you how awful and hard their lives were but the simple fact remains that millennials are set to be the first generation to be worse off than their parents.

Totally agree with you op.

Yep. It's the wage stagnation for the last decade as well. We are public sector and academia, good jobs in theory but a decade of pay freeze, pensions looted, childcare bills and house prices we work as hard but couldn't possibly aspire to the lifestyle of our parents.

I think someone upthread put it perfectly.

When some of our grandparents were children, buying a TV was a big event. The whole street would gather in one house to watch the moon landings. Now you have a house with 4 TVs in it, plus four laptops and four mobile and no one blinks an eye.

To buy a new dress was something for Christmas/birthdays. Now some poor person in Bangladesh gets paid 2p to make one and we pay the cost of a sandwich to get it.

To someone of that generation it's like saying, 'yeah we use 20 pound notes to wipe the floor. They really clean it well then we throw them in the bin.

It's like 'this person has more money than sense.'

But the truth is that a couple with professional degrees, e.g. a teacher and a social worker can not afford to buy the house their Factory worker, plus housewife grandparents COULD buy.

They hear the grandchildren say, boo hoo, we can't afford a house. And they're thinking, you rent a house with twelve TV screens, new Primark clothes every month and think: surely if you weren't so extravagant/didn't use £20 notes as floor rags, you COULD afford it.

The multiples of average house price and average salary are not what they are thinking of.

These threads are just divisive. Yes, if we're talking about home ownership then the millennials and gen z have it much harder. I bought my first house with a £3500 deposit and £530 a month mortgage (7%).

However, until COL crisis the standard of living was better and smart phones, internet, more gender equality, not growing up with strikes, power cuts and the 3 day week, 1000s of TV channels etc.

My parents, retired, modest 3 bed semi are absolutely skint and having to do equity release.

And, yes, I am gen x.

Instead of harping on about "how unfair it all is" do something about it, to the people that are responsible- ie the government. Protest, campaign etc.

This will just turn into an us v them.

Obligatory NABALT

But actually yes, I do blame the boomers to a degree. That countercultural individualism that drove the much-needed cultural shifts in the 1960s turned into economically driven selfishness in too many people. In the UK and US, plus much of Western Europe, since the 1970s that generation has consistently voted in parties and politicians that have shored up unequal systems and me-first economic policy. They explicitly seek to feather their own nests first and if that means the drawbridge goes up then so be it.

The Sunaks, Bushes, Reagans, Thatchers, Johnsons, Camerons and Trumps of this world wouldn’t be where they are and able to enact unequal policies if boomers hadn’t, time and again, voted for them en masse.

I don't think things are "better" or "worse", but they're certainly different.

Affordability of homes is going back to how it was pre 80s. We "peaked" in terms of wealth, luxuries, home ownership, etc in the 90s and 00s but it was all smoke and mirrors and some kind of "correction" was always going to be needed, and that's what we've been going through for the past 10-15 years.

Yes, a couple of older generations massively benefitted from the "easy money" couple of decades, with rising house prices, endowment policy payouts, demutualisation/privatisation windfall profits, etc., and of course oil and gas. Lost of poor/low income people got windfalls from buying their council homes at massive discounts and then selling them on for a huge tax free profit or renting them out.

But, at the same time, the older generation often also had very poor/impoverished upbringings in the 50s, 60s, 70s., i.e. the frost on the inside of your bedroom window was very real, as was not having a family car, not having washing machines, inability to buy a house because they ignored the wife's wage for mortgages, etc. A lot of such people went from a relatively impoverished childhood to a pretty good standard of living, wealth, etc., for no reason other than being born at the right time and being lucky.

As for the "can't afford it because of coffee" matter, it's not just one thing. I look at my son's bank statements and weep - he is at Uni, but manages to spend a few hundred per month on what I'd consider non essentials such as Netflix, a completely unnecessary expensive phone contract, takeaways, xbox subs, and several other online subscriptions.

Oh how generous of you. I don't think you are lazy - I have no idea who you are. Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. But my parents had nothing (and nor did anyone we grew up with) and we had our own "narrative" that didn't involve being helped out by anyone or left houses or anything else. I don't think we had it easy, and I don't think millenials have it easy. I think the main difference between us is that we just got on with it because we expected nothing more, and didn't have some entitled attitude to what we thought we were owed out of life. But to be fair, outside the rarified atmosphere of MN I don't know any millenials who think like I so often see here either. They get on with it because they have to. Just like we did. Just like those who went before did.

As for house prices, we don't dictate those - I won't go into the mechanics of it because obviously it's much better to blame previous generations for things than to actually understand the world around you, but try capitalism out for an explanation. We didn't invent it.

On the topic of house buying it is harder for millenials to buy a first property and move up the ladder. House price to earnings ratios clearly show that. And the fact that home ownership in that age group is lower than in previous generations at a similar age shows they are struggling to buy.

Im sure those closer to 42 will have found it easier if they got a property very young than those aged 27 though And big regional differences.

Im not a millennial and it doesnt mean I dont understand about high interest rates and recessions affecting boomers being very hard too , but millenials wont go through life without fluctuating interest rates and recessions either.

I definitely agree. The boomers have had a lot of support, like free education and cheaper housing, that we did not have.

However, we bought a house without any help (both came from single mother households so no chance). We had to save lots and bought a house that needed a lot of work done which we did ourselves. There were times when it was hard and people weren't making it easier. Like when we went to the tip and they were saying we had a lot of plaster board cut offs and we're deciding if this counted as DIY (free disposal) or major improvements (you have to pay to dispose).

I agree OP. My parents are still living in the family home even though my brother and I moved out 25 years ago. I think they should downsize (although to be fair it's a terraced house not a mansion, but it does have four (small) bedrooms). My PILs only moved out of their family home last year due to ill health.

I keep hearing elderly people saying "well of course they want to stay in their own home" and rejecting other living options, with no acknowledgement of either the privilege of owning their own home in the first place or the inconvenience they're causing the younger generation by hanging on to these houses. I really hope that I'll be more pragmatic about it when I get older!

I’m only just a gen x, a few months later and I would be a millennial. To be honest, all ages have challenges and it’s hard to compare them

3 bed semis are not starter homes.

As for the "can't afford it because of coffee" matter, it's not just one thing. I look at my son's bank statements and weep - he is at Uni, but manages to spend a few hundred per month on what I'd consider non essentials such as Netflix, a completely unnecessary expensive phone contract, takeaways, xbox subs, and several other online subscriptions.

LOL. My unemployed widower friend told me last week that his live at home daughter (employed in a decent job) is not speaking to him after having a tantrum, flouncing off to her room and refusing to come out. The reason? He told her that he was going to have to raise her "everything included" (that includes food) rent from £200 per month to £250 per month. She can't afford it she says so she's going to move out. But she could afford £1500 on an iPad two weeks before! I told him to let her move out, although I doubt she'll actually do it after she looks at the price of a room in a shared house with nothing included.