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...

I’m 30 and bought my house with my fiancé when we were both 28.

Amongst my friends the vast majority now own a home with those renting or living at home now being the minority. This also goes for randos I went to school with.

So true.

My parents wouldn't buy their council house, even though they could have paid the discounted price outright, because my father thought it was wrong and my mother was paranoid about having to find money for repairs if they owned it once DF had retired. Even though it has disadvantaged me personally, I admire my dad for that.

My late DP's DF always said the same, ie he wouldn't buy the house on principle, but after he died MIL told the kids they couldn't have bought it anyway. FIL had to give up work due to ill-health when he was in his early 50s and they couldn't get a big enough mortgage just on her earnings. MIL's 84 and still living there, getting the rent paid in full by housing benefit.

I would assume the less than 100k ones are part rent/part buy ownership. The 100k will maybe get you a 25% share in and around London. And are v hard to sell on as there are so many conditions apparently

I'm 55 and bought my first flat aged 23, on my own with an average salary. That's just impossible now.

The selling off of council homes has led to higher private rents, meaning no opportunity to save if you're renting.

Also wages are far lower. One wage used to be enough for a couple/ family to live on.

I don't blame young people for spending all their money on enjoying themselves, instead of trying to save up for something that's constantly going up in price and always out of their reach.

Absolutely. Hocking your house at an uxorious rate of compound interest is financial lunacy. As @winningeasy will discover in the not too distant future.

I don't think posters like @winningeasy care tbh
As long as they get what they want ,stuff their " selfish,hoarding" relatives.

She’ll care when she sees the impact on her husband’s inheritance.

I'm in my 60s and rent a tiny housing association basement flat in central London. It costs 90% of my state pension. Mortgages became unaffordable for middle earners where I live 30 years ago, so though I've worked all my adult life, since age 15, I've always rented. My adult son moved back after uni and is still here because it makes no sense to pay 80% of his income on renting privately elsewhere.
The millennial offspring of home owning "baby boomers" will inherit property. The millennial offspring of us older renters, will inherit only our poverty.

@winningeasy I don't think most parents would sell up and move to give their children the equity. DH's parents certainly didn't and he never expected them to.

TVs used to be so expensive that a lot of families rented them. I don't think my parents got round to buying one until after I left home in 1975.

In 1969, our neighbours won a colour tv in a competition, and my parents looked at the same model in a shop. It was £500, an incredible amount of money. And we all watched the moon landing on it!

I've no idea what the equivalent of £500 in '69 would be today, but it's a fuckton more than the £200 you can get a tv for.

Techology is and always has been relative to it's time. Showing off your TV in the 60's is the equivalent of someone having a self-driving car now or an AI robot cleaning the house or something. Not common yet, but probably will be in the future.

Having a TV now is not an extravagence because they are easily accessible technology. Technology always becomes cheaper and more accessible over time as new tech is developed. That's how it's always been.

I've no idea what the equivalent of £500 in '69 would be today, but it's a fuckton more than the £200 you can get a tv for.

£100 in 1969 is equivalent in purchasing power to about £2,105.90 today so about £10.5k.

When my friend's daughter and partner were buying their first place, his parents gave them some money for the deposit and they were going to do the same.

When they crunched all the numbers, it worked out more beneficial for them to give her the money to pay off her student loan, which meant that they could get a bigger mortgage. The student loan deduction was far more than the extra repayments on the mortgage.

House prices have soared with artificially low interest rates. Following the financial crisis in 2008 and near zero interest rates for the last 15 years, house prices have climbed at a crazy and unsustainable trajectory. Whilst rising interest rates will cause pain, hopefully they will put a slowdown on house prices and allow wages to catch up a little.

Do you realise that there will be compound interest on the capital she's released, and that it will be rolled up and deducted from the proceeds of the sale of her home, on her death, or if/when she goes in a care home, @winningeasy ?

It's frightening how quickly compound interest snowballs imo.

A former colleague's father did equity release on a house worth approx £250k at the time of his death. By the time everything had been paid for, there was less than £80k left, to be split between his 3 children.

My father (an NHS doctor/consultant all his life) spent £130k in his last year of life on his dementia care at home (usuing up the last of his life savings other than some equity in his house in the NE) (as the one thing we can all be sure of no matter how high the tax we pay the NHS is rarely there for us when we need it - cradle to grave it lets you down).

It is always hard to compare between the generations, in 1900 in the UK 90% of people rented and they rented mostly from private landlords. Today many more own. You can decide people born in XYZ year have it best of all but across a life of 80 years there will be hard and good times. Few of us alive today have lived through a world war in the way my parents did in the 1940s with then military service after and rationing. Their parents suffered WWI too. Although I grew up in the cold war with real threat of nuclear war I have never other than a bit of IRA trouble and ISIS trying to kill us suffered too badly from war so I feel much luckier than those born from 1914 to 1940. No bombs so far have rained on my head - which is why supporting Ukraine is so important.

I put my good health above everything so think I have been very fortunate indeed (born in the 60s). Someone above said 60s/70s had grammar schools not true all over - in Newcastle where I grew up they were abolished in about 1970

across a life of 80 years there will be hard and good times.

So true. Wise words.

My MIL has done equity release so her other son can get onto the property ladder.

She’s a financially illiterate idiot then.

It depends on a number of factors, plenty are doing it because they want to reduce their IHT burden & not move. You need to have an expensive home though

There are far more effective ways of reducing IHT liability than equity release which is simply handing the money to the lender instead of the taxman.

I never said it was the best option. I just simply pointed out that it's financially illiterate one either 🙄

that it's not a financially illiterate one either.

@LakieLady my parents rented a TV well in to the late 1980s. "Sending the TV back to Radio Rentals" was a common threat if we acted out

Yes, it's undoubtedly much harder for Millennials to buy a home compared to the Boomer generation and 'get ahead'. Very, very hard without family handouts/ inheritance. Gen X are in between, older ones had it easier. And Generation Z are likely to have it harder than Millennials.
Apart from the affordable houses, there was free University education so no huge debts, job security, more ability to manage on one wage for many, better pensions for some and less complications in general.
Obviously there were disadvantages too but in general, it was far easier to own a house if you worked hard, gain wealth and have a better quality of life as you got older.

And what percentage of boomers got to enjoy free uni education @rainingsnoring ? About 5% wasn't it? Compared w about 50% of millenials.

Maybe we should go back to a system where only 5% of the population get to go to uni? Then it could be free and then everything would be fair.

And many of us know that's rubbish. Funny how it's always the first lot who get reported on...