To think the age of leaving home is getting higher and higher

[Fatcat00]

Sparked by a comment I’ve just read on a tiktok video “we can’t afford to leave home”

I know many people late 20s still living at home. The norm as I understand it is you’d leave home at around 19/20 years ago. Now I know everyone can’t afford a deposit for a mortgage (also read something about 0 deposit mortgages being a thing recently?) but do people just not move out because they don’t want to rent?

I’m trying to have a better understanding on what is the norm now. And how people do things. Purely out of interest but also because I fell on very fortunate circumstances where this is not something I’ve ever had to deal with or think about. There seems to be a divide of people saying kids should move out by X age by any means even if it’s a house hard, and another half saying no. What do you believe to be the case generally?

I don't think it is, I am certain it is.

This to an extent.

Unless you were lower class.

Then it was common to leave home as early as age ten or eleven to go into service.

The idea that you left home in your twenties and could afford to run a household is very recent really.

We live in a fairly deprived town an hour outside London. You’d be lucky to get a £30k job here without a degree or years of experience.

A one bed flat to rent (ex local authority) is £1k a month, plus bills, you’re looking at £1.5k not including food. A one bed to buy is £200k+ so if you did earn £30k you’d need a deposit of £100k. How can you save for that with rents that extortionate that take up most of your wage anyway?

DD (recent grad) works in London on £30k, travel costs are in the region of £300 a month and she only goes in 3 days a week. A flat share in London is a minimum of £1k. She’d still have travel costs on top so still very little left over while living with strangers and their mess.

She’s recently had to start working weekends so is now working 7 days a week so she can start saving for a deposit which will take years.

I bought my first house comfortably in 1995 on a £16k wage for £43k, a 3 bed terrace.

You can see the difference!

There are 3 existing low rise blocks of them already plus mixed blocks that have flats from 1+ bedroom.

My area is mostly families with children or sharers so there is a need for more 2 and 3 bedroom properties.

Also there is an issue with parking. Currently any new development has to be able to provide it's own parking so the residents don't get a parking permit.

I know everyone says people have to be 'independent' but if that means my kids forking out 900 a month to live in some shithole, I'll be happy for them to live at home if they want to, even when they're adults. I think things have changed and I see lots of students I know living at home. They still have lots of fun with their friends and a big social life.

Left at 18, went to university, never went back. Mid 40s now.

I don't know anyone who stayed at home. It would have been like admitting you were a loser and couldn't get a good job after university which was the point of it all.

I have nephews at 25 who are making their way in London, and they are not sitting at home with their mother but making their way in the world. Good on them.

I think young people expect to have more when they leave home than I did 40 years ago. Then it was quite normal to rent a bedsit with shared bathroom. When I got married we had a very basic flat with a loo but no bathroom, that was shared and was upstairs, our flat was on the ground floor. Most young people wouldn't even consider moving into something like that, so of course it is difficult to afford anything decent. Also I think some parents do way too much for their adult children. As an adult they should be able to pay their wsy, do their own washing, share the household jobs etc.

House prices have risen about 10 fold in the last 40 years. Wages haven't. That's why younger people can't afford anything decent.
Anyway what you said kind of proves my earlier point. Why on earth would anyone want to leave home to live in somewhere with a shared toilet?! I'd way rather my kids stayed at home and had fun with any excess money.

I personally think it's a real shame people can't to afford to buy or rent until much later on life. It was certainly fun times living with friends in my 20s. Also makes you appreciate it more when you get your own place.

Does it make young adults feel they are living a suspended existence or are they perfectly happy as so many are in this situation?

@HamBone

Thinking about it, I only know a couple who are currently living at home (both 23), the others went to university and didn’t move back home. It surprises me, tbh.

I think graduates are having to move to where the jobs are, i.e. the cities, as there are usually pretty few decent graduate jobs close to their hometown if they live out in the regions.

I also think the reason for more Londoners living at home is simply that most decent/graduate jobs are in London, so it's actually possible to continue living at home and benefitting from the good public transport links to commute to work. Out in the regions, that's simply not as likely due to there being so few decent/graduate jobs within commutable distance of parental homes!

There are newly recruited graduates and interns working with my son who are living in hostels because they can't find anywhere else to live, shared bathrooms or not! These are Maths graduates working in one of the UK's largest insurance firms, and still can't find anywhere semi-permanent to live! The housing shortage in more and more areas is getting absolutely desperate, and it's not all about money, sometimes it's simply that there are literally no homes/flats to rent at all - people can't even get viewing slots as demand is outstripping supply so much.

Absolutely, @Badbadbunny . I couldn’t have found a job that I wanted in my home town, it would’ve been v. different if my family had lived in London. I liked moving around anyway and lived in a few different cities/countries. We’re not expecting our children to stay in their home city either, most of our extended family has itchy feet, we like to move around!

My ds had just moved out, having managed to buy his own place at the age of 23.

He graduated a year ago, moved back home and worked remotely from his room upstairs (he'd managed to get a good job in his niche field). We charged him a nominal rent of £100/month which covered his food and his work gave him a "working from home" allowance of £26/month which we also got. We also expected him to save the full £200/month that he was allowed to put into his Help to Buy ISA that I'd opened for him a few years ago. He also saved as much else as he could.

He's bought a flat for £116k, a (maximum) mortgage of £92k, with the rest from his own savings (we contributed £4k so that he had funds to furnish the place).

My 23yo is still at home because private rental is too expensive on one wage. She doesn't want to go into shared housing because she said its no different to being at home but more expensive in living costs. She is trying to save while here but hasn't really got anywhere near the amount she would need for a deposit to buy.

By contrast at 23yo I already had a baby and was pregnant with my second (the now 23yo) and been living away from my family home since 19/20yo with my partner at the time. I never was able to buy a home because I had a family young but did get help with council housing which I still use now (I was private renting when I first left home though)

Your're not wrong, by the age of 20 I was getting itchy feet and bought a house with my BF (noughties).

Now I know people in their mid thirties and even a few people aged forty still living with parents. In some cases of people I know, they have an easy life in the parental home and don't contribute much, maybe not encouraged to be independent.

My DS is 23 and autistic. We can support him financially to move into his own place, but he'd never manage the practicalities. In a way it's been a positive trend for him that all his peers are also living at home (we are in London where people live at home for even longer) as it makes him feel less of an odd one out.

I moved out at age 18 when I went to uni, and for various reasons I got allocated a council house shortly afterwards. So I've never had to deal with private rentals and had the security of a secure tenancy until I bought it under rtb. Quite a big responsibility when I was still a teenager and I had to deal with lots of household issues on my own, but it was an advantage in other ways.