To be so sad about my slide in living standards?

[ColdNow]

I grew up in a not so nice area, but my parents had a big house with a huge garden that they bought on two fairly modest salaries when they were younger than I am now. My mum took years out of work when I was born and although things like holidays and eating out weren't a regular occurrence, my parents admit they were never really stressed about money despite having several children and easily paid off their mortgage.

Fast forward to now, where I did my very best to do the 'right' things. I got a good degree, decent and stable job, married and bought a property before TTC. I'm now pregnant and feeling so sad about our financial situation. We purposely went for a modest property with a tiny garden to give ourselves a buffer, but now with the huge increase in our mortgage repayments and other expenses we're struggling to keep afloat. I would love to work part time when I go back but it's now looking very unlikely that we'll be able to make it work without being extremely stretched. I'm always worried about money and already buy all my clothes second hand, shop at budget supermarkets etc. The main cost is housing though, because we live in an expensive city, but this is the city I grew up in and where all my family and friends are, and moving away would be a very difficult choice to make and remove us from all our support networks.

I just feel so sad that within a generation the things my parents were able to offer me (space, time) I'm not able to offer my child, despite me earning far more comparatively than they did. I'm also the youngest in my family and the older siblings are much better off than me, again just because of time - they got onto the property market much earlier before prices sky-rocketed and now although I don't earn a lot less than them, I'm only just scraping by. I notice this at work too, I have colleagues at the same level of seniority and pay to me but a decade or more older, and the houses and lifestyle they sustain far exceed mine.

I don't know what the purpose of this thread is except to just say that it makes me sad that this is the situation I'm in, and people younger than me (I'm in my early 30s) are even worse off.

I don't believe that estate agents doing their best for their customers - vendors who want to sell their most valuable asset for the highest price possible - is the problem with the UK housing market.

A Council House building programme along with Council apprenticeships for the building trades would be one way perhaps? Encourage builders and tradespeople closer to retirement to mentor them.

I guess if house prices remained stable-ish or just dipping gradually over a couple of decades while we wait for inflation to catch up would be optimal…

The issue everyone's skirting around is NIMBYism. People who've staked everything on a massive mortgage to buy a house in a 'nice' middle class sort of area aren't going to welcome a large social housing development at the end of the road, threatening the value of their homes.

It depends on the type, design and density of the new homes. If there is plenty of green space and wildlife corridors proposed and the scale and design of the houses is in keeping with the local area, there may be less objectons? A thousand homes crammed on the edge of a nice market town may be objectionable, but 100 well designed ones might be better. 100 homes each in 10 towns can achieve the same overall number without the stress.

IME, if you propose to build nice housing that isn't too cheap in someone's suburb or village, people say "How disgustingly greedy, building all this 'luxury' and 'executive' nonsense. I'm all in favor of building more, but we need AFFORDABLE homes to be built."

If you do propose to build more affordable homes in the suburb or village, people say "Yes, but...hmm...we're worried this doesn't take the....character of the area into account. I'm all in favor of building more, but it's important to make sure that the RIGHT homes are built in the RIGHT areas."

If you give up on building in the suburbs and villages and say "OK, got it. We'll build flats on brown field sites in the centre of the city," people are OK with that for about 10 minutes, until they realize that (8 times out of 10) "brown field site" is a car park where they are used to parking their car when they drive into town.

We may just have to change the way the planning system works and start bulldozing through objections.

It sounds a hard life, and I really feel for you. Similar for me years ago when children were young. I honestly can’t imagine how difficult it is for parents with young children and child care costs, but we are in a better place now with adult children. Hope things do improve for you - I know when you’re in a black hole it’s hard to see light at the end of the tunnel when life is a daily struggle just to keep your head above the water. The one big thing I can see in your post is that you own your home, which is a massive bonus. We rented until we managed to get back on the property ladder five years ago, and I count my blessings every day for that. The house needs work here and there, but Im just so relieved that we have somewhere that’s ours and we’re not beholden to landlords and rental uncertainty (although our landlords were lovely people) - mortgage recently paid off. Sending you lots of positive vibes and hugs.

To be fair though there is a bit more to it than that... (1) Surely housing everyone whilst having a nice country to live in are both equally valid aims, and if housing comes at the expense of a nice country then we have a problem. (2) If people thought "oh, we've had loads of immigrants due to war in Ukraine... we need to build 100 new houses in every large town in the UK to accommodate them, then we can stop concreting" then they'd be happier than the situation right now. Right now we have a massive housing shortage, but people know that whatever they do to build extra houses there will still be more immigrants and more housing needed and there is no long term plan or end goal.

We're in a Greater London area where a private developer is building many hundreds of flats at the moment. There is already some social housing and supposedly there will be some "affordable" housing later in the scheme but many locals do not believe that this will ever be built. The majority are expensive flats, none of them remotely affordable and some selling for over £1m. The buildings are not particularly attractive and the developer has added extra floors at various stages before they are built, forcing plans through regardless of objections.
There appears to be nothing that local people can do to modify these plans, they are simply steam-rollered throgh by the local authority - presumably to meet a quota of new housing required?
Pressures on local NHS services, schools and utilities do not seem to have been considered. Local free shopping car parks have disappeared and our own residential street is inundated by cars.
Apologies if this doesn't seem to have much to do with the original post, but I'm responding to suggestions that plans for housing should be forced through. That's fine if the housing also meets local needs, but grandparents of children raised in this area often mention that they will have to live elsewhere because there is no suitable property for them to buy.
Local shops are also due to be demolished and there don't appear to be any affordable retail units in the new developments which displaced shops could use. Amongst others, we're losing a hardware shop, a chemist and an excellent local grocery store in the latest round of closures.

I think if planning permission for a development requires a certain number of affordable homes, then regardless of what they end up building they should be forced to sell them at a certain price, to buyers who intend to occupy them. Perhaps even a rule specifying that properties designated as affordable homes cannot be either bought for cash or financed using a BTL mortgage.

"the amount of housing required to reduce prices is huge"

No it isn`t, you reduce prices by making mortgage debt more expensive, prices are reducing now as rates have returned to more normal levels.

"Right now we have a massive housing shortage"

Why are mortgage applications and property sales massively down in that case?

https://www.plumplot.co.uk/house-prices-by-county.html

You don`t "build" affordable homes, you make existing homes more affordable by not giving people massive amounts of cheap mortgage debt to play with! Have you seen the state of some of the New Build rubbish that people have got themselves into 25 - 30 year debt for?

All people have been doing recently is trying to outdo each other with how much debt they can spend and how big a house they can borrow their way into, very tragic but sadly an aspect of human nature that the bankers understand well and profit from every time.

Not how things work unfortunately, sentiment - greed and fear - take over and we have either manic exuberance (stamp duty holiday was probably peak silliness for this, people massively overpaying to save a few thousand on stamp duty! Almost like the loyalty card scam but with much bigger numbers) Fear will be coming soon, and this will lead to the biggest property crash the UK has ever witnessed IMO.

It's all about demographics and downright luck riding the house price wave.

We started off in a £40k Victorian end terrace in 1993, and after several do-er uppers and moves, and riding that wave, are now asset rich/cash poor in a property worth north of £1m, which is great, but unless we want to sell, it means nothing.

However, if I had a choice, I'd much prefer to be in my 20s or 30s again in rented rather than in my 50s.

Can't win.....! 🤷‍♀️

Ahhh I do love a bit of festive doom mongering

I said "housing" not "properties for sale". We do not have enough flats and houses for the population to rent and buy (or maybe we do, but so many large houses are occupied by older couples and singles that it feels like a shortage).

People not wanting to buy today, at today's prices, with today's interest rates and today's expectations of house price falls says nothing at all about whether or not we have enough homes to rent and buy for everyone to be adequately housed.

Depends on your definition of "adequately housed" I suppose, you are right when you say "feels" like a shortage, I think this is closer to the truth than the nonsense the Doom mongers trot out where if you don`t saddle up for 35 years (of now much more expensive) mortgage debt you will be eating beans from a cup in a room heated by a candle, the reality is that rents are starting to come down and mortgage debt costs are at their highest in 20 years.

user1477391263 can't seem to reply for some reason but completely agree with this - exactly same round here where they oppose any new development because 'local' people won't be able to afford it and only rich people from London can buy - no one has tried a massive social housing scheme but they'd struggle to object to that! luckily the developments are now going through, but with no apparent restriction on immigration at the moment I can understand people are reluctant to support massive change when there is no end in sight.

We're interested in both the first time buyer market (on behalf of DC, who will benefit from a deposit and might as well own a property not central London) and as downsizers and relocators. It's the second part of the equation that is likely to be hardest as, IME, the UK is not great at building properties to please vigorous healthy retirees with an eye on possible future frailty.

Thank you very much that was a really nice post to read. I also rented until 4 years ago when we bought our first home. I’d only ever rented since leaving home as a teenager so my mind is still trying to adjust that I won’t get kicked out etc (I have MH problems) …..this is my 17th house since having my child in my teens and I’ve suffered homelessness and other dreadful times. So yes I shouldn’t complain but I do worry about the mortgage repayments.

Hope you are also enjoying being a home owner……our house is the tatty one in our road (I have vastly improved the garden as that was a shambles). I see all the younger couples and families with their fancy upgrades, extensions, new doors and windows and have no idea how they can even afford it and buy food but but at 50 I’m just appreciating a cosy home I can’t be kicked out of. We are trying to fix or decorate one thing or part per year.

My adult son also currently lives with us as the rent for a flat is more than he earns (we are in the SE).

The data on housing and affordability suggests it doesn’t really matter what type of housing you build - everything, ultimately, in the long term, increases affordability.

Even if you are 100% sure that a flat would never be bought by a normal young couple, the availability of that flat will tempt someone else to upgrade from their current place, resulting in their current house or flat being put on the market…someone else will upgrade from their current house or flat to that one, and so on. Gradually, the availability of new housing will have a knock on effect on rents, prices and availability everywhere.

You mention grandparents who are annoyed as there are currently no suitable properties for their grandchildren to buy, but refusing to build those flats is not going to actually solve this problem or cause more suitable dwellings to magically appear. Do these elderly people live in detached houses currently? If they really are serious about wanting young people to have single-family detached houses, well, they could always consider downsizing to a senior-friendly flat and freeing up their detached house for someone else to buy…

I posted some links upthread which talk about this.

As for shops, the main problem facing local high streets and town centers is lack of use caused by a mixture of internet shopping and the fact that in the UK, not enough people actually live in town centers. You are more likely, long term, to end up with a lively town center if people actually live there who have little access to cars and therefore shop on their doorsteps. My local high street area here in Tokyo is full of people and busy businesses. Because it’s packed with people who live in the area and who naturally shop on foot in the area because it’s the obvious choice for us.

Huh? What young people are buying huge houses?

The average house being bought today is smaller than ever - British houses and the amount of floor space available per person in the UK have got smaller and smaller over the past 30 years. Both figures are now similar to Japan.

Or maybe after working to pay their house of they still love where they live. Why should they move somewhere they don't want to just to free up their house. They paid it off its their choice. You donr get to tell other what to do.

Plenty of studies show that elderly people moving us detrimental to their health, moving away from established networks and familiarity of where they live.

I know a couple in their very early 30s who own a 4 bed detached @user1477391263.