To worry how my children will buy a house

[Biggiebiggiecantuc]

I’ve been working in the head office of a large retail bank for the past 10 years.

I’ve worked with a bunch of slightly older colleagues who will blush when we discuss house prices. They mostly started working in the mid/ late 80s, after leaving school at 16/18, and were able to buy a property within 2-3 years of starting work.

Many have multiple BTLs and will head off into retirement in their late 50s with large final salary pensions.

I look at them with envy. I will need to find away to earn till I am in my 60s

However, I am terrified of what future my children will have. I jut don’t see how the will get into the property ladder. They, like me, are average. They won’t get into top city firms and earn £100k 2 years out of uni. Hopefully they will prove me wrong but I just see a future of misery, running just to stand still.

I have managed to save around £10k for them. A housing deposit. Is there anything else I should be doing to help them?

Young people can save up and buy in most places, not zone one or two in London but in other places it's possible, 2 of our 20 something dc are are currently house hunting, no help from family I should add. They have saved £20k as have their respective partners and earn circa £30k as do dps.

Individuals over 50 now hold a staggering 78 per cent of all privately held housing wealth in the UK, with those over 65, the wealthiest age group, owning property valued at an impressive £2.587 trillion net.

On average, private renters spend 33% of their income on rent. This is higher than for social renters, who spend about 27%, and for mortgagors, who spend 22% of their income on mortgages. This includes any housing support received.

The average proportion of household income spent on rent is higher for those who live in London (41%) or the South East (36%), for those who receive housing support (39%), are retired (44%) or otherwise economically inactive (45%) and unemployed (58%) private renters, as well as households with a HRP under age 25 (44%).

For those in the bottom two income quintiles (or the 40% of renters with the lowest incomes), 71% spend more than 30% of their income on rent.

No house-building programme can restore the balance of home ownership-the post-war idea that grew rapidly in tandem with the economy of the time. For us, intergenerational living will be a reality. The fact is Gen Z holds 86% less purchasing power than Baby Boomers did in their 20s.

As I suspected you don’t have an answer to people buying their own property in an expensive area on minimum wage, my “attitude” whether you like it or not, is not going to change the reality of the situation of people on low wages wanting to buy a property in an expensive area, they either rent where they currently work, move to a cheaper area or wait for the mythical mass council house building program.

I've never said everyone should buy. But private renting is vastly unaffordable in this country hence why we have multiple issues.

Moving to a cheaper area pushes renting and house prices up in cheaper areas as I said before Manchester is experiencing this. I'll repeat myself again, not having affordable homes in the South and London is harmful for the public sector.

The solution is to build more, but we need a higher percentage to be council homes.

In my area in zone 3 in London it will be extremely challenging for my DD and her partner (combined income £70k) to afford anything.

Ok then you are right, everyone should stay exactly where they are and wait for a mass council house building program countrywide to solve all their housing problems.

It is especially hard for me as a Muslim practicing we don't do Mortgages. My parents were able to purchase in the 80's on low wages working in factories after saving for 6 years! But us even with high earning Jobs we still can't afford to rent and save for a house in cash as they did.
My parents rented a council house 3 bed semi and then purchased it at a reduced price. We are not entitled to council housing and do that option is not possible for us.

It won't ever happen for us so we will rent for the foreseeable future. We are also considering moving abroad where it will be possible to be home / land owners.

This does not benefit those in their ivory towers!

I did question this myself. Rent to buy council properties in the 80's and 90's why weren't the council reinvesting the money the massive profits into new council properties.

Another major issue is that I know of people on London who play the system and do take housing from those who actually need it. A lot of people sublet their council homes. It is disgusting.

It's not just about building more council houses we need more homes overall, but there has to be a major majority of building more council homes.

We won't get out of this crisis by everyone just leaving London. What do you think would happen to London if every single person left and went to live up north? You have to have people live in London. Because I guarantee you would be posting on here at one about how the north would no longer be affordable because everyone has moved out of London and the south.

Both renting and buying has to be much more affordable and we don't get out of this crisis unless we start to build more homes. you can't make housing more affordable by just not building anything at. But then telling everyone we'll make the housing crisis go away by everyone moving up north.

I don't know how much more clearly you want me to spell it out for you, but I'm bored of you.

Absolutely right to buy has caused a lot of the the issues in the housing crisis. I'm glad to see they've started to make changes to the system.

They (the baby boomer multi-property landlords) have to die sometime!

You don't think that the generational wealth will just pass down to the kids to continue to make a profit 🤔

@MotherOfRatios you can fix the issue of low pay professions being forced out of London by massively increasing the London weighting on the salary bands to make it affordable to buy/rent. Maybe even do something radical and include a housing elements that is equal to half the 35yr mortgage cost on a modified average 2 bedroom flat within X distance of your work place which could be applied across the country. The private sector would likely soon copy.

Minimum wage jobs like supermarkets etc are really entry level jobs where the worker is likely still living with parents etc so it's not a concern.

Many resident doctors, new qualified lawyers, nurses, teachers etc live in HMOs because that's what they can afford. Why is Mike down the road who is 40 but still only earns 25k any more entitled to a single occupancy house?

We are soon to be 35 out of our close friendship group of 6 couples we all bought 5+ years ago with the majority (5) being 10+ yrs.

Your hyperbole is ridiculous, are you always so dramatic? Somehow I think we won’t see everyone leave London 😂 and anyway it would actually be a good thing if people spread themselves across the country, we would have a more balanced society where London and the South East are not the the epicentre of the country, it would be a positive for everyone if the UK was more equal, FYI other cheaper areas are available than the South East, it doesn’t just have to be ‘moving up North’ I suggest you brush up on house prices in various locations, you may learn something.

I work on housing so yes I know house prices across the country. But simply moving people without building more homes will not solve this crisis? It will create more issues

Again I never said they should get a house but there's multiple reasons people should be able to rent a 1 bed by themselves in London and the south people shouldn't be forced into HMOs well into their 30s+.

Wages should increase but that might solve the crisis alone. We also need to build more.

Changing entitlement to social housing would help free a lot of this up, for example max term of 5/10 years subject to exclusions for the sick? Change it so that it is a temporary provision only.

People need more security not less!

The puzzling thing is how you think this affects what people can afford to pay for a house 17 years later. First time buyers now were still in primary school then and probably didn't have many assets.

You think the impact of QE has gone away? Now that is puzzling! 😆 I don’t even know where to begin with the rest.

This will change. The IHT threshold has not increased for years, people will realise that if they refuse to downsize, 40% of the value of their valuable home will go to the government when they pass away. This will free up a huge amount of property.

Your lack of empathy is astounding

Councils were banned by the Tory government from reinvesting the money into social housing.

Then in 1997 we got a Labour government. Like many other social housing workers I hoped to see changes, including the withdrawal of the Right to Buy, if not everywhere, at least in areas with serious shortages of homes. They just reduced the discount.

We didn't get Labour. We got 'New Labour' a mixture of neo-liberal economics with a dash of tepid skimmed-milk-socialism and an occasional splash of cream (sure start).

As a result we got university fees and 'Regeneration' aka 'Let's Demolish 5000 council homes because they don't look pretty, sell the land to an a contractor to sit on for 5 or 6 years, meanwhile move all those undesirables former tenants to Clacton-on-Sea or Barking or somewhere else out of London and replace those previous council homes with 1500 'affordable-but-not-for-the-locals' homes and 300 'rentable' homes made up of housing associations. No we didn't lie. We said we would replace them. We didn't say we would replace like for like and in the same numbers.

Also let's also rename the place and call it something ending with 'Village, Town or Green' that has a nice isolationist and exclusive twang to it and brings in the desirable people. That local health centre, or school, or community hall? Repurpose it for exclusive buyers. So what if you remember it fondly? We're not doing community. We're not giving back, we're regenerating. If you insist on making a fuss, we'll plant a few flowers with a contemplative bench somewhere and if you're lucky add a few swings for the children that can't play outside anymore, because they have no spaces to really place freely because we sold the community hall and land for property OWNERS.

Now let's also change everything to accommodate and attract these new shiny owners. Lets start by getting rid of all the grandfather community stores and local stall sellers and replace them with coffee shops and retro clothing stores that charge more than new stuff. Well do this by hiking up the letting and pitch prices.

That way the people stubbornly holding on will have to get the message to move out the area. No we're not building new council homes here.

Yeah that was the 90s Labour legacy. The conservatives just ran with it.

People have short memories.

The laws in the uk mean it isn’t really that profitable for to be a landlord anymore unless you put the rent up

Each time a government has put in laws to penalise landlords, all that has happened is the renter has had to pay the price

I remember before AST’s and the rental market was over priced and dire. I see the return to those days with each piece of legislation governments bring in to drive landlords out of the market.