Why have people tolerated the housing catastrophe of the last 30 years

[nomemono]

I know it has been good for those geared up or alt the top of the ladder in the mid 90s, and to a declining degree, most years since then, but really, how has this been allowed to happen. Just as one illustration, houses in the frankly crime ridden North London estate I grew up now cost 4 times their real, inflation adjusted, 1997 price. £420,000 to live in one of the worst areas of London, in an old, poorly insulated house. Oxford, affordable when I was a student, now almost worse than London. Cambridge, Brighton, anywhere well linked and with good transport links or local jobs, the same. People casually posting on this website about having £900k to spend on a house. Single people shafted, ditto those without inheritances. How has it come to this?

It’s u foreseen consequences.
In the Edwardian and Victorian times rich industrialists bought estates and built mansions.
in the 70s and on people realised houses held their values and even went up in value in desirable areas.
So people wanted to buy houses, so did anyone wanting to make money /foreign investors, landlord businesses etc
House prices rose -however not just here but worldwide, why no one spotted this I don’t know.i remember everyone being encouraged to invest in property -private and cOmmercial in the 2000s . Then we allowed thousands of people to move here increasing demand and we are where we are-worldwide.

Was your mother a nurse or a teacher? Mine was a teacher in the 1960s, and I think she said they opened nurseries for certain professions to get women back to work and address shortages.

But as for staying home in the 90s, which is what I remember personally, no we absolutely didn't!

We have PR in Scotland, and it has allowed complete lunatics into government.

In 1991 more than 70% of women worked, and by 1992 60% of women with children worked, and almost 80% of women with children over 10 worked.

Are these statistics for full time work! And is this for women with babies?

I went back to work six months after giving birth. To make my life work with the freedom to jump on a plane, I had to have a private FT Nanny so I did, but I could not offset any of that cost against my business expenses, so it was paid out of after-tax income. I could have offset secretarial costs against earnings, but I didn't need a secretary. It was the stupidest tax rule ever, but it finished my career. I earned extremely well, and could have continued to earn well, but eventually the numbers parsed down to 1/3 for the revenue, a third to the nanny and I got the change. At which point I decided that working wasn't worth it at all, because my clients wanted all of me when necessary. There wasn't any local transition to be made, so I changed career. Unsuccessfully. It might not be quite so abrupt now, but in the late 90s and early 2000s, the HMRC rules on domestic help cost them lost tax on £85,000 to £90,000 earnings. The last year I worked FT, in 1998, I earned £80k. All gone. I stopped work. How flipping stupid is that?

A lot of what you are saying resonates with me.

In 2004 I was an 18YO student at Uni working a part time weekend job on £100 a week and every time I went in to my bank to deposit or withdraw or whatever they were trying to book appointments for me with mortgage advisers.

Won't that reduce the properties to rent - thus driving up demand and prices for people not yet in a position to buy - and thus put renters at more of a disadvantage to ever be in a position to buy?

Unfortunately yes, probably. That's what has happened in Wales after similar legislation was brought in. It's turned a crisis into a catastrophe with the remaining landlords able to be extremely choosy about their tenants and to impose ever more stringent conditions.
This kind of legislation needs to be backed up by real alternatives including widely available social housing otherwise, no matter how well meaning, it will just exacerbate the housing crisis.

So the boomers are not that selfish.
Helping out your own kids with wealth you didn't work for and on which you've never paid tax isn't exactly selfless.

Sorry, this post just makes boomers look deluded and insane. They didn't haggle by the way. What utter nonsense.

It's so easy to blame" boomers". I think most people these days would love that the film Solent Green to be real life. So many people these days really dislike their parents it's terrible. I hope it's only a few disgruntled MNetters that think this way.

Interesting

And Hitler gained power through PR in Germany!

This is a sensible assessment.

Market forces. If there are fewer properties available, people who can afford to buy will pay more to get what they want.

More women than ever work, and many more work full time when they have children than used to. That means families without a double income ( and single parent families or single people) are automatically at a disadvantage.

Housing stock is lower relative to the population than it used to be, so there's more competition and many people are priced out. Where I live there is an unbelievable amount of building of high rise flats going on everywhere I look - many still not ready for moving into. Not sure how affordable they are but someone will buy them. Is it enough - I don't know, but it shows that there is simply a totally insufficient housing stock.

Divorce and separation is rife. Ex two parent families now need two places to live. More demand, higher prices.

I could easily buy a property in the 80s as a single person on a starting salary and continue to socialise as much as I liked (though the latter wasn't expensive back then either, not were utility bills). I did have extra funds from the bank of mum and dad which enabled me to buy something better than I could have afforded on my own, but I also had savings from temporary jobs I'd done as a student. My other single friends mostly bought their own places too, but some didn't more due to not wanting the responsibility yet or waiting till they were married, rather than for financial reasons.

That's not quite the full story...

lol the brown shirts wouldn’t have surrounded the reichstag if FPTP meant he’d only won 10 seats despite winning 33% of the vote 😂😂

We need people to stop having children in multiple relationships so multiple houses are needed.

We need some small blocks of flats and we need to enforce people moving out of council housing as soon as the children leave and they are under occupied. Members of our extended family are a retired couple in a 3 bed semi housing association house. They should be in a flat.

We absolutely should not be churning up the countryside to build more houses. Its absolutely heartbreaking.

Less than 10% of land in this country is built on .. that’s all built environment including roads, railways, shops, houses etc. Vast swathes are banked, to aid various tax-dodging schemes.

I agree. BTLs and, in certain areas (Cornwall, Wales etc), holiday homes are a major factor in all this.

I think the Welsh govt's policy of taxing second homes etc. is an excellent idea.

Couldn’t agree more. Taxes on second homes, and stop the insanity of reduced or no council tax.

My youngsters don’t have a chance. I’m in a council house and have no assets so no inheritance will come their way. They are all working full time but the ‘affordable housing’ is way over what is actually affordable on a bottom of the rung wage. Until they meet a partner or climb the wage ladder they have no chance. My eldest daughter (25) has given up and is using her money on nice holidays rather than paying a landlord all her wage each month and the deposit required for a mortgage is also beyond her reach.

It also means I can’t downsize my council house any time soon (which I’d be willing to do) for a young family as my adult children still need it as a base. I’m also unlikely to become a grandparent since they haven’t got a home of their own to settle in and start a family.

Maggie Thatcher gave away all the council houses and created the whole buy to let culture.
Also all the millions of holiday lets/air B&B taking up good housing for local people.
London is absolutely mad, millions of pounds of fairly average houses

That’s true, but you do avoid council tax, and standing charges for utilities. You can also own a boat outright for much less than a house so it’s more open to people with very little. My area is very expensive (comparable to London, but without the London weighting for pay) and more and more people are scraping together money for a van or a boat because rents are so high (and so competitive to get in the first place). My local Facebook groups constantly have appeals for places to live, and then often from the same people, places to park up a van or caravan. Bristol as another example has massive van park-ups under motorways and on the downs because it’s so hard to rent or buy in the city.

Maybe they don’t want to be?

We live in a democracy.

Don’t forget uni student housing too!