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 generally cheaper to rent in most places now I believe. Once everything is taken into account and if you move a few times in your life.

MIL bought her 1970s council house in one of the most desirable areas of Birmingham for £11k under Maggie’s RTB scheme. She was able to save this money & pay in cash from FILs FT factory job and her work as a dinner lady.

Her house is now worth £400k & somehow this is “earned through hard work”. Is it?

DH & I both have full time higher paying jobs & zero hope of affording a £400k house. That’s the problem.

Yes, if you get lucky with your rental and your landlord doesn't want the property back while you're living in it then it can prove to be as financially advantageous as purchasing your own property.

There are a few people on Youtube who prove this theory and show you how renting and investing buys you the same size pension pot at 60 as home owners. I'll see if I can find them they are interesting.

Sorry, meant to say why would you want to buy a tiny flat and then do the housing ladder.

Ive been no fault evicted twice and moved several times due to renting insecurity. Any home I’m able to buy I’m not going to want to use as a stepping ladder.

It's supply and demand plus the availability of mortgages.
The number of people in the country has increased. (All need somewhere to live)
More people are getting divorced meaning what was once one household is now two households.
The rules changed regarding mortgages. Disposable income and expenditure have to be taken into account in a way they did not earlier. (Ie reading of occasions when mortgages of 'x' amount not allowed because after paying repayments the couple would not have 'enough' disposable income - even though the mortgage repayments were less than the couple's current rent)

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

For the same reason we have tolerated appalling immigration levels. Rubbish healthcare and poor education - you vote in a Gov and hope they’ll fix things -unfortunately for years / decades they’ve been crap.

Well I suppose what do you mean by tolerate it? What are the options!?

My parents bought their house for £35k in 1982, it just sold (not by them) for £1.6 million. It's a 3 bed townhouse in Oxford. Our neighbour when we moved in was a labourer. My dad worked at the council and my Mum in a shop part time. The people now are both working in London in the city. It's mental.
Homes have been treated as commodities. Stagnant house prices are viewed as a negative. House prices rises are linked to improve economy and gentrification.
The Tories sold off the council homes and stopped building them and Labour did nothing to improve things (in fact sold off most council stock to HAs).

When Thatcher sold off council housing it was to give working class people some pride in themselves; a chance in life they'd never had before. No one at that time, and certainly not Thatcher, thought Blair would allow in 5 million immigrants in order to boost his voting base... or that subsequent governments would allow in 700,000 immigrants a year. No housing system can cope with that onslaught.

Plenty warned about the pressure on housing and services etc but of course: screams of racist etc from the usual crowd who then complain housing is expensive and scare. You can't make their logic up !

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

Because whichever government has been voted in, they've not cared enough to do anything about it. The people in power are all relatively wealthy, likely to own at least one home already. So for them there has been no catastrophe.

I've only recently, in my 40s, been able to afford to buy my first home. I've been renting. My partner, almost 50, sold his flat a couple of years ago. It was too small now we have two children, and we needed to relocate. It took an unnecessarily long time to sell in an unpredictable market. Then we rented for a year.

The first place I've bought has had to be a family home. I've had to make that leap. The longer people have to wait to afford something, the more their needs have changed to suit a property a rung up the ladder, or live in an overpriced shoebox, looked down on by boomers in cheap, ivory towers.

I'm lucky we could just about afford to buy a house. The maths often ain't mathin' for the next generation.

It's really shit.
Let's recap, Labour created the Buy to Let nightmare in the late 90's, prices rose, stoked by falling interest rates and lax lending standards through the early to mid 2000's.
100% then 120% mortgages. Increasing population and low numbers of houses being built.
Financial crash happened, things eased for a few years, no mortgage lending though, then the market got going again around 2013, falling mortage rates, then 2014/15 our government changed the Stamp duty system /thresholds that was keeping many properties under 250k, after that everything rocketed, combined with plunging emergency interest rates, house prices (and other assets) went berserk. The very low emergency rates were kept for too long.

Now we have house prices that are based on 1.0% mortgage rates, but the rates are much much higher than that now - but prices havent come down to match - everything in every part of the country is way overpriced even by 2014 standards.

What have I missed? UK economy has been shit for decades, so goverment policy has been offset that by making us all pay more for inflated housing and all tax take that brings, and it makes GDP look better.

I bought my first flat before the 2007 crash. I was in negative equity for years. However my mortgage and bills were a bit more than renting, but I had my own space.

I have a good wage but had to save years to afford my bigger house. The crash wiped out a deposit. After saving I was only able to afford a better house due to inheritance. It’s bad luck for me, but my mortgage is less than any rent and more secure.

They can't upgrade because the 'starter home' is so expensive and means maxing out on lending for a long term, equity doesn't get built quickly, there's nowhere to go.

I live in the north, I bought my first house for 24k in 1998. I’m late forties now we have bought and sold a few times and made some profit each time. We now live in a four bedroom detached house and have about 80k owing.

DD saved 7k (as did her partner) over Yeo years. They recently bought a two bedroom house for £140k with 10% deposit.

1.5 million empty homes and houses in England and Wales, 10% of which are second homes.

For a country short of property, these figures don't help. But sellers are a stubborn lot (as are we all) - properties on the market for ages, not shifting, and prices barely drop.

We need to collectively just agree to reduce house prices by 50% and restrict additional ownership.*

*and yes, I know it would cause a negative equity problem, but not sure that is worse than the housing issues we currently have.

Complete drivel. Thatcher despised working class people-her friends in the Murdoch papers, Galtieri doing her a favour and invading the Falklands when she was massively unpopular, and buying the votes of former working class people is what got her elected. She manipulated people and they allowed this to happen. I couldn't believe how people continued voting in conservative neoliberal governments from Thatcher to Starmer in an unbroken sewer of electoral excrement. She rulned working class communities then the rest of the country voted for its own ruination- middle class Jemimas crowing about £800k houses in London, idiots in pubs up and down the country saying "dey shud just stop buying coffee" and a whole generation financially screwed are the result

We also see loft conversions and extensions going up everywhere because the next step up is completely out of reach too. When the older generation that live in the £800k+ houses pass on, who will be able to afford them?

But if you had the opportunity to do the same you'd do it. We all would.

That is one of the most deluded posts I’ve ever seen. Baby boomers got their house because they haggled hard?😂. People pay more or less the going rate at the time and with QE inflating asset prices, shortage of housing and houses as incestment plus little secure social housing around-it!s now a perfect storm. Even boomers were caught out in the late eighties when the MIRAS rush fuelled price rises then a crash as interest rates rose and we had Black Wednesday. I feel so sorry for young people with no help-I bought a London flat as a singleton in 1995-impossible now.

Because some people have made and are still making a lot of money out of it.

Buy to let landlords, wealthy individuals, foreign investors...

Also politicians and their families are not affected, as they tend to be form wealthier backgrounds, so they have no incentive to really address the housing issue.

I also think that the 'elite' does not mind too much people having to take on high mortgages to afford a house because it keeps them having to be wage slaves working long hours for most of their lives and fearful to lose their jobs and therefore easier to control as a population...but then I am just an old cynic.

And our young people have to put up with the moronic bilge from the likes of poopee whatever. In fact all that tax credits and hand soap nonsense must be rage baiting. It’s too dumb.

Basically this.

Govt should have deflated the property bubble years ago by (for example) getting rid of the PPR CGT exemption. But this would be political suicide, so they don’t.

See also: raising the pension age.

also think that the 'elite' does not mind too much people having to take on high mortgages to afford a house because it keeps them having to be wage slaves working long hours for most of their lives and fearful to lose their jobs and therefore easier to control as a population...but then I am just an old cynic.

Agree completely - they like to think the masses are too tired to challenge anything. Thats actually quite thought provoking.

I don’t think they do realise they’re out of reach given the sheer number of comments about mobile phone contracts and takeaway coffees!