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?

@nomemono

the dreadful FPTP

Which is a cause of much of the rubbish policy of the country: there’s no incentive for the two big parties to change. They just need to shore up their little posse of voters and that’s that. As much as I hate Reform the one bright side is that at least they’re making the two parties have to actually work for once. But what we really need is PR.

@p1nkp0ny I have lived in Northamptonshire for most of my adult life. It has always had poor health and education services, poor public transport. It has even probably always had dodgy chief constables. It isn't a slum, it's just too spread out.

Perhaps this is what has helped it to remain a place where people can still get on the housing ladder. It has never been fashionable. The terraced houses don't get gentrified. When renovating, kitchens are your bog standard Wickes not Smallbone & Wotsit. Nobody digs under their terraced house & garden to create a gym & swimming pool complex.

Yes @CatHairEveryWhereNow it could do that too.

It's simply not true to say that women stayed at home in the 90s. 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. I had my DC in the 90s and all my Mum friends were working.

I went to a 'childcare centre' ie a nursery, in the 1960s, they didn't start opening in the late 90s.

I don't think this was widespread as housing costs are nine times average earnings, such costs last seen in the Victorian era! My parents and their friends, peers came from working class backgrounds and all bought houses, 3- 4 bedroom in London. My parents bought a detached house in West London. My parents went to uni on full grants but the fact that they could buy their house with no family money, on professionals salaries as could their friends in similar circumstances is just something unattainable now. We are early to mid 40s but don't have anything near to that size house and even as an Architect and data professional we still needed help from family. It is undeniably a problem of foreign investment buying up homes as assets and wholly changes the environment of a place. I was born and grew up in London and 90s London was a world away from this global city which has its good parts but the down sides are nowhere for long term citizens to buy or rent at a reasonable rate.

I don't think we should be fatalistic about it, near me there was a u turn on the destruction of the leisure centre to be replaced with luxury apartments such was the outcry from the local residents who they listened to!

I just need you to tell me what:

1. Join political pressure groups and parties that support decreasing housing costs a quickly and by as much as possible.

would entail.

What are the exact market interferences you want the govt to make?

I don't think attitudes have changed that much over the years you're probably just moving in different circles now, there's a whole long street in my town that is 90% house shares with people with young kids in.

Yes. It was on for £550k and the vendor ummed and ahhed about our offer for a while. We had to mi d quickly for work so probably still paid too much.

Prices certainly haven’t doubled in our pleasant coastal town! We put our current place on at offers over 695 a year ago on the advice of the agent - we told them we needed to sell quickly they told us if we didn’t, they’d start at 715, much in line with similar properties.

Most have considerably reduced since then or are still sat on the market. We’ve recently accepted an offer some way under 600 and are glad to have it. Means we can all on with our lives.

My parents bought a house in 1999 for 114k - 4 bed detached corner plot in a cul-de-sac of a very desirable area in the South. Sold it in 2003 for 195k... current estimate is £500k+.

I'm in my 30's and have come to terms with the fact unless i win the lottery or everyone i know dies and leaves me money i'll never own my own home. Who on earth can save for a deposit when my rent alone takes up £1200 a month of my pay? not to mention any other bill at all.

The real kicker is the disgusting behaviour of so many landlords. I've had my rent increased every year living in this particular property but the landlord has no outstanding mortgage and hasn't for over 20 years! and in 3 years they've spent at most £300 on our property....

You are right bad choice of words. Most women stayed at home and full daycare centres were few and far between. Many women that did work had family to look after their children. Yes many women did work but a lot worked evenings or part time. I had my children in he 80s and i only knew one woman with a child under school age that worked. Many went pt once their children went to secondary school.

I think to answer the OPs question the reason it has been tolerated is because a lot of people feel like they have "won" from the housing bubble whereas in reality all they have done is end up with a massive proportion of their money tied up in housing (which they could have spent on other things), paid the bankers ever increasing amounts in interest and priced their descendants out of the marketplace.

The housing bubble really is too big to fail. People are in it up to their eyeballs and if it pops there will be ruin for the majority. This is why successive governments basically throw money at the lenders, housebuilders to keep the bubble inflated because if it does go they are finished.

It will pop eventually, but it will be pretty much the last thing that goes down because when it does the government that presides over it will be finished. They would rather just carry on throwing 10s of billions at it and kicking the can down the road for someone else to deal with.

I suspect dh's parents employment history was more patchy than they made out while dh and I both went to rg universities and we bought the flat after dh got a job at a tier 1 investment bank.

Perhaps in our generation they wouldn't be able to buy anything and perhaps wouldn't even have been in a position to start a family. We are the only ones amongst dh's generation to buy anything..

Nowadays no one seems to want to share for over a decade, or miss out on takeaways, or delay having a family until they are established.

Loads of people do share & look at the birth rates! 😆

I think to answer the OPs question the reason it has been tolerated is because a lot of people feel like they have "won" from the housing bubble whereas in reality all they have done is end up with a massive proportion of their money tied up in housing (which they could have spent on other things), paid the bankers ever increasing amounts in interest and priced their descendants out of the marketplace.

Yep

The average age that people leave home has increased between 2010 and today, and more people than ever are living in rented shared housing.

The average age of first birth for women born in 1943 was 23. For women born in the past three decades it's 29. For girls born in 2025 it's projected to be 35.

What have you done about it OP?

A starter home is a one bedroom flat or studio flat...

Depends on where you are. Where I am 2/3 bed terraced house is the starter home. Flats are often in over 50s developments so appealing to different buyers.

I already said this up the thread. Ban buy to let mortgages and Air BNB. Build council houses. Heavily tax empty homes as in wales. Make second homes untenable. Restrict lending to 3x income- there’s probably more - but all of these things would immediately start to reset the housing market.

Most women didn't stay at home though, most worked in the 90s. Most women with children worked too. Maybe the mothers in the 50s, 60s and 70s stayed home, but the stats are clear that by the 90s that just wasn't the case and the majority of women with children worked.

Also, and this is a key point- it’s a POLITICAL DECISION to let house prices remain at this level. There are plenty of actions that could be taken to reset the entire market- but politicians don’t want to do what is needed and so we are in a housing catastrophe. I will vote for any party that has the balls to do what needs to be done!

Also, and this is a key point- it’s a POLITICAL DECISION to let house prices remain at this level. There are plenty of actions that could be taken to reset the entire market- but politicians don’t want to do what is needed and so we are in a housing catastrophe. I will vote for any party that has the balls to do what needs to be done!

I’m sorry but this advice for your children is quite foolish longer term.

But ‘working’ for many looked very different to today. Women may have worked part time whilst kids were in school more, or evening work, or only several hours a week.
In the early 90’s it was very normal for a mum to be at home with kids for the majority of the time until they were older and lots never went back.
You can’t say mothers worked as much in the early 90’s as they do now surely? There has been a big shift in the past 30 years

There wasn’t the childcare then or breakfast and after school cover