The housing catastrophe has ruined lives

[Croydonishell]

The real terms rocketing in house prices since the mid 90s, particularly in desirable cities in the UK & elsewhere, have been a social catastrophe.
Young and many middle.aged people without rich and donarion inclined parents, people doing jobs they hate and working all hours just to afford basic accommodation, putting off life decisions.
Then on here you get this casual comnenting like "you won't get much in X for £800k".
People who were just born atbthe right time or inherited rich way beyond necessity. Probably caused Brexit and a lot of the hate towards immigrants too.

We need workers to fund older people….

Yeah, do they eat too many avocados and Costas as well ?

Mate, I'm not a boomer but I'm sick of the petulant, foot stamping, give it to me now I deserve it generation.

People have worked hard. The depression era and world wars were austre to the extreme. Austerity is not common these days, consumption is.

What I see these days us people aren't happy with the "starter" option. They want the 5 bed + media room, 5 acre block as their first home.

That's interesting - what percentage of first-time buyers are like this and how did you find out? I've seen plenty desperate for a one-bed flat (my brother included) who can't afford it so it can't be everyone in your category.

House prices started increasing after 1997 when new labour came to power. 11.3million net migration into the country since that time. Thats like adding a city and a half the size of London in just over 25 years. Immigration since 2000 has been higher in this country than upto that time in entire history. Has it benefitted the country. No. It has suppressed wages and caused a housing shortage. So that he government could do a social experiment.

People start crying racist, but numbers are not racist. 28 years later, the country is run down, economic growth non-existent, housing shortage, 10 million working age on benefits and the cultural fabric totally divided and segregated.

It’s too late for this country. We have entered the final stages of terminal decline, as a country.

People have always needed multiple incomes / jobs to get where they want to be. It has never fallen on their plates.

@k1233 A very average two bed terraced house round the corner from my house is selling for £215k. In 2000, it sold for £30k and someone on one average income could easily get a mortgage for. Wages haven’t caught up with exponential property prices.

We were lucky to get an 100% mortgage back in 2000. But we had to buy an hour and a half train ride from our jobs and commute. At one point i had a FT day job and an evening job in a theatre. It hasn't been easy at all. And yes where we moved to was rough. But the situation is awful now unless you're on a very high salary.

I didn't visit, I lived there, not through choice. I hated it beyond what words can express, South Croydon included. The general culture, the air of violence, the rightwing blinkeredness. Dreadful place imo.

People have always needed multiple incomes / jobs to get where they want to be. It has never fallen on their plates.

My parents and all my friends parents/extended families/childhood neighbours pretty much all bought a good size family home with one salary in London…

A quick look on Rightmove shows 167 properties under £100k in my nearest city which is Glasgow. Good transport links, excellent amenities and good job opportunities. Some may be in not so good areas but the first dozen or so I looked at were in areas I’d be happy to live in.

We live on a tiny island people need to be more open to moving if they want to own property and if not then accept the impact of their choices to stay living in more expensive areas with shortage of stock

Fair enough. My brother (who lived there for years) liked it a lot. So perhaps different people have different views and whilst Croyden might not be for you, other people live there quite happily.

I would never buy a flat (and a lot of those properties would be flats) - leasehold issues, losing value quickly, much harder to sell on than a house. Low house prices (under £100k) usually come with economic deprivation to some extent, area-wise.

It was not immigration that caused the housing catastrophe, but Thatchers sell off of council housing, New Labour governmets continiing not reversing this policy, deregulation in the financial services market, long term negative interest rates, dysfunctional electoral system and an electorate with sufficient numbers of people in the right locations happy to continue voting for neoliberal idiots who don't care.

For the "its always been tough, I had to eat coal to get a mortgage" brigade, a question. Are you satisfied now that the average house price to income ratio is 7.9 in England and 13 times in cities like Oxford, Because if you're ok with what has happened in the last 30 years, it follows that you thought this ratio and real prices in general were too low before. Perhaps you don't think they have yet reached their optimum level, Maybe they should be pushed higher still. So what then, is the level above which any increases would be too much? Average UK wide prices of £800k? 2 bed flats in bad areas of London at £2m? Where does your perception of optimal come from? Maybe £2m isn't enough . Maybe they shuld be £25million. Or £2 billion?

IN the years up to the mid 90s people who had grown up in say Cornwall, did not have to make this choice. Now they do. So why should someone born in say 1953 be privileged over someone born in 1993?

The council homes were sold off in the 80s removing the option of affordable, for life, homes

houses became assets not homes

the tax payer who had had their council assets sold off cheap to fund the Tory’s policies , was then conned into paying housing benefit to landlords via people who couldn’t afford a home. If you are lucky you get to pay tens of thousands instead to a bank for a mortgage.

and to reset without horror of a crash will take
decades

yes if housing had increased at the rate of inflation people would be feeling incredibly affluent

and no it isn’t really possible for everyone to have a cheap home near their work because it’s beyond the wit of the brightest CEO to enable home working and a distribution of office estate around the country

Thatcher didn’t take the houses to the grave with her. They are still standing. In the same place.

Prices only go up (and down) for one reason.

Supply and demand.

If there is more demand for something than supply, i.e more people wanting to
live in houses than houses, then prices will rise.

It’s really no more complicated than that.

Well people are privileged in different ways - that’s a poor way to think of things

someone born in a time of peace or war, a time of growth or depression , a time of health or a time of death from simple illnesses , someone born to a loving family or the wrong skin colour….

the blame rests squarely on the tories who turned houses into assets and it’s incredibly hard to go back from that

inheritance doesn’t help - it passes the luck, unearned wealth , down the generations but no one will tackle that because “why should I pay 148k tax when mummy just died… “ omitting to admit that they must therefore be getting enough to buy a decent house in most parts of the uk for nothing

but don’t get jealous of those who were born at a different time - because most of them would support trying to get the problem fixed - and looking forward is more practical and better for your mental health

She didn’t take the homes

she sold them cheap , and then enabled landlords to make a fortune out of them

reducing the cash in the pocket of Jane bloggs and meaning Jane can’t buy her own home

the reason behind the housing shortage is partly growth in population overtaking house building - and restricting the building of homes is just another way to inflate prices - and partly a decline in housing occupancy I suspect

if we still had council homes there would be no need to go slow on house building because that would not raise more money for the council

but once it’s all private - pure capitalism - you restrict supply deliberately

Cheap borrowing. Easy debt. That's the problem.

Lend more and house prices go up.
Keep importing people and there's more demand. Prices go up.

Perfect storm.

Brexit was years ago
Property prices were spiralling prior to Brexit
Freedom of movement drew 6 million people for Europe into the UK
They all needed somewhere to live
That hugely increased demand for housing
Property prices are driven by supply and demand
Recently prices have fallen as demand has slumped hugely
Most people are doing a job they would Rather not be doing
That is just life for 99% of us

We all make life decisions based on circumstances
We delayed having kids until we were better off financially
Again, that is just life
We did not and still do not have expensive holidays -0 waste money in coffee shops every day, have any TV subscriptions
Some people bought when property prices were more affordable
Nothing wrong with that – it is what you want to do
As for inheritance why do you think you have the right to tell other what their necessity is
When we go our kids will be well looked after
That’s is one of the reason we work hard all week to support them

60% of social housing taken up by immigrants in certain areas. It’s not rocket science to conclude that immigration has made the housing situation worse. Tens of thousands of normal terraced houses now HMOs that would previously have families in them.

I agree with you @Croydonishell

Mind you I've never been to Croydon

It will vary across the UK but 6 years ago I bought a one bed flat in West of Scotland - with good transport links to Glasgow - for £35k. It had been on the market for 2 years with zero interest. I was amazed that it had been on the market for so long and my financial advisor said that it was because young adults went straight to buying big 4 bed detached family homes with large mortgages over 35 or even 40 years. That they weren’t interested in starting lower down the ladder and working their way up. He also said the big cars they had sitting on their driveways were all leased - an expensive way to have a car but it lets you drive about in a car you couldn’t afford to buy. Very consumerist, very showy and that attitude has also driven prices up.

It’s a complex picture - with a range of different causes.

This is nonsense. Absolutely no one is complaining about nor being able to buy a 5 bedroom house as a FTB.

People have always needed multiple incomes / jobs to get where they want to be. It has never fallen on their plates

Absolutely not true. As I said above, my parents were able to afford a three bed, w bathroom house just on my dad's income in the 80s, in a nice bit of London. This was the same for all their close friends and family - decent family houses on one salary, or one plus part time. When I was a kid, none of my parents' family or close friends had both had full time jobs.

Now, dh and I are both working full time. We've moved to a much cheaper area. But still all we can afford is a two bed, so my kids are sharing.