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.

My DF is in a 4 bed house that he bought. Why should he move, and even if he wanted to the smaller houses around here are tiny. He has a lifetime of memories that he wants to keep, however house builders think that if you’re old you want a minuscule bungalow where you couldn’t swing a cat. As long as he’s happy and can afford it then people can have their opinions and he can ignore them.

60 years old. Definitely voted against Brexit. Think it was absolutely the worst thing that could ever have happened to the UK. It's also let to the rise of the UK far-right fascism in the form of that vile Farage.

House prices in the SE of the UK are horrific. The north of England is a lot more affordable though.

My DS was able to afford to buy in his mid 20s (we helped with some of the deposit) despite only being a shop worker (e.g. not great salary) so I think it IS doable. But that was as a single person, accepting a TINY property, that wasn't much more than a studio. Getting on the ladder was the thing and it's paid off now he's older.

So I think YANBU in relation to the housing crisis.
But your nasty ageism is off the scale. YABU

It is called luck
Simple as that
Nonsense to suggest that everyone could afford a house in the 90's
During the 90's there were plenty of people in Cornwall and everywhere in the Uk who could not afford to buy a home
In 1995, the homeownership percentage in the UK was 68.5% of all households, with 25.4% of homeowners owning their property outright and 43.1% paying off a mortgage

Do you ever think how lucky you are to be in the UK rather than in a very poor third world nation for instance
Or to be healthy
or to have people who love you
You are luckier than billions of others

Not with Ai coming in we need less unemployed to support

No one discusses how much tax payers are funding all the millions getting housing benefit to cover the cost of high rents.
Lots of pity for first time buyers but not for taxpayers who are handing millions to landlords.

I AGREE 100% WITH YOU

I bought my house (SE, but 50 or so miles from London) in 1993 for a tad under £50k. It's now worth 9 times that.

When I bought it, I was earning approx £20k. The equivalent salary for the public sector job I was doing then is now around £35k, not even double what I was earning.

It's no wonder that it's really hard to recruit essential public sector staff in this area. A nurse or a teacher gets the same salary here as in parts of the country where housing costs are a fraction of what they'd have to pay here.

I know a paramedic who left the local ambulance service to work in London, because London weighting increases his salary significantly. The commute isn't much longer than if he'd stayed here but been transferred to a base close to the border of the ambulance trust area.

Totally agree that it’s the young now who are suffering most. When I bought my house about 10 years it was £70,000 less than what the asking price is today. I was simply born at the ‘right time’ when property wasn’t as expensive. I’m only mid 40’s so those 10 years older and so on were born at an even better time when you could buy a property on a minimum wage job, you’d be lucky to get a bedsit for that now!!

@Croydonishell you've obviously never been to Camborne. But yanbu, I agree with most of your points.

The reality is that the housing market got way out of control about 20 years ago and we are at a point where the brakes can't be safely applied without major issues - which is why you see tinkering around private landlords, BTL etc but no wholesale reform because the choices of 20 years ago still land poorly today. The reality is that it's going to take just as long - while having intentional policies and to boost supply and avoid driving further price rises - which is going to be deeply unpopular with those who have got used to seeing housing as an investment vehicle.

We have a productivity crisis, and there are proven links between housing affordability and productivity. We need more houses, in places where there are jobs and where people want to live - and we need a period of great stagnation in house prices while wages catch up a bit if we're going to be able to solve the productivity problems we have.

YANBU.
We would never have been able to buy in the U.K. We now live in Europe and have a much better quality of life and mortgage free.

If you think immigration does not affect property prices you do not understand the basic law of supply and demand.
Agree with council houses being sold off but it did bring home ownership to many people which is what you say you want?
Deregulation of financial services has also allowed many people to own their own home, it has made business loans much easer to obtain, it has made the city a huge source of income to the UK it has provided thousands of jobs for people to support themselves and their families.
low interest rates have fuelled business - most business have business loans, it has made property more affordable which is what you say you want.
The usual refrain of the left - if you do not vote the same as me you are an idiot. I guess some of those idiots are homeowners and financially well off - no?
You may not like to hear it it but when we first bought we were hard up.
I know many people mid 20s to mid 30;s are are buying their own home.
Our son just bough on his own with no help from us - offered but refused as he wanted to do it on his own.
All of his friendship group have bought are are looming to buy in and around London/Surrey.
Second hand sofa no tv for nearly a year, and old car As for prices - they have fallen in the last couple of years and are still doing so.
As for perception of optimal - its is just supply and demand.
Since the dawn of time some people have fared better than others.

I agree with you - not the 5 bed thing, but that people seem to want it all without making sacrifices. One if the school mums is consistently moaning about her children bickering sharing a room but can't afford a bigger house to have own room. But they have 2 top range SUV's, many foreign holidays, down pub a lot etc. As is their right, they are working and can spend their money how they wish. But it's not true that it's the 'housing crisis' stopping then getting a 3 bed, it's their choices on how they spend their money.

OP mentions middle age people - I'm early 40's and every single one of my friends has been able to purchase a nice house in a mid level area. All on fairly average salaries - teacher, nurse, social worker, HR etc. All without any parent help. They (and we) did this through getting on ladder early in a small do'er upper and working way up. We lived in some awful places, even in DH parents garage at one point, and went without to consistently pay down our mortgage on each house over past 15 years. DH and I total income is about 90k a year before tax - very average for our area. We own a house worth around 850k with a 250k mortgage but next year will be our first foreign holiday in 9 years, we both drive cars 10+ years old and only person who gets new clothes is my oldest daughter. And that's fine, that's how we chose to spend our money.

But the problem is the housing ladder has collapsed. The whole concept of a starter home has collapsed. There’s no suggestion today’s buyers will buy a small home, then a medium sized one then a large one. You buy later as it’s expensive and then that’s often your lot.

I’m Gen X and when we bought this place we were first married and planning on trying for a baby. The family who sold it had two kids, the youngest of whom was 7. I thought to myself - yep, that’s likely to be when we’ll move too. That’s never going to happen. If I’d have realised that I would never have chosen this house with its large master bedroom and smaller kids rooms. Because chances are they’re likely to be living in those rooms well into adulthood, which in the mid-2000s I never would have believed.

A lot is down to choices and a lot down to luck. My dc finished uni and rejected the job with the higher salary because it was London based, took the lower salary because it made more financial sense, they weren't looking at just the salary but overall cost of living and the northern city left more disposable money to save towards a deposit. It also worked out luck wise because it led to a much better, much higher paying job. This enabled them as a single adult to purchase their first home (2 bed semi not flat) in their mid 20s (no family money). Yes some of it is luck but choosing the right job in the right location was the main thing and that didn't mean chasing the highest salary.

I do not understand where people who say immigration does not affect house prices think that immigrants actually live ?
Do they not understand the law of supply and demand the first thing that I was taught in economics when I was 13
It is bizarre

Not all of Croydon is bad, i grew up there, my cousins still live there. It’s also not all mega expensive, it’s comparable to where I live price wise.

people are paid more money, entry level jobs are paying 4 x what you got when I started working in 90’s

Also asylum seekers become homeless and the homeless are the only people who have a chance of getting social housing, or council help.

Which housing disaster?

Concrete cancer, where people ended up paying for condemned houses

Radon - where people bought houses that killed them with radioactive gas

Cladding - where people ended up paying for overpriced new build apartments that were then declared death traps that they had to pay more than the flats were worth to rectify the issue

New builds - where people paid for overpriced homes that turned out to be shoddily built, with no other amenities, no council maintenance of the roads as they were on a private estate, where the maintenance companies take extortionate fees and do nothing or the promised amenities weren't built

Buy to Let - where naive people overstretched themselves to buy more properties, hoping the rental income would pay the mortgage, without realising the area was undesirable and decent tenants would not pay to live there, legislation would change and fees, insurance, taxes and landlord licensing weren't taken into account

Compulsory purchase schemes for building that may or may not have happened (Westway A40 Corridor and HS2, looking at you) - Homes were effectively undervalued, owners weren't given enough money to buy anywhere equivalent and the homes in the area that were available to buy went up in value as there was a sudden and significant decrease in the number of properties to buy

Homes falling into the sea/succumbing to climate change

Right to buy - where eligible council tenants bought there own homes at significant discounts, but local councils were legally forbidden from using the money to buy or build more homes, resulting in a dearth of council housing and people on low incomes having to rely on private, possibly BtL landlords who are gouging the local Housing Benefit rules as far as they dare, taking advantage of lack of council overview to 'offer' substandard and sometimes uninhabitable accommodation

Elderly homeowners refusing to move from large homes to smaller homes

There is a massive shortage of affordable housing to rent or buy for any number of reasons

These issues have been building up since the 'greed is good' days of Thatcher and no one, Labour or Conservative, have done anything about it

I thought this podcast on you tube was really good.

So your house is now worth £850k. How much did you buy it for?

There are no leasehold issues in Scotland, and it’s common to buy a flat as a first step on the ladder. My first purchase was a lovely old tenement flat - solid and spacious and sold easily. And while some will be in more deprived areas many aren’t. The housing market in Scotland is very different.

No because they had cheap rent!

Yeah it's a shit show.

The housing problem needs to be prioritised by the government. It’s a massive issue affecting so many people and it affects everything else!

We all absolutely need to pay far more tax than we do but due to high housing costs, it can’t be implemented because a big section of the population can’t afford it.

Loads of people working full time in professional jobs are claiming UC because of ridiculously high rent. Traditionally, those people would have never claimed benefits because they’d own their own home. Even those who chose to rent still wouldn’t be claiming benefits because they’d be able to comfortably afford to pay it from their salary. That’s no longer the case so the benefit bill is ever increasing.

When I was 16-18, my expectation from those around me was that if you didn’t do well at school, you’d have a low paid job and you’d only be able to afford the basics, you’d still have an ok quality of life though. If you did well at school and you trained in a profession and worked in a professional job, you could own a fancy house in a nicer area and have holidays abroad. That’s what I saw myself and what the adults around me told us all.

I did well at school and got the professional job but I rent, can’t afford to buy and can’t afford holidays. What’s the point? It feels like life has changed so much over the last 10-20 years.

What I see in society, is that the priority for individuals needs to be marriage or cohabiting with a partner. Couples seem to be ok (still not great but ok) whilst single people are struggling. I often wonder if I’d actually have been better off finding a partner than focusing on my career so much.

There isn’t really much hope for single parents trying to improve their circumstances in most cases. No matter how hard you work, it’s almost impossible to keep up with rent increases and house price increases.

I am a single parent but I only have one teen so no childcare costs. It’s not that long ago that someone in my job would be able to support a family of 3 or 4 and have a good standard of living. I can barely support myself and one teen!

Yes, I’d have a few more pounds in my pocket if I didn’t have a child but I still wouldn’t be able to afford to buy and rent would still be considered high relative to my income.