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.

745k, 7 years ago. And we have spent around 25k on doing it up. Interest paid on mortgage over that time around 30k, total expenditure around 800k. Not quite sure why you are asking - I'm guessing it's to tell me that I haven't actually earnt the money my house is worth, but am the recipient of good fortune through sheer luck?

Define achievable..

The real problem was Thatcher who sold off council stock, where houses went from being a place to live to an investment. Before this 80% of the population lives in council properties. Owning homes isn't a thing in much of Europe.

Should have finished those GCSEs..

Achievable for me is being able to buy somewhere to live at a reasonable multiple of your salary.

The starting salary for teachers, nurses, social workers (as an example of a starting professional salary) range between £31-£40k. A multiple of three times salary gives a mortgage of £93k on the lowest of those wages, add in a 10% deposit and the £100k homes currently on Rightmove are easily achievable.

I know it’s not the case in many parts of the UK, which is why I said the feelings of “life being ruined” are very location dependent. If you want a four bed in a prestige area or are trying to buy in Edinburgh of course it looks different, buying in rural communities looks very different again. But there are ways to get on the housing ladder here without ruining your life in the process.

House prices started increasing after 1997 when new labour came to power.

So, after Labour had been in for all of three years, prices stopped rising? Did the next FOURTEEN years see the Conservatives ensuring house prices didn't rise faster than wages?

11.3million net migration into the country since that time.

Again, you're implying that Bad Boy Blair is responsible for this. Who's been in government "since that time"?

I think all your arguments are daft and you're ignoring a whole slew of things like fiscal policies, a global financial crisis, a pandemic and a gigantic act of economic self-harm. Just picking up on your first two daft statements, though.

Boomers didn’t live through the depression or war.

Quite right about the leasehold difference, although my points about flats losing value more than houses and are harder to sell are still valid I was making. I see that the average price for a house in Glasgow is £194k (and it was you who first mentioned houses, which is what I originally replied to). Looking on Rightmove, I see that to buy an average two bed terrace in an OK area of the city with good travel links into the centre you're looking at £140k - out of reach for many.

I agree with house price inflation putting homes out of the reach of normal workers, particularly in the South East. However, I often see posts on Mumsnet saying £400k budget , looking for a house in London (obviously a lot of money).People pile in saying not possible or posting mikes away or with a big commute that adds the cost of another mortgage. It is possible in the outer boroughs like Bexley or Bromley (perfectly nice areas). It’s what me and my friends had to do when we were younger (Woolwich for eg). Expectations seemed to have increased with the rise of social media. Young people want the bouji place in Camberwell straight away.

Agreed! (With this principle. Not referring to my own father).

@k1233 Brilliant posts. I'm not a boomer, either.
Neither do I contribute my personal wealth to "luck", but to hard work and self discipline.

My dad used to say she sold off the family silver: Sold council houses, privatised utilities and railways. Thick as a plank financial strategy. You can only sell these once then when the money is gone, you don't have the revenue from them ever again. So the nation felt very wealthy for about...eight years.

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.

You're more likely to find people who voted Brexit and hate immigrants in working-class estates. I could take you to estates in my southern market town where many people aren't very nice about immigrants, voted for Brexit and, perhaps because of their lack of education, haven't worked out the correlation between Brexit and then having fewer white immigrants and more brown ones. Their houses would probably cost around £350,000.

Many of my New Labour luvvy friends live in houses costing £800k plus. They voted Remain and are adamant that immigration isn't a problem.They don't live in cramped streets and can afford private GPs and private schools, etc.

I do agree with this. I often look for (relatively) cheap housing in London. It does exist. There's usually a compromise but you can still buy a family-sized home for under 500k or a 3-bed flat for under 400k

Jesus. You're deluded. Talk.about seeing what you want to see.

This x1000

Cancer treatment today is light years ahead of where it was when I was in my 20s and 30s. Should I begrudge today’s young people for availing themselves of it, because it’s “unfair” that they get life circumstances that we didn’t enjoy? Same with subsidized childcare, more generous benefits, affordable air travel, a booming stock market, vaccines, tech and other major perks of being a young adult in certain recent decades?

Baby Boomers built much of what today’s young adults enjoy and take for granted as standard quality of life. Have some gratitude and respect.

There was severe post-war austerity, polio, housing shortage, v high inflation, racial discrimination, and other major social woes in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Lack of decent birth control for much of that (yes the pill came out in early 60s but it wasn’t widespread and early versions had deadly side effects; my aunt died of it in her 30s)

People whining about their lives now have no idea.

Yep, it's also buying smart. My brother bought a 2 bed terrace near Woolwich when there were rumours about crossrail but nothing concrete. It doubled in value in the 10 years he had it, he did very little work on it.

And cheap housing, and free university (with grants!) and doctors who would not only see you but even come to your house if you were really ill, and final salary pension schemes.

Cheap housing?! There were housing shortages! And massive issues with the mortgage market. https://worksinprogress.co/issue/britains-forgotten-financial-crisis/

Far fewer people attended university. In the 60s it was 4 percent.

To earn a decent pension people had to remain tied down to the same employer for decades on end.

Those of you looking backwards with rose-colored glasses really need to educate yourselves about demographics, economics and history.

I imagine I’m in the age bracket of brexit voting immigrant hating people youre talking about - neither of which apply so wind your neck in. People my age didn’t have it as easy as people think and now we’re made to feel like pariahs - using up all the tax funds for our pensions and having the cheek to live in our own houses.

who knows - maybe another pandemic will come along and wipe another shit load of us out. Would that make you happy - or make life fairer?

I know. My parents are pensioners and tell me about the crazy high interests, how the unions had such a hold on the country that some days there wasnt enough electricity and they had blackouts. Childcare provision was very limited so going back to work after having children was difficult for many women. Your age group definitely didn't have it easy. I think the age group that did are probably those in mid to late 40's now - could afford property, went to uni before fees came in, but improved equality and opportunity for women. But we also had our children during covid with minimal support, and have seen the impact of that on our young children. Every generation has their positives and negatives and there is far too much "we have it hard compared to X group". As saying goes, comparison is the their of joy.

Thank you for responding.

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

So you didn't buy a £745k house on a combined salary of £90k. I'm guessing that at some point a property you owned went up in value hugely. Or you won the lottery. Or inheritance.

I wanted to share my situation in contrast to the example you gave of the school mum. We have one car, 13 years old (don't need to use it much). We've had one foreign holiday in the last 8 years. We're a family of 4 in a very small 2 bed. We spoke to our mortgage broker about borrowing enough to buy a bigger house. He said we could extend our mortgage into our 70s.

Dh and my salary combined is similar to yours. Actually how much we owe on our mortgage is similar to you. Yet there's zero chance we own a house worth £850k.

Of course your dad doesn’t have to move if he doesn’t want to . This is just people who feel entitled to dictate their left views onto others. At the same time I know of a cleaner that occupied a 3 bed council flat given to her decades ago. She lives by herself as kids are back to where they come from. Most of her earnings cash in hand are sent abroad to her family.Two houses in her country of origin. Good for her but come on. It is a joke what she gives back to the UK.

We’re not. Already downsized. More house building the better, far as we’re concerned. Never tried to stop anything.