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.

@MrsSkylerWhite surely that poster is talking statistically though? Well done you but meaningless in the context of a wider debate.

I have travelled a lot, seen a great variety of places wealthy and poor in many different cultures and in the UK & Ireland. C is firmly rooted to the very very bottom of that list for me. Very patronising to say "you obviously havent travelled much"

Okay I will bite, social housing is the problem, there needs to be a reverse of council tenants being able to buy their properties thus depleting the stock of housing available.

I say this as a private landlord and with a number of properties.

I don't know anything about you or your circumstances, but I often think about people in this situation. A silent suffering minority, who on websites like this are drowned out by the "I'm buying houses for my kids outright and earned my £2m of equity by my own graft" brigade.
If there is no social housing available to you on retirement, would relocation be an option? I was recently in Europe and thought there should be some kind of advisory service which matches people who have a little capital on retirement with possible locations where they could buy, or rent more affordably.

I have to say the replies on here have made me see that the situation and the general lack of empathy that many of the fortunate have for the less fortunate is even worse than I thought

This "young people want the bouji place in Camberwell and thats why they cant get housing" stuff is complete drivel.
Firstly, who wouldnlt desire a nice house in a good area? What is wrong with desiring something you cannot have? Secondly it is not their desiring the nice flat that is stopping them having any chance of a decent life, it is the fact that even completely crap flats in crap locations are unaffordable.
If I desire a £30 nut roast in a restaurant, but cannot afford £1 for the ingredients for an ultra simple home cooked meal, it isn't the desire that is stopping me eating properly, its the lack of basic funds

My 23 year son and his girlfriend are in the process of buying thier first home. £130k, two bed flat.

West Midlands.

We moved here from London where we had been renting until the age of 40, it’s a mugs game. We own a beautiful home here for a fraction of the cost of our rent in London. Ds wouldn’t have stood a chance in London. And nor would we, we’d bee have bought.

We both worked full time, I was killing myself working nights and looking after the children in the day just to pay rent. We didn’t qualify for social housing and in any case, the list was 15 years long. When we had the opportunity to get out, we did. Best thing we ever did. I now don’t work and we have a very comfortable life on dh wage.

It all depends on where you want to live. Lots of big, 3-4 bed houses where I am for under £300k.

@Croydonishell there’s also a refusal to acknowledge that FTBs are older now so unsurprisingly they may have different needs to FTBs in the past. And moving up the ladder isn’t really a thing so it often makes sense to skip a stage.

Falls on deaf ears here though.

People here, generally, are out of touch with how unaffordable housing is now, especially as a single person. Not five years ago, not ten years ago or decades ago when they bought their houses. Now.

Do you know that someone born in 1953 would have had a ration book? And that food was rationed? And that several male relatives were quite likely to have been killed in the war that ended only 8 years before? Give us a break.

@Mydogsmellslikewee I’m glad it worked out for you but it’s shit that you had to leave. It’s so unfair that you were struggling so much when working full time.

But only a small number of people can do that or the house prices in the cheaper areas will increase a silly amount and then no longer be affordable.

If every retail worker, cleaner, teacher, nurse, social worker, care assistant, hospitality worker, admin assistant, receptionist, etc without family money did a mass exodus from the places with high rent and house prices, what would happen?

There aren’t enough properties in cheaper areas to house everyone.

Don’t bring logic into the argument!

In 1979 46% of households lived in rentals. 32% were in council housing. 14% private lets, social housing and tied housing.

In 1980 council houses started being sold.

45 years later
owner occupiers up from 54% to 65%.
Council tenants down from 32% to 6%
Social housing is 10% total, can’t determine how much of the 14% in 1979 was social housing.
Private rentals are 19% up from whatever proportion of 14% wasn’t tied or social housing.

Benefits for Housing support has gone down from approximately 33% of households in 1984 to 14% in 22-23.

Social housing occupancy has gone from mixed wide ranging demographics to new tenancies only being offered to the most in need.

40% of former council houses are now owned by private landlords.

I did discover recently that the concept of right to buy being a good thing came from Callaghan’s Labour government but was implemented by Conservatives under Thatcher.

pocketpairs · Yesterday 13:20
The real problem was Thatcher who sold off council stock, where houses went from being a place to live to an investment

I can only speak for where I live but in our village the tenant of a council property recently died. It’s got a sitting room and one bedroom and a 30 ft garden in a pretty and safe village and would be ideal for a single person or a couple without children.
However the council have sold it which is daft considering the social housing shortage.
I wonder if vacated council properties are being sold elsewhere.

@WellOrganisedWoman & yet the older generations who benefited from far more housing help think it’s the young who are entitled!

Well yes, as I was typing, I realised that 6 years ago when we moved here, ds could have bought that same flat for 80k.

We bought our 4 bed here 5 years ago for £165. We were potentially looking at moving over the summer and it was valued at £285. And that really is how much prices have risen here - other houses are selling for the same having increased the same amount (rightmove shows me that 18 years ago, my house sold for 50k, like all the others on the road at the time).

When we first moved here we rented for 6 months. The rent was £700 a month. It’s now £1200 a month for that same house.

We were lucky to have bought here when we did, and we were lucky we could move - dh job went remote and we could live here without me working, so we didn’t have the hassle of having to find work as well.

I think you are missing the point. The two bed terrace isn't what young people in Glasgow aspire to. Most people would much rather have a beautiful Victorian flat with big rooms and high ceilings and original features. I and everyone I know was brought up in flats like that and we are definitely not scarred for life by it. They are not hard to sell, and certainly do not lose value.

And yes, that’s always my argument too, what if eveyone moved out.

We did - other people don’t want to. But it was getting to the point where it was getting stupid to stay in London, when every time we’d come to visit dh parents where we live now, we’d see all his old friends living on one wage, going out, going on holiday and having a great life while we were slogging it out, for what?

I’d lived in London all my life, but I got nothing out of it as an adult.

Thank you for your kind reply. To be very honest with you, my plan is to fall off the mortal coil. I know that sounds extreme, but quite honestly I don't see any other options. Like many on here, life's dealt me a bad hand and I just about scrape by so unfortunately haven't even been paid into a private pension. I just simply couldn't afford and it's too late now anyway as I'm 55 next month. I always count my blessings that at least I don't have children to worry about.

There is certainly a generation today who lives with their parents well into their 30s which I believe restricts relationship opportunities for many of them, the old stigma of a man still living with his mum sticks etc. Then there are the ones living in HMO hell holes living with strangers.

And this is where the area divide comes from! If you work in London, and are paid less than £100,000 - you will A. Be facing a long (and expensive) commute and B. Be paying at least £1600 rent (if you’re in Croydon) for a one-bedroom flat.

Where I live, that shoots up to £2500 per month, and you will not find anything for sale under £300,000 except retirement properties, which start at £180,000

We can’t just all up-sticks and move to more affordable areas - but if we did, you would have to live with the fact that it would also push your prices up!

Affordable housing is a top problem we have; home value to income ratio has gone from 4:1 to 10:1.

It affects anybody everybody - including those with houses. I can't afford to move!

It has massive effect on younger generations who see an ever increasing part of income going to rents or have to borrow massively paying large mortgages.

A lot of this problem I'd put at the feet of older homeowning generations who have abused Planning Regulations to strangle housing supply. My local Pensioners Association has objections to any building over 2 floors and celebrates every time a new housing application is rejected. There was one case where an application was made to convert a bungalow to a 2 storey and every neighbour objected.

Our High St is a third empty driven by lack of people. Shops that sold goods shuttered a long time ago we moved to internet buying, what's left are service sector shops - restaurants, coffee shops, salons, etc. And they need people to work, and if you keep housing low, there isn't enough density and they die.

It's basically a large wealth transfer from the younger to older home owning generation, adding to triple locked pension wealth transfer from workers to pensioners. And then there is the gift of Brexit by that generation, who after enjoying the benefits of EU for a few decades, yanked the rug for future generations.

That’s interesting about tenements in Glasgow, and the contrast with flats in the rest of the UK. I see those flats you describe aren’t exactly cheap.

It's not just ruining lives, it's ruining the whole country.

You're a young graduate aged about 25-30 with skills in demand.

You can stay in the UK, pay high taxes and end up getting mortgaged to the hilt in order to have a house the size of a shoebox and start a family. Or you can move abroad.

It's a no brainer.

High house prices are absolutely destroying us and they need to be brought down immediately.

Yes it is a form of wealth transfer from the old to the young. But it is desperately needed.

There is a housing problem.

Mortgage lenders stopped lending and their criteria became harsher in order to qualify after the 2008 crash. They got bitten. So getting a mortgage is harder.

Margaret Thatcher sold off our social housing stock. Appalling decision. Anyone on a modest income or whose circumstances have changed and they can no longer afford a mortgage suffers. This was not so when I was growing up. There were plenty of council houses.

Construction companies want to only build four bed, or they will concede to build a few semi detached houses. Plenty of people seem to buy them. Social housing goes on the planning application but then gets reduced down in numbers once approved.

There are unseen homeless people who live in hotels, who live in appalling rental homes barely fit for habitation.

We don't have enough people skilled enough to build. Construction companies recruit directly from India rather than building up skills of younger people here.

Just to add, nobody helped my parents with their first home. They rented. Mum didn't work so there was no childcare costs. Dad had very long twelve hour days if you include the travel. In all weathers. He didn't particularly relish his job. But it paid the bills. They lived in a modest three bed semi. Having moved up from a terrace.
They didn't help me with my housing either. Not all people who are older are somehow rolling in money. It is inaccurate to think so.
And not all young people are poor.

But yes, there is a terrible crisis. And you can trace it all back to the 1980's and the 2008 recession topped it up.

I've posted this chart before. I think it's hard to argue that people first buying 40 years ago didn't have a huge advantage over those first buying now. (I am neither)