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.

Also, it's true that there is much regional variation. That said, a 100k property in Glasgow is really not much use to a teacher or nurse in Croydon.

No, but both the teacher and the nurse could live and work somewhere which wasn't London.

This is the nub of the problem. If you choose to live somewhere where a lot of people earn a lot of money, unless you earn a lot of money too you won't be able to buy there. The cost of houses isn't kept high by some mysterious 'they' the cost of any house is what someone is willing to pay for it. Very high earners in London can afford to pay a lot more than the nurse and teacher, and do so. Sellers obviously sell to the highest bidder.

My suggestion to solve this problem is leave London if you can.

What happens when all the nurses and teachers have left London for cheaper areas?

Oh if only it was solely a ‘London’ problem…..just look at stats for average wages v average rents and house prices. It’s much much more than a London problem.

The housing crisis is the single biggest cause of the cost of living crisis and the reason so many children are living in poverty today.

Another poster said anyone should be free to charge whatever rent they like for their garden shed and anyone should be free to pay it.
This in a nutshell is the problem.

Housing is now primarily an investment vehicle - somewhere safe to put your money while earning a high yield passive income. Whether you’re renting it out (approx 75% of landlords have NO mortgage - that’s a good profit margin) or keeping it empty or for the occasional weekend as a nice growing nest egg to pass on to your offspring.

Rents continue to escalate - up 25% in the last 5 years alone. Wages could never hope to compete.

It’s not only the UK - much of Europe is facing similar issues. And like the UK those countries have faced a growth in popularity of the far right. It’s an easy assumption to draw - get rid of the migrants and lots of housing will be freed up.

The reality is landlords will continue to charge ‘market rent’ without constraint and it will continue to be unaffordable for many. Councils will continue to have to fund temp housing for those facing homelessness each time a landlord shifts that rent up to maximise profit. Housing benefit will continue to fund the private rental market. Councils will continue to cut services as they are driven deeper into the red.

The renters rights bills won’t fix this as the problem is fundamental. Do we want everyone to have a social right to a safe, secure home or do we want housing to primarily be there to provide passive income and profit?

The teacher earning £40k will be saving for a long time to get to £18k (fees and 10% deposit for a small house in OK areas of Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield and many more places in the country). And that mortgage and associated costs, once living there, would be all on that person. Even over 30 years paying those repayments wouldn’t necessarily be sustainable for someone on an average income.

@Scotiasdarling how would that actually work? High earners are dependent on low earners to even exist. If everyone on a low or average wage left London, how would London even continue?

Jane on £130k a year driving the bin lorry emptying all the bins before her morning commute to her fancy pants job. Dave the CEO missing important business meetings because he’s having to put a shift in shelf stacking at Tesco.

It would be a lot quieter so maybe all the high earners would just pitch in and make it work just fine.

A question for those who think that the current situation is ok. If this is OK, it follows that it was NOT OK when a house could be bought in many parts of the country for twice a single earners income. Is this what you think then? Did people.who bought houses that in 2025 adjusted terms cost £100k, before they bought think "this is terrible that this house is so cheap". Or did they only start thinking this after they had bought it, or when they had bought their most expensive house? If your house is now worth £800k and you think that is OK, when did it start to be ok? When it was worth £600k? And what is the price level that it will no longer be ok at? £1m? £2m? £25m?
If London prices increase in real terms in the next 50 years at the same rate as they have in the last 25, then 50 years from now people will be paying an average price of £1.2m for a house in today's money. Or £1.6m for a reasonable 3 bed house.

I agree that housing costs are absolutely insane. It does nobody any good. Obviously its completely shit for people who want to buy their first place but even if you have a house, assuming you are living in it, then a price increase doesnt benefit you either. Really the only people who do well out of house price increases are people who buy property as investment.
Im a bit upset at your user name though. I live in Croydon! At least its more affordable than most of London.

I'm going to get absolutely flamed for saying this, but hey ho...I think that only people on low incomes should be entitled to a council property. Plus...if said tenants financial circumstances change ( in other words they can afford private rental or a mortgage), they should relinquish said property.

There are families utilising council accommodation who have household incomes of £100k plus . This isn't fair. Anyone...absolutely anyone can get council accommodation. You just have to get on the waiting list. I've been waiting for 9 years...I have no kids so not seen as a priority.

I am a very low earner and have to pay private rental fees. It's so unfair.

I would like for lifetime tenancies to be regularly reviewed, but logistically it would be very difficult and expensive to administer and manage.

Re: the username.
I lived in C for many years growing up and until recently had close family members living near there. For me, it was hell. I found people chronically unfriendly, and there was a culture of violence and abuse. Friday nights out in town there would be regular fights and knifings, The city centre was and is depressing, run down and lacking in any kind of culture. Most people I was at school with could not wait to leave the place.
The council has recently gone bankrupt multiple times. The Whitgift centre is a depressing disgrace. I regularly experienced racial abuse while living there.
The people who had chosen to live there I found largely small-minded, defensive, highly attached to commercialism, politically narrow-minded, and unaware of and unlinked to other parts of London.
A young girl was stabbed to death in broad daylight on a bus in town just a short while ago. The flats around East Croydon station cost north of £400k and many have been bought by overseas investors and are left vacant,
A soulless and depressing place which I absolutely despised to my core. I realise others see things differently.

You are so right. The cost of living crisis is largely down to high housing costs, leaving people with not enough left for everything else. The market has been allowed to run away since the late 1990s, it's mostly only profited the financial sector, and the already rich. The selling off of council houses and failure to build more affordable housing has just made it worse. Becuase housing benefit is pegged to market rents, the benefit bill is rocketing too.

I suppose we were unwitting beneficiaries as we bought a house in the late 1990s in London, on my grad+6yrs salary, helped by an inheritance of part of my nan's RTB council house. Within 5 years prices had doubled and they never came down again. And although London is extreme, most of the country has followed to some extent.

We have really got to build decent, well serviced, affordable housing for sale and secure rent. Managed by the government, not left to the "market". We are actualy heading for a population crisis, probably because people in their 20's and 30's don't have financial stability to start a family. But then I wonder if there will be a housing oversupply and crash when the population "bulge" dies off...

"The people who had chosen to live there I found largely small-minded, defensive, highly attached to commercialism, politically narrow-minded, and unaware of and unlinked to other parts of London."

This is an incredibly rude comment to make to someone who you know nothing about except that they mostly agree with your views on housing and have just stated they live in the area. Some might even call it "small minded" or "defensive" to use your words. For that reason I won't be engaging again.

I was talking to the plumber and I asked if the baby wipes are a problem still blocking drains - oh,yes, but only in the counci houses/ social housing as they don’t have to pay to fix the problem.
A wee example of why you might be discouraged from building the low priced social housing -you also need to pay maintenance teams.

I agree. I am in my 40s and myself and my husband were lucky enough to buy flats before the world went too crazy. I have no idea how people on normal wages round here even rent somewhere, let alone buy. I don't see how they could afford to start a family. A 2-bed flat round here is upwards of £1600 to rent and at least £250k to buy.

It’s certainly ruined the lives of DH and me. We’ve been together over 30 years but have never lived together alone (I had a child when we met). We still have two adult DC living with us with no prospect of either being able to get their own homes.

UK housing stock is absolute shit. Well about 90% at least. It's barely fit for purpose by modern standards. It is not healthy to live in, is ugly, is badly connected, can't be retrofitted without a ridiculous energy input and yet is totally overpriced and out of reach for most mere mortals.

The housing market and home purchasing system are different in Scotland. Flats are really popular at least in the urban areas and we don't have the same freehold/leasehold system.

Yes Ronnie Corbett had his mansion there, granted there are some not so nice parts but you can say that about anywhere in the world...

Also, here in the UK we have a pathological obsession with independence. We believe that you're not an adult unless you're living on your own. That's not how the rest of the world does things.

Good point. Many on MN act as though people are losers if they're living at home beyond the age of 21. I'm in my 60s and, in my northern town, it was perfectly normal to live with your family, pay board and save up for many years until you bought a house. And it was usually with a partner not a solo purchase.

Yet my parents could afford it on one salary (mum was sahm)

Maybe it's true for your family but the majority of women worked. The "sahm" would've had evening or school hour jobs to fit in with looking after their children. There wasn't the huge nursery/childminder industry we have now.

Then full time work when the kids were at secondary school. No afterschool clubs - we were latchkey kids and coped just fine.

Most of the women didn't have what some describe as careers now. They worked, brought money into the household, saved and raised their families without the luxuries we consider necessities today.

100% Agree.

But Labour had the oppertunity to stop it and didn't. So both parties culpable in my book, for the landscape today.

You have no gear stick to reduce housing stock being used as investment rather than housing.

Take a look around the globe, there are various options.

In Thailand (when I lived there) a foreigner could own no more than 49% of a house, industrial/commercial property or a company.

In Italy there is a higher band of our versions of stamp duty, legal fees, burocratico nightmarescape navigation etc. , plus higher rates applied to utilities, for any residence that is not a primary residence where you actually live.

You need ways to stop housing being the place where the global mega wealthy stash their cash. And introduce brakes on people becoming accidental/non-professional landlords.

You could also do with looking beyond Britain v America for how to run a national health system and a welfare system with checks and balances. There’s more than a Yankee or. brit way to manage things.

It won’t be a magic wand, some fuckers will always play the system and be dodgy. But there are ways to at least reduce the rather wild, wild west free for all.

I agree the rise in house prices since the 90's been tough on many people.
The main drivers have been (historical) low cost of borrowing, and a population growth of around 4 million.

The population growth is largly diven by imigration, rathe than our declining birthrate.

Yes there are other factors, but higher prices are the outcome of the increased demand.

I've mentioned on other threads: population growth is also due to people (happily) living longer, not releasing homes to the next generation. That generation have done well out of house price rises, may have separated or have second homes. It's easy to see why there is a shortage of homes to buy.
Immigration is basically topping up the working age population (and supplying a shortage of healthcare and construction workers).