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.

Yes living longer has had an effect, but (according to the ONS) the biggest driver in population growth in recent years has been immigration.

The crux of the problem is that councils have continued to permit the Right To Buy without building more social housing. If there was sufficient social housing, people wouldn't be going bonkers trying to scrabble onto the property ladder and private landlords wouldn't be coining it in at the expense of the state.

My mum wasn't rare being a sahm at all. She did work when I was older but part time. Women working part time in the 80s and 90s was very, very common. My mil went part tine when she has kids, and never returned full time. Out of all the people I know well enough to know their circumstances, my aunts on both sides, all my mum's close friends, none worked full time.

Yet dh and I both work full time, and could never, ever buy the kind of house my parents, their siblings, and friends had with a single salary, or one full time and one part time.

I'm not saying my mum had it easy. She had no financial independence. Due to lack of childcare, she wouldn't have been able to work full time. My only point is that they can afford a house that is completely out of my reach, despite having a much higher household income.

(I won't have an inheritance coming my way, that's a story for another thread.)

It depends where you live.

I’m a stay at home mum. We own a lovely house and live quite comfortably on dh 50k wage (and it wasn’t too bad when he was on 38k a few years ago either).

So you can get a house on 3 times salary on junior wages then.

I’ve just looked on Rightmove and one bedroom flats where I am in the West Midlands start from £60k.

My 23 year old son and his girlfriend have just bought a really lovely flat for 130k. They both earn just under 30k each and lived at home while saving a 10% deposit.

Mate.
I bought my first house in the 80’s at the age of 18 with a partner.
Both on starter salaries.
3 bedroom on a private estate integral garage.
Not a cat in hells chance it can be done now.
No money from parents needed.
Tell me those from the 90’s onwards haven’t been dealt a shit deal.
Although I’m alright Jack I’ve known from late 90’s how house prices are screwing society over.
Anything you can imagine in society has been made worse because of the cost of housing.

Yes but why aren’t Govs building social housing? It can’t be a cash cow or Govs/ companies would build them. Maintenance on let properties would be expensive nowadays - how much is it to get in a plumber? Replacing eg a boiler is £Ks
The returns are not enough.
But perhaps our strict planning laws mean that you can’t throw up kit houses to deal with the problem on a temporary basis to relieve the present problems.

I live in social housing and have bowel issues I dispose of wet wipes in nappy bags, If i ever heard a contractor accuse me of this i would threaten to get them out of the bin and get them up close and personal to him.

The whole housing sector is screwed , it’s not just the buying or renting it’s the millions stuck in unsaleable leasehold flats with extortionate service charges / Grenfell cladding / short leases . All of this impacts buying and selling and the whole industry needs an overhaul

There are plenty of small houses up North for under £400k. Even in cities like Leeds, Sheffield. A lovely 2 bed house with a garden in Knaresborough is on sale for £185k right now. If I wasn’t able to afford my house here in the South that’s where I’d go.

People just don’t want to leave the most expensive places because they’re nice or well connected even though that’s why they’re expensive.

There are loads of lovely houses near me.

250k will get you a lovely, 3 bed house. You can get some great 4 beds for under 325k.

But not many people want to come and live in Dudley.

We did. But I still have friends in the SE who would rather work themselves into an early grave to keep spending 3k a month on rent.

Yes, it’s awful for those people trying to sell those flats but great if you’re not bothered about those issues if you’re a potential buyer because you have tons of choices all over the country. I can’t see flats in general ever appreciating much in value again and I would never buy one, no matter how cheap, but I understand why OP is interested.

I think it’s more likely that people don’t want to leave the more expensive places as their job, family and friends are there! The south east needs teachers, nurses, shop assistants etc too you know. We can’t all move up north!

And your solution is '''''''''''''''''''''''?

What an ignorant post

“I’m alright jack”

It’s not a case of that at all.

We all have choices.

We had to leave London as we were getting priced out of renting, even with housing benefit top up (we both worked full time), and we would never have been able to buy.

So we moved 3 hours away, somewhere a lot cheaper, where we could buy a house and live in one wage.

So for all the “what if eveyone who couldn’t afford it left London” talk - that’s not my problem. I wanted to own a nice home and I didn’t want to be killing myself working nightshifts on no sleep just to pay rent on a shitty house that I couldn’t even hang a picture in without asking permission.

It wasn’t easy to leave where I was from, our eldest was one term into A levels, but we couldn’t keep making excuses to stay somewhere we couldn’t afford.

I'm going to finally bite on housing as set a few misconceptions straight.

I bought my first house on 15th September 1992. I know the date exactly because it was the day before Black Wednesday. The house I bought, a 'starter home' was 2.7 times my gross income, a dream by modern standards, so I had it easy right? Well lets dig a bit deeper.

My take home pay at the time was 909 per month, and the initial 10% mortgage was 360 per month. So my mortgage payments were about 40% of my take home pay, this is high by historic and modern standards. This is important, and is actually the one more of less constant it house prices. First time buyers historically spend 30%-40% of there net income on mortgage repayments, everything else can change, but this is more or less fixed. This is about what people can afford. When people are spending less house prices go up, when more, house prices go down,

So pretty soon after I bought, mortgage rates stared to fall. Great, this makes houses cheaper. No, it means people can bid against each other higher on the same house, and still keep to the 30-40% rule. So house prices went up to match mortgage rates going down, all caused by buyers able to bid more. Between 1992 and 2009 rates dropped from 10% to 1%, this is caused a significant inflation in house prices. As this unwound since 2022 we see house prices deflate slightly compared to earning, to bring it back to 30-40% repayment ratio

When I bought most houses were still bought on one income, but since then two incomes is more usual, Great, we say, we can afford a better house. You must be getting it by now? No, it caused prices to rise as buyers could afford to pay more to keep to the 30-40% repayment ratio

House prices are always what they are, because that is what people can afford. If you give people more money prices go up, Give them less prices go down. Simple really.

If people want to go back to the 3x earnings to house price ratio, reverse these inflationary causes. Interest rates up to 10-15%, one income per household. You will still only be able to afford the repayments on the same house, but it will now be back to the 3x ratio, Be careful what you wish for,

Finally a house is wealth? Is it? The headline might be that I sit in a 1 million pound house (for example). But that just means if I wanted to sell, possibly someone would bid up to 1 million pounds to beat the next lowest bidder to buy it. As people so often say, a house is only worth what someone ELSE is prepared to pay. It's not money in the bank, I can't buy a Ferrai with it or go one holiday. I've had no say in the inflationary pressures that make other people think it is worth that. I will always need a home, so if I want to move, I'll probably have to bid a similar amount to buy a similar house. All it means is that by going to work for 35 years, paying PAYE & NI every month, and consistently spending less than I earn, I will probably have the great at luxury to choose and fund my own care home, and at least choose a nice one.

I don't agree with this at all. Take the total amount you will have paid over the course of your.mortgage and inflate it to 2925 values. Then compare it to the amounts paid by someone buying in 2025 at values that vastly outweigh lower interest rates to the point where many people cannot even afford a deposit. Then what are single people supposed to do?

It may be true that you had to work hard to pay yiur housing costs, but honestly, question whether the exact same version of yourself as a FTB now would be able to afford anything at all, let alone what you have had. As for this housing equity isnt wealth business hundreds of thousands have had massive cash boosts to their net worth by downsizing or simply relocating. If it's actually all so easy for buyers now do you think 30 year olds actually want to live with their parents?

I agree. But house price inflation isn't due to the oldies.

It's due to housing shortages and massive money printing to prop up government debt (which pushes up asset prices).

Sadly we're returning to a time when only the wealthy can afford houses.

The housing shortage didn't happen in a vaccum. It is deliberate.

Go to any council meeting on housing, the oldies are there in numbers.

My local pensioners association protests every new house build to "preserve the character of the town". Any building over 2 floors is objected to for no reason other than because "it can be seen".

And conveniently for them, their house values have shot up, into millions.

And they are all getting a 4.5% increase in pension benefits that I am paying for with 40% average and 47% margin tax.

How much was the deposit you needed?

With reference to that exact same starter home, the total amount payable would be the same, 30% of income, times 12 months a year, times 25 years, No different.

In terms of deposit, a household on 2x NMW the deposit on that same house today would be 3.7s time monthly income, for me it was 3.2 times monthly income, not massively different.

Single incomes always have less purchasing power (in everything) than dual incomes, it's always been like that. I'm not sure the solution, go back to the 1950's where one partner was expected not to have a career or income and stay at home? I don't think that is really what you want.

And finally, people moving from big and expensive to small and cheap have always pocketed the difference, but it's not compulsory and only a small proportion of people who do

As a pensioner, with a small DC pension on top, I am still paying full whack on my taxable income, just like you or anyone else. My energy bill isn't discounted; there's no discount for being old. And nor should there be. But my DC pension fund is not rising with inflation so over the next 25 years (for reference, my dad is 92 and in good health, with a military pension) it is unlikely that my income will keep pace with the cost of living as well as his.