So, how is it actually possible for our adult kids to ever move out of home?

[cateringday]

I’m imagining it’s the same for a lot of people.
two kids 20 and 18, they both actually have £10000 in the bank as an inheritance but can’t see how they would ever get enough for a deposit or pay a mortgage. If they rent then all that money will be gone anyway.

how old are kids leaving home these days

we live in the south east

The young people I know (lots of them) are hard-working, in difficult circumstances, and I simply don't recognise these ageist tropes being trotted out.

So working your contracted hours that you actually get paid for isn’t acceptable? Or do these young people who work longer hours get paid overtime for them?

When I first moved to London I lived in house shares. So, a 2/3/4 bedroom house with up to 6 people. The rent was x amount divided by 6. To do that now (i still live in the same area) the landlord would need to get an HMO license which isn’t easy. LL’s then charge a stupid amount per room.
It makes me so sad that my kids have zero chance of staying anywhere near where they will have grown up.

… in addition they would have to meet safety standards that the cheap, humble rentals of the past didn’t need. A lot of them are still pretty awful but they certainly aren’t cheap, as a couple of minutes’ googling will amply demonstrate.

My DS and his girlfriend have been living together since his last year of uni. Neither big earners but rent council tax and bills is about £1200 a month so doable with them both working full time. It's a shoebox one bed flat .

Seeing as minimum wage is around £1600 a month a flat doable for 2 earners.

There's also rooms to rent inc bills for £500)600 which is perfectly adequate for a single person and would leave then nearly £1k for food social life and savings if they were working 35 hours a week on minimum wage. So that's really not unachievable ( this is in Essex not the north)

Yes thanks. I did it, DS did it and now DGS is doing it. Is it easy? No. Is it possible? Yes.

How do you plan for them to get an inheritance in 18 months so accurately?

how do you pay rent and save for a deposit if you can't get a job?

I moved out in 1999 aged 18. I had zero savings and I had zero help from parents. I worked/studied and rented rooms in shared houses for 10 years. I saved hard and aged 28 I bought a 2 bed flat with my soon to be husband. It was hard then and it is hard now…… but it is possible.

Things have changed a lot since 1999 in terms of rentals and prices. It's almost impossible in the south to rent and save unless you're earning a really high salary. Most youngsters get help from their parents if they buy a place. The other big obstacle now are the punitive demands for the loan and the lack of interest-free loans. Yes, there were problems before with the system but if you had a job you could get a mortgage on a small deposit (mine was 100% loan with a partner). These days you have to put down a small fortune.

I bought a (really horrible!) house with a derelict orchard under a sea of brambles, and a few ramshackle outbuildings. DD is being evicted out there in a couple of years. In the meantime, she is going to be leaning a LOT of practical building skills with me.

She’s autistic and a houeshare would be hell for her. She’s already struggling. I am mildly concerned that it will be too easy for her to just get comfy in her little house and live off her PIP forever, but she will have helped build a house, and I think after a few years she’ll be more ready to cope with further education and work and a stable base will be somewhere she can reach higher from. Rather than floundering with everything at once. We’ve been through enough. I don’t really want to live in a houseshare anymore EITHER! 🤣

You cannot compare 1999 to today. It’s completely different world. If rent / house prices were still the same proportionate to salary as they were then, it’d be ok for the vast majority of young people. They are not so it is not. To not see that is very short sighted.

I don’t think it’s wildly different - we lived in a shared house in London, we had substantial student loans to repay (although yes probably lower interest), rent/bills were very high on just one room, we got no handouts from parents, we just had to be very frugal and save save save. There were no interest free loans in my day either - we had to save £35k between us to get a mortgage on a £300k flat (2009).

Yes I agree that it is harder for young people now, but I don’t think it’s night and day different. Very very few people these days are willing to move into a shared house, all the people in their twenties I know (SE commuter town outside of London) either rent their own flats (very nice ones)….. Or they live with their parents still. Both cases they go on holidays every year, have their own cars, have £100pm gym memberships, new clothes all the time etc.

The person where goes above and beyond is the person who is promoted or is the person who progresses their career - thus buy a home. The person who doesn't remains stuck. It has always been that way. More fool them if they take the 2nd option, even moreso now.

This situation is also a knock on effect of the two person working family. This meant two wages were often needed to buy a house.

Young people starting out are more likely to be single. Pushing womens working rights benefitted the well paid career woman but not the woman with just a job. The outcome was not thought about when the agenda was pushed.

So working your contracted hours isn’t acceptable, then. It’s helpful to know that the perception that young people being lazy / afraid of hard work is actually around the expectation that employees should work for free.

Everyone can take take that option but don't expect to buy a house. Their choice. The best option would be to be self employed then they can dictate their own hours.

Maybe this will help you to understand?

And what level of unpaid work is expected? An hour a day? Several hours a day?
Are they told when they start that they are expected to work longer hours than those in the legally binding contract that they signed or are they expected to just know that?
Is this in all sectors?

@SheilaFentiman The paper did close and he lost his job. He then sold garlic bread at school until he got a job in the kitchen of a gastro pub via my friends BF who was head chef. They actually let him do some of the cooking.

The op children living in the overheated SE really going against them . DH and I moved to the Midlands 35 years ago met at work and then moved further North almost 30 years ago. But you have to not mind moving about, it’s not for everyone.

DH got DS and a friend of DS experience. As mentioned previously I helped DS ex GF get her first graduate job 2 years ago by passing her cv on to my friends firm. DH had also got her work experience in a laboratory which is really hard to get. She said we had done more for her than her parents, not their fault obviously it was just we knew people.

As ever in life the cards any of us are dealt are never the same and life is unfair. Like the op child who is very academic but is autistic, makes life so much harder for them.

@tripeandchips and @Farmerswork if your salaried then there is a bit of an expectation to work without overtime, there was when I was working. DS takes urgent work calls and has worked at home unpaid. He is 24 and already on 40k, he wants to progress.

I was only lucky enough to move out five years ago (as a single person, aged 28) because I got a job that came with accommodation. If I hadn't, I'd still be stuck living in the NW village where I grew up.

As far as I know, quite a lot of the people that I went to school with rent privately, or live in rented houses owned by family members. Some went into other occupations that came with accommodation, e.g. the army.

I think buying is out of reach for most young people (especially in the higher cost areas of the country) than it was for people my age (graduated 1997) and because of that young people are less likely to move out into house shares etc because they want to save. In 1997 I earnt £800 a month as a support worker in a hostel and paid £220 a month in rent for a room in a shared house (26% of my wage), that job now pays £1,976 a month and a room to rent in the same city and same area is around £750 (38% of the wage), so doable but harder and with less scope to save to get a deposit. In 1997 I could have got a 110% mortgage and bought a flat for £40k on my very basic wage, now you’d need a deposit of £118,000 and a mortgage of four times your salary to buy the same flat.

It simply isn’t true that you will only be able to buy your own place if you work tons of unpaid extra hours. Of course you need to work hard and be good at your job.

Both my nieces have bought their own places in the last 6 months. Dn1 works in IT and bought a 2 bed flat with her partner, and dn2 is a junior doctor and bought a 1 bed flat on her own.
Both are under 30, bought in the south east.

City workers have always worked crazy hours. They are a position to buy a house.

Mid level workers need to offer some flexibility if they want to be considered for promotions/ receive good bonuses. Standout from the rest and be in a position to buy a home.

If you are in low paid job and paid by the hour you probably can't buy a house even if you increase your hours. It has always been this way.