To be jealous of older generations who were able to buy houses because their bosses exaggerated their salaries?

[HonestTealPoster]

Yesterday I was at the spa and got talking to a man who was older than me (I’m 33 and I’d put him in his early 50s at most).

He told me that when he was in his 20s, he and his friend were able to buy properties in the area of South London where I grew up.

Despite not earning particularly much at the time, his boss wrote a letter stating that he earned £90,000 a year! He openly admitted that he wasn’t earning anywhere near that amount but the letter helped him secure a mortgage. He also received £5,000 from his grandmother towards the purchase.

I’d heard stories about people being able to do things like this years ago but I’d never actually met someone who’d benefited from it!

I was genuinely gobsmacked. Imagine being able to get on the property ladder like that.

AIBU to feel rather envious of how much easier some people had it when it came to buying their first home?

AIBU to feel rather envious of how much easier some people had it when it came to buying their first home?

YABU.

I bought my first home when salaries needed to be proven by 6 months of payslips, and I could only borrow 1.5 or at most 2 x my salary. And then interest rates shot up to 15%

My first house had no hearting or hot water. I worked 1 FT job + 2 part-time jobs to afford to put in modern plumbing.

Just to add it was much easier to buy a house. But it was much easier in 2000 to buy a house,when we bought our current house. It is in the last ten years it has become very hard.

This is a ridiculous anecdote. He’s not that old for starters and even if, if what he bragged about was true, he’d have to remortgage at interest rate intervals and probably moved a few times needing to back up claims. Implying people just bs’d their way into mortgages is not quite reality.

We had an endowment mortgage. Actually three endowment policies for one mortgage due to a house move etc. Those letters, warning about a shortfall, dropping on the doormat every few months were terrifying. They became increasingly more urgent. I remember we joked because one company’s letterheads were brown and we called them the ‘brown trouser time’ warnings, because if we didn’t laugh, we’d cry. We did have a shortfall at the end of the term but we had taken advice and saved separately to cover it. But we weren’t high earners by any stretch of the imagination and it was bloody tough.

The get rid of your phone thing is a ridiculous comparison. I literally couldnt do my job without my phone. Im also in my 50s and having a mobile is no different in cost to having a landline was. Having netflix is relatively cheaper than hiring new release VHS tapes from blockbuster in the early 90s.

Don't believe everything random strangers tell you. That person may never have bought a house and the letter described is not typical of the time.

What are you talking about?? 30 years ago was 1996. We had mobile phones, internet, take away coffees, avocados, cars, and foreign holidays. We didn’t have Netflix, but there were plenty of DVD rental shops and a little bit later LoveFilm to get DVDs-by-post.

I’m in early 50s and I’d be really surprised he got a mortgage on the basis of a letter like that.

But yeah property was cheaper 30 years ago obviously.

BS. He was hitting on you! Did you give him your phone number!!! Why would you believe such a stupid cnut, he's probably having a laugh with his makes.

Well remembered!!

This. People talk all kinds of shit.

I would be very surprised if he's telling the truth. Even if it is, he'll have been paying more than he could afford by his loan being based on a falsely inflated salary. That is not to be envied.
I/we and everyone I know who has a mortgage has had to produce a payslip to confirm income.

I had totally forgotten Lovefilm! We still have a DVD player. Cheaper for Home Alone, Elf and all the Harry Potters etc and can still watch if the internet is down. Also lasts for ever not like a download for a year. I do think modern life has a way of making things expensive but obviously brunch isn't the reason people can't buy a home. It wasn't easy in the past but now it is almost impossible for people who it would have been possible for in the second half of the last century. Which might actually be the only time property ownership has been accessible for ordinary workers in the history of this country and many other countries too.

Age 45 (tomorrow) and we did this buying our first property almost 24 years ago to the day. We moved in 9 days before my 21st birthday.
Both myself and my now DH worked for the same company and our boss wrote a letter stating we earnt more than we did because we were already paying more in rent than our mortgage would be. Almost everyone I knew buying around the same time did this who were getting self certification mortgages.
I'm not sure why so many posters are saying the man was lying and it can't happen when there's posters like me coming on and saying we did it too!

This man has embellished this story. I am 55 and bought my first flat aged 24. My boss knew I was trying to secure a mortgage and told me he’d give me a pay rise and wrote a letter to that affect for me to present to the mortgage lender.

If this mans claim is true then he also forged bank statements.

You still had to provide bank statements and wage slips then. It wasn’t 1645 when a wax sealed note was sufficient!

Yup, probably complete BS. Just like all the smart arse self employed tradesmen in pubs who talk about claiming the cost of foreign holidays against their tax bills. They can't and they don't! It's just BS as they think it makes them look more exciting, especially when trying to chat up women.

Its not a thing of the past...it still happens now.

Evidence is generally 3 months of payslip. I know to friends who are locally employed who just asked their employer to spread pay unevenly for this purpose

In experience most families had a car but it was less common for most people to have a car. Even less common for most teenagers to have a car. The same street that I grow up in in the 90 used to have very few cars parked on the road versus people drives, now the road and drives are full.

Of course they were more! Look at the relative salaries.

Lol I can't believe this cliched response. OP you're not unreasonable, my brother is in his 50s and bought a 3 bed semi detatched house in his early 20s in a nice suburb of York and had a blue collar job and his girlfriend was a freelance artist. It was about £60k in the mid 90s and he was on about £18k it's now worth about £340k and I imagine someone in the same factory job in their 20s would be earning £28k.

I'm 13 years younger than my brother and couldn't get on the house ladder until 2013 when I was 30 and my husband and I had masters degrees. Our first house cost £195k and when we sold 11 years later it was £390k (although we prob put £40k of reno work into it over the years) our salaries were prob around 60k joint, we even said when we sold, our increased joint wages (which were closer to £90k mostly due to a couple of promotions) would struggle to get a £350k mortgage if we were first time buyers....

I’m in my early 50s and mortgages didn’t work like that they wanted proof of salary so payslips, P60 etc.
Unless it was a loan from a family friend etc then there’s no way a bank would have lent on strength of a letter.
What did massively help us was builder paying 5% deposit and we had 95% mortgage so we bought as soon as we qualified age 24. I’d been in a couple for 6 years at that point so buying together made sense.

Younger people think that older people had it ‘easy’ but, mostly, the actual details of life in the past aren’t known.

There were NO benefits for families apart from child benefit, no free childcare, mostly very low paid jobs for women, and if you were a woman trapped in an abusive relationship, there were very few to no options for getting away (domestic abuse wasn’t a thing the police would do anything about - even in the 1980s).

Most people also didn’t live in the relative luxury that people now do (mobile phones, holidays, cars, entertainment, meals out, clubs, hobbies, internet, TV subscriptions, devices, appliances… it all costs a fuck ton of money).

Wildly increasing house prices have absolutely crippled this country. Not sure whose fault that is - but it’s not mine 😂

What a load of BS. The graph below shows why younger people can't afford housing in the same way that older people did. Mobile phones, coffees etc are trivial compared to how housing costs have rocketed far higher than average wages over the past few decades.

It’s a stupid thing to do as it bypasses affordability protections. Be grateful that you are better protected. Lots of people lost their homes in the past because the repayments were unaffordable. It’s far less common these days.

Yes it was true some people were scamming how much they could borrow eg if self employed…
but it did push up the market and also cause some people to lose houses in the crashes.
The market is crazy
now and its not only affecting the young

it affects those renting as rents are so
high.

Col is just so high. Council tax, food.
i actually think young people having more than 1 kid are crazy.