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?

Is it just remotely possible that many people do these things because they have no hope of getting a property no matter how many sacrifices they make?

Why not enjoy the small things in life when giving them up won't make a spot of difference anyway?

@Whatalunaticwhy do you think you people aren’t doing these things?

I work hard and I'm homeless. Did everything in my power to avoid the situation and couldn't . My children and I are in shitty crowded temporary accommodation for the foreseeable future and it's a mercy we aren't on the streets. It's not because I don't work hard because I do. I have always worked.

I’m 47 and that wasn’t common at all. Seeing as it is fraud and that.

@Additupits nonsense, just educate yourself.

Yes! I used to have a friend who did this. Was actually not working but a friend with a company knocked him up an employment contract which he used to get a mortgage.

I'm also VERY jealous of the previous generation who were able to retire early. Probably 10-15 years earlier than I'll be able to.

@ClawsandEffectnext people will tell you pension schemes were better than today.

There is an oversupply of unsold property, flats and new-build in particular, the developers want the government to launch another Help To Borrow scheme so they don"t have to cut prices but the bond market might not like this, and if the government challenge Leasehold they might piss off their mates with offshore companies that give them cushy well paid jobs when they leave politics. The property bubble is a scam from top to bottom, an average house/flat in Anytown UK should be about 60k.

There used to be websites selling fake payslips.

Exactly! I remember sky dishes outside houses, radio rentals, and as a child spending hours in a crowded the pub with a bag of crisps and a Coke. It's such tosh.

@HPFAI find it so odd that it’s become
such a moral thing, “I have my house because I was more frugal, more sensible than you” I have dc so why would I I lie to them that it wasn’t easier.

I’m mid 50s, bought late 90s. I also worked in HR then. It was absolutely the norm to provide payslips. If you had bonuses your employer would write a supporting letter to outline the average and expected income and at my company we would write the most optimistic version, but it was based on truth.

Also in the 90s, £90,000 was a massive salary and it absolutely would not have been green lighted based on a boss’s letter.

I'm very late 40's, bought my first house in my 20's, I definitely had to supply payslips (I also had a car and a mobile). The difference is that the house cost me 55k, that exact same house is worth over £140k now. I couldn't have afforded that price as a single person in their mid twenties.

Those are certainly useful indicators to watch, particularly new-build sales and mortgage approvals. I’d be interested in whether the trends point towards a sustained deterioration in the housing market or a period of adjustment to higher borrowing costs. I think there’s an important distinction between the two. But I agree that looking beyond headline house prices gives a much fuller picture of what’s actually happening in the market.

@SparklingGlitteryWineHow did we have 35,000 fish & chips in the 30s if people only ate in them once a year! 75000 pubs in the 60s that again were always empty.

I doubt this was very common. Plus you wouldn't be able to afford the payments if you were too overlevereged.

I am late forties and bought my first house in late 90s. There was a fair bit of mortgage application bullshit about. It was ridiculously easy to type your own stuff up (payslips etc), send it in and have the mortgage accepted. I don't recall ever being asked for bank statements back then either, which is probably how people got away with it. Banks wanted to give you the money and as long as your bullshit was plausible, you'd get it.

I didn’t actually get his name! Do you have someone particular in mind?

I haven't read the whole thread but i think this is bollocks and that the 50s something person is winding the OP up

Whenever I was involved in getting a mortgage in the 80s 90s and 2000s you had to provide payslips to prove what you were earning. No bank, building society or other lender would lend you money to buy a house without proof of earnings.

No way would a letter from your "boss" suffice

Why do people think because they didn’t experience something it didn’t happen @manxexileyou are wrong

I know someone who tried it and got laughed out of the building society. She had used Tippex in her pay slips and typed over the figures.
Just because we didn’t have Internet banking didn’t mean we didn’t have banking. I was grilled getting my mortgage and yes one game fella did ask if I planned on getting married and having kids. Now that you did get asked a lot in all sorts of situations.

They still had to pay the mortgage. 🙄

I saw a big change in about 1999 more around the amount of money flooding the market where you could get 200 per cent mortgages some went up to 100 years. It was mad.
I sold my first house just before that I made 10k on it. The person who bought it off me sold it a year later and made 50k on it. Then things did slump, and people were left with these mortgages they were struggling with.
My first mortgage was an endowment one, luckily I switched quite quickly with no shortfall.

I look at photos of my grandma on the 60s and she definitely had false eyelashes, something else that gets thrown at today's generation like it's a new thing.

never heard of this and it’s certainly not what family and friends did.