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?

@time4anothernameits just shouting into a void though

whats the point in being jealous?

@TeethAreImportantwhy do you think btl mortgages didn’t exist then?!

Are you also aware that most job applications are online? That the majority of correspondence from employers, schools, and just about everything is by email? What can you suggest as an alternative please? x

Friend of mine did this and her and her ex owned 3 houses in London. Rates were low then!

BTL started gaining popularity in the 90s. There were several banks/building societies heavily involved in multiple BTL mortgages to landlords building up their property portfolio. I remember as we had a lot of clients doing it where I worked in an accountancy practice in the mid 90s. There was one building society in particular which was "good" for re-mortgaging existing BTLs to use the equity as deposits for more BTL properties. We're talking about people with 10, 20, 30, 40+ properties using multiple BTL mortgages to buy more properties without actually putting money in themselves due to rising house prices meaning re-mortgaging released equity for more deposits.

Same. Not me but a co-worker. Our employer wrote a statement of her employment terms that was straight from Jackanory but she got on the property ladder in 1992 just as it was all starting to sky rocket.

I benefitted enormously from the Tory government allowing people to buy their council houses. I am housed and have BTL properties as a result but to get it all, I went without an awful lot. I spent fifteen years living so frugally to make it all work for me, if I described my life then, people would not believe it.

It was far easier for us back then than it is now. Life was far more free and easy.

Meh I’m not jealous - my house cost a lot yes And my mortgage is crazy like 2k a month

but I’ve done way cooler stuff than my parents ever could / did

like travel the world and chunks of time where I didn’t even work at all cus I was living on a beach in Asia

I was adding my own experience in the 90s when I bought and properties were still reasonable mostly, because Buy To Let wasn't a thing then. They took a few years to take off (launched 30 years ago this year), it was a niche thing for a few years, but then rocketed in the mid 2000s. Just googled and there are now around 230,000 granted a year and the consensus is, their introduction totally changed the UK housing market (along with Right to Buy, a huge proportion of former council houses are also now owned by landlords).