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?

If you were a young buyer nowadays, you'd just be told you were stupid and greedy to stretch yourself so much.

Not typical of reality. Doesn't matter, anyway. Should I be jealous of different eras or live my life as I find it now? Which will serve me better? Glad he got a house - good on him - now I'm drinking coffee and waiting for the evening.

I’m not sure where you’ve got the impression that I’m angry. I shared an anecdote about a conversation I had with someone and expressed some envy at the circumstances in which he was able to purchase property. That’s hardly an expression of anger.

You’re now constructing hypothetical scenarios around his age, earnings, interest rate and repayments, none of which you actually know. I certainly don’t know the particulars of his mortgage either, beyond what he told me.

I think you’re overlooking a fairly fundamental distinction. The advantage wasn’t necessarily having a large mortgage at a particular interest rate. It was being able to access homeownership through lending practices that would be considerably more difficult to navigate today. That doesn’t mean the borrowing was risk-free or financially prudent.

I’m also not sure why you’ve suggested I take out a mortgage costing 70% of my salary. I’ve never indicated that I’d want to do anything of the sort.

You seem rather intent on arguing against positions I haven’t actually taken.

This 100% Some people today are pretty entitled and want everything.

I can assure you that 30 yrs ago the lender would want to see proof of income, in the form of bank statements and salary slips, along with credit records, not just a letter from the employer. I bought my 2nd house in the 90s and had to prove my income, although I was putting profit made on my 1st house into the purchase of the 2nd one.

This is the wrong forum for this question! 😆😆

You make a fair point about the number of things we now spend money on compared to years ago, however….

Landlines in some areas are about to be switched off so a mobile phone is a necessity- though I agree no one needs a £100 a month contract.

The internet is needed now and can’t be considered a luxury. Gone are the days you phoned up places, you need to email them, log in to portals, bla bla bla so it having access to the internet is needed.

I would say you need a car now more than ever as public transport is shocking and unreliable in many areas. When I was young I would get the bus everywhere as they were every 7/8 minutes now I see all the time in the local FB page at how they don’t turn up and folk are waiting for 45 mins to an hour and are late for work.

I agree with the Netflix etc… and the coffees etc but then again even if all of the above was followed and money saved, the banks still wouldn’t give you a mortgage as their computer says no system is so strict and back in the day it wasn’t.

It wasn't a typical thing to happen back then.

My earnings were at one point in the 90s £15k (certainly not high earnings at the time!) and I could have borrowed 3x that and got on the housing ladder that way. The cheapest houses/flats round my way were £45k so it was doable.

Perhaps not. But there is definitely a shift in spending - takeaways, uber rides, subscriptions, spending on cheap wear once clothes, beauty appointments, takeaway coffee, gym membership, new cars on finance, new furniture......these are not things older people spent money on in their 20s. There is alot of saving to be done if you knock all that on the head. There is no denying the lifestyle shift.

Yes well done for not paying for things that didnt exist. Kept the pubs open though...

Was his name Dell Boy? Or, more likely, Walter Mitty? He was trying to impress you and going about it in a weird way.
It happened vanishingly rarely, just as it does now, according to a PP.
We got our mortgage in 1983. The rules were just as rigorous (and enforced) then as they are now, and lying in this way would have got both parties into trouble. It would also have resulted in a lot of people defaulting. We struggled to pay ours as it was, for the whole of the 25years, because interest rates were horrendous for a lot of that time.

A landline would cost more than a mobile for some & aren't available everywhere now?

The internet isn’t a luxury, many rely it on for work etc.

Coffee spend has replaced pub spend for younger generations

Foreign holidays were cheaper for me in the 00s when the budget airlines did their £10 fares.

Younger people are less likely to have a car now

Cutting out netflix & avocado toast won’t do much if needing thousands for a deposit.

Can you try again?

I’m not sure why those things are being presented as mutually exclusive. It’s perfectly possible to recognise that people in different eras had certain advantages, feel a little envious of them and still get on with your own life.

I wasn’t suggesting anyone should spend their days lamenting the past. I was simply sharing an interesting encounter and reflecting on how different the experience of getting onto the property ladder could be.

Exactly. The OP can be rightly frustrated because getting on the housing ladder is so much harder now, but one anecdote isn't necessarily true.

I'm not sure I believe what he said, maybe it was a chat-up line, even in the 80s and 90s mortgage lenders demanded more that a letter from his boss, they would expect to be able to see tax returns at least.

Or move outside of London??? the first place I bought was in a shit area way outside of my work friends and miles from where I grew up.

But if you're "jealous" than you're not recognising the differences. You're begrudging them and that is negative and self limiting. Even if the person 'got on the ladder' they would have had to work to maintain their mortgage. Everything appears easier to someone who thinks they lack what others have but we often lack the history, perspective, full story etc and so default to emotion i.e. jealousy.

It's just not productive or realistic to be envious of a different person or time period. Just do what you can do to get to where you want to go. Anything else is a waste of time.

He’s having you on @HonestTealPoster.

The interest rate point is not hypothetical. Mortgages were 6-7% interest in the late 90s to very early 00s, so most of the period when this guy was in his 20s. That is a fact. If someone needed to lie about their salary to say they earned 90k a year, I am guessing they were borrowing a lot, meaning high repayments.

If I borrowed 3.5 x a 90k salary at 6%, about 70% of my actual net income would go on my mortgage.

We got our first mortgage in the 80s and we had to provide bank statements, pay slips, tax returns, p60s and employment contracts.

That was fraud by the boss and the mortgage applicant.

Some people went to prison for this particular type of fraud.

Self cert mortgages did exist in the past and were banned in 2014. People did falsify their earnings & both self employed & employed people used them.

Interest only mortgages didn’t require big deposits like today either.

Lending was far more relaxed in the past

@HonestTealPosterfor some reason it’s not ok to acknowledge housing costs were cheaper in the past on here.

On the flip side, my godmother was refused a mortgage application by the bank she worked for because she planned on marrying and would therefore surely be pregnant and unemployable very soon. It was likely only the men who got lies about inflated salaries.

i’ve always thought interest only mortgages amongst other things ruined the housing market. People could borrow so much more which pushed prices up so high. I’m 60 op and from the north. The 70s were difficult and my family for different reasons went through a terrible time in the 90s but yeah it’s difficult for young people now, I agree. There’s no point dwelling on it really, it won’t change anything, i think generally its best just to get on with things and not allow resentment to take too much space in your life.