Housing costs

[LongStory]

It just struck me reading through some posts that most people with large families seem to have bought their homes many years ago, so have manageable housing costs. It's certainly the case for us.

20-somethings in my team at work tell me they and their partners would love to have children but can't see a route to anything bigger than one-bedroom.

Might we be the last generation who can / could afford to have large families in the UK (esp London)?

I know lots of families of 2 DCs who are living in 1/2 bed flats or similar proportions. I think we will see more overcrowding rather than smaller families.

I expect there will be a combination of overcrowding, multi-generational living arrangements and smaller families. While baby-boomers rattle around in large houses and complain about the heating bills. It's really sad thinking about it.

Definitely agree. We were just saying the other day that we could never in a million years afford to buy the house in which we live now (with a small mortgage) had my DH and I not got on the housing ladder 10-15 years ago...

Me and DP are looking to find a house in a year, can't even dream of buying but we want a bg family, fate willing. We're resigned to being a bit squished.

Neah, the others will just rely on the Social to keep them under a roof.

We are a family of 5 in a 2 bed house. We bought this house in 2005, thinking it would be relatively short term and never expected to have children here - in fact, we put it on the market when I was pregnant with ds1 and then took it back off when we decided I would be sahm eager than go back to work. That was our last chance to move as our house value is static and we have nowhere near enough equity to move! It hasn't stopped us having 2 more dc though - our view was that the house situation is short term, but our family is forever - we weren't going to base our family around the lack of one extra bedroom in our house! We'll move eventually, luckily dh has good earning power and we are saving, but our dc are happy sharing for now - in fact, they have an amazing bond. We are very happy despite our lack of space.

Rather than go back to work. Hate autocorrect!

Adventures, the housing benefit cap means most non-home-owner London families needing more than 2 or 3 bedrooms will basically have to move to the provinces unless they can get a council or housing association low-rent place. And this will push up private rents elsewhere.

Housing benefit is often a top-up payment when wages are low, not everyone who gets it is on the social. And the extra bedroom sometimes can't be managed without just by squashing everyone in, eg if the family contains a nan with dementia, or a wheelchair using dc has to sleep on ground floor level.