The ridiculous, ridiculous price of property

[Snakesandpropertyladders]

This is really just a rant/moan/ whinge about how ridiculous house prices have got.
We are looking for a standard 3 bedroom house where the 3rd bedroom is actually a box room that would only just about fit a single bed. So nothing fancy. We have a pretty good budget but it is just not going to be nearly enough as house prices have risen so much recently.
We viewed 2 houses today. Both had pretty small rooms and needed quite a bit of work. The first was priced at 450k. It needed a new kitchen and complete redecoration. The second house was priced at 425k. This one was identical to the first but needed new kitchen, bathroom, complete redecoration throughout. It was a major project, though not being sold as one. If we bought the house we wouldn't be able to afford to do the work for years and years if at all. How on earth can these sorts of prices be justified!?
For that sort of money we'd expect a house that we can move into and that's it. It's a pretty high budget yet all that is coming onto the market are dilapidated houses or houses in dodgy unsafe areas. Even houses in not particularly savoury areas are edging closer to 500k.
We have even looked at moving further out from where we are, but the cost of commuting then becomes prohibitive. Both of our jobs only exist in London so we have to be within commutable distance. A 30 minute commute from Essex will cost us around £800 a month in train fares!
I'm despairing of us ever being able to leave our flat and buy a house of our own. Rents are pretty crazy too at the moment so even that isn't a great option.

The thing is, the house prices are like that because people keep paying it. Not sure what anyone can do about that.

I understand your point OP.

DH and I are lucky to own our home, but I really worry for the next generation. It is really getting completely out of hand.
Just yesterday I go a leaflet through my door, from an estate agent, begging to sell my house because they have just sold one that looks like ours for £90,000 more than what we paid three years ago! If estate agents were paid a fixed amount on a house sale rather than a percentage, maybe we wouldn't have this mess.

We now have so many regulatory agencies for banks and financial institutions (to avoid all the financial debacle we had with banks in previous years), I think some sort of agency to control the house prices should be created.

Yes, prices are ludicrous and the rises in and around London have trapped people. To upgrade from a one bed flat to a two or three bed can mean upping your mortgage by £200k. Ordinary folk can't do that!

However. Put Norbury, 3 bed. Max price £450k into Rightmove. You do get some nice houses in Norbury, Streatham, West Norwood and Crystal Palace Biggin Hill within your budget and there are good transport routes for normal travel to work costs

Yes, it's mad. You could buy an actualfax country house for that here. I'm sorry it feels so hard.

Have you considered changing careers? I work online now and so can live anywhere. It means we can live in a really lovely place with a lot of freedom.

In large parts of surrey you could get a three bed for that or less, depending exactly where you look. Sutton, Epsom, surbiton are all convenient to London and probably doable at your budget (Sutton cheapest, surbiton most expensive. Epsom variable based on exactly where you go).

It is very difficult. We have what you want but want a bigger house now that dc 2 is on the way and we have so many house guests because our families live far away. Realistically we can't do it anytime soon because even though our house has gone up massively and we have paid off a nice chunk of the mortgage, the increases mortgage is just not possible. We are hoping that a loft extension combined with a few more years of combined reduction in mortgage we have alongside increased prices means we can buy something bigger in a few years.

Well there are plenty of three bed properties in Croydon for your budget, with good gardens and decent size rooms. My bet is that you wouldn't even consider Croydon though. Its a very decent well served commuting line into central London (about 22 minutes from East Croydon to Victoria IIRC). When we started looking for our first house we ended up in Croydon. Most definitely wasn't the area of choice but for our budget it was an area we could afford. I do agree house prices have risen stupidly and it is a worry for those people who genuinely can't afford to buy but, honestly, with your budget there are loads of places close to London that you could go for. We have moved twice since out Croydon days and now live somewhere considered desirable but I would still have preferred to buy a lovely place in Dulwich Village. Wasn't going to happen for our budget and needs though so we, again are somewhere quite different.

Sense of entitlement?

Yes OP. How dare you have hopes of having reasonable value for the money you work for.

I agree with you. We are so lucky to not have these problems in my area -
Come to Wales! The equivalent price would buy you something huge and rather luxurious in this area.

But of course, you are being totally U for wanting to live in a nice area.

Some odd people afoot.

What's Norbury like? I don't know that area of SW London.
Even cheaper areas are getting crazily priced though. Friends bought in Croydon recently and had to pay 15k over asking price.

Oh and I should add that the house wasn't that cheap to start with. I know we could get a house for under 300k in a lot of areas but most if them are cheap because they are not very nice areas. Yes, I do want to live in an ok area that's safe and has a good school for my child to attend. I don't think that's a bad thing.

It's because snobs like you won't consider "rough areas" that I have a tiny mortgage and a very decent-sized house in a lovely area. Plus I get to avoid people who would rather moan about house prices than to contemplate living near people who are not good enough for them.

I had to laugh when DH's boss turned up her nose at our area (which is literally two minutes' walk from her house) because it is "rough." We paid £124,000 less than she did for a house that is significantly bigger than hers. When she visited her face was a picture :)

Why not try Berkshire. Trains to London half an hour and there are pretty villages with good schools.

Yay! Lazy, entitled and a snob. All within just a few posts! I call Mumsnet Property Thread Bingo!

OP, honestly, don't bother. Any threads about the fucking insane price of property end up with the OP getting royally slagged. It's not werf it.

(You are completely correct, of course.)

The OP is patently not correct Lacuna. It is possible to get a house within her price range, she just doesn't want to accept that she might have to be near people she considers beneath her.

Cailidana, the point is, patently, that with the best part of half a million quid the OP should be able to buy a two-and-a-half bed house pretty much anywhere she damn well pleases.

House prices are ridiculous and (hopefully) unsustainable. It doesn't make a person an entitled snob to say so.

There's no "should" about it Lacuna. The market is what it is, and it's fuelled largely by people exactly like the OP - people clamouring to live in a certain area and willing to pay every last penny they have to do so. If people were willing to spread out and not compete over a small amount of houses in a small area then the prices would naturally come down. There's absolutely no point in complaining about a problem you've created for yourself.

I'd love to know where you live and it would be interesting to see if the houses in your area are still as cheap as you think. Even the "less desirable" areas are overpriced now.

Totally sympathise and empathise OP.

The 'not nice' (read: shitty) areas we could have afforded a few years ago are now out of reach. Prices up 30% in a year in some areas. Those selling their 2 beds can't afford to upgrade to 3 beds so are moving out of the area which is pushing prices up in the outer areas too.

I have no idea what we'll do. None. My parents earned good money when they bought as newly weds and got a 4 bed detached in a great area. We earn good money but it makes no difference - we can't afford a one bed. We can't compete with the uber rich being handed/inheriting 100k+ to buy their 2 bed flats.

I guess if we feel 'entitled' enough to want kids we'll be in a 2 bed, rented, in a less than nice area far away from our friends, family and jobs etc.

But, hey, how fucking entitled am I?!

I totally agree with you and I work in property! It is a disgrace the way the market has gone and the govt just keep coming up with hair brained schemes to keep it going because to be honest if the UK wasn't able to sell expensive houses to each other and buy frothy coffee the whole house of cards would fall down. Prices are too high end of They need to fall and bear some relation to wages and outgoings.

Well, we bought in an area four years ago that nobody whatsoever was 'clamouring to live in'. We massively compromised on location to be able to buy (and were happy to do so). Four years and two DC later, we're happy here, have made some lovely friends, DS1 goes to an excellent preschool etc.

What's happened? The London Overground arrived. Our local primary school got an outstanding Ofsted. Suddenly a three-bed terrace costs over half a million quid. Our house has gained in value but so have all the others, so we're stuck unless we move further out, uproot the DC, start all over again and add more to our hour-long commutes.

So no, we're not snobs. We're ordinary people like thousands of others who are being pushed out of London.

Well the 'not nice ' areas are now home to the aspirational, foot of the property ladder families and becoming desirable. It's called gentrification. With even more disastrous effects on the original residents of the area.

And it will all lead to disturbances in social cohesion as the pressure mounts and the options ofr ordinaty folk are squeezed and squeezed.

As for moving to Wales - half the Londoners I know have moved from areas such as Wales to find the work.

The pattern seems to be:

Move from a low-jobs, low opoprtunity area to london, struggle like crazy to pay the mortgage but in doing so have a stake in a modest flat that would buy a 3 bed house in Wales (or wherever), and an impressive few nothces on your CV, move back or onwards to another reagion, with youir London prices, and compete for employment there, presumably displacing someone else....

If only the government would invest in serious employment and regeneration initiatives across the country as a whole it would benefit everyone.

We've just sold our 3 bed house for 275,000. We're in a town on the South Coast. The train to London takes about 1hr20-1hr30. Would that be too long for your commute? It's a pleasant town with lovely beaches and decent schools.

Sorry, just noticed what you said abut the price of the commute. Would be quite a lot from here, I guess, but then the house prices are a lot lower than what you've been looking at!

I think the prob with 1.5 hour train commutes is that they are never 1.5 hrs. The houses near the station are too expensive so you live 20 minutes away. And your office is 20 minutes tube from the mainline train station. So really it's 2 hours 10, not considering any delays.

You leave home at 6.45 am and you're back 8.15pm, if you've done a normal day, not considering anything that's run over, or any crisis at work

You're kids were in bed when you left and they're asleep when you get home.

You need a nanny because nursery won't have kids 6.45-8.15 which costs a fortune and add that to the train fare...

Cartsmar you are exactly right! Our son already goes to nursery from 7.45am until 6pm. If my commute was longer I'd have to get a nanny, which again we can't afford. You also have to consider being able to get home in an emergency, or if the trains are cancelled.
I've friends who live near Milton Keynes and on a good day it's a 30 min train journey. When there's a problem with their train it can take them hours and they've no alternative route. That would be a disaster for us as we've nobody to collect our son if we can't get home.