Do you think family have an obligation to help young people on to the property market?

[shoestein]

Do you think, if family could help, then they should help younger family members on to the property market.

This is considering the huge boom in house prices since most bought, and the huge increase in gap between wages and house cost/ deposit needed.

Just to say, I had no help on to the property market in the 90s, but then in that time my house tripled in value. It wasn’t unaffordable for my job then, but to buy the same house again starting out would be a huge stretch in the same job.

My dp like many, have never had a mortgage and were bought their large 5 bed detached in 1970 through family money. They have since inherited, and sold on the family business that was set up in the 1880s. I —foolishly — made the choice not to enter the business, but the market was in decline anyway.

They live outside of London and property in the area is reasonable in comparison, therefore they’re worth in excess of £1.5mil.

Do you feel people of that generation, or mine if more shrewd than me, should help their grandchildren/children on to the property market?

No, I don't think they should be obligated.
Something needs to be done about the housing market certainly, personally I think the rental market needs to be better regulated to stop people buying up houses cheap and renting them out at extortionate rates.
It would also help if councils were given funding to bring more homes into public ownership.

Well some of our family have always shared wealth so we will be continuing the tradition when DD buys.
My parents are a bit like yours had a huge financial leg up but never thought to give us one!
We both inherited from grandparents and have been lucky enough to have rich generous relatives which means that we consider it our turn to help out next but only if the DC are doing everything in their power to save up themselves.

Watching this one with interest. I don't think it's a moral obligation but when my Ds gets to an age where he wants to buy (many years away!) if I am in financial position to do so, I'll definitely help rather than let him struggle. Not having a fixed, permanent home affects so many aspects of a persons life that I think it should be a bigger priority for the government than it is. But I do feel that although the government are on a massive building campaign right now, it's been stifled by selfish nimbys and people obsessed by the effect new home could have on their own house value.

Of course not. It’s a lovely thing to do if the parents so choose but certainly not an obligation !

No.

As for building new houses, I disagree that most people are worried about the effect on their house price - they are worried because the local primary and secondary schools are already overcrowded, the GPs are overloaded and hard to get an appointment with (and the same can be said for the local hospitals) and local services are struggling. There has been a recent planning application near me for a housing estate (just under 200 homes) yet there are no GP or school places available near them. How is that going to work for the residents, then?

No of course there is no obligation. No one should be forced to sell their nome and downsize to help their child. It's a personal choice, not an obligation.

No.

I don't think they have an obligation, but I do raise an eyebrow at those who are spending their retirement "spending the kids' inheritance", when they themselves have clearly benefited from the huge rise in house prices, and their kids are struggling to afford a deposit.

Not that they shouldn't enjoy retirement, but personally, I'd prefer to scale things back a bit and help my kids out.

No because that would be regressive and would only help out the members of the younger generation who have well off parents.

What ought to be done (and should have been done ages ago) is gradual abolition of the PPR exemption, so that people pay CGT on their house price gains.

I have said this on a previous thread (the 9 year old wanting to throw £50 away on make up) but the best thing my parents did for us was to put all the money we got for Christmas, birthdays, exam results, graduation etc etc etc in an account and forget about it. My parents were not rich by any means but savvy. £50 etc may not seem much at the time but it adds up over 20 years! This approach then meant that when we started working at college - retail, waitressing, etc, we had the mentality of saving. I am so grateful that my parents instilled in us this sense of saving and didn't let us waste all our birthday money growing up.

I think there’s quite a lot of myths about how easy it used to be to buy a house.

For example, my BIL and SIL left school at 16 and have worked every day since. Got married at 20 ( I know ! ) , stayed in a one room rented flat.Furniture and household goods all second hand. Bought a small flat and worked hard, had a couple of kids. Her mother watched the kids, BIL did overtime to save up.

By the time their kids were in primary school they had a modest house on a nice estate. They put both their kids through university , a privilege they never had.

Nephew did media studies and then spent his 20s travelling , staying in friends flats, playing in a band and working in fun and interesting but poorly paid jobs in the media. Went out socialising every weekend, meals out , partying , foreign holidays etc . All things his parents never did, or only did in their 40s.

Nephew then turned round at 30 and complained about how hard his life was, because his parents were married with two kids at 30 and he had nothing. And it was everyone’s fault but his.

He couldn’t see that his life choices had got him where he was.

By his age, his parents had worked full time for 28 YEARS between them. Ordinary boring non glamorous jobs. They had meals out for birthdays and a pint in the local on a Saturday . They went to Spain for a week, not a year travelling in south east Asia.

They didn’t go to festivals and then call in sick to work as they were hung over and then get fired. They didn’t wear designer clothes and drink in champagne bars with models.

If he were my son, I would have told him to GTF. But no, they remortgaged their house ( which was paid off ) to GIVE him a deposit to buy a flat.

They are now both in their late 50s , both have heart problems but can’t retire because they are still paying off their mortgage.

Their son has bigger house than them . And a decent wife , thank goodness, who is knocking him into shape. He’s now earning good money , which he has used to buy an exensive car.

Some people might think he should have used it to repay the gift from his parents, so his father could retire after his last heart attack and triple bypass.

But no.

Sigh .

I don't think anyone should be obliged - a lot will depend on the relationship between dps and dcs, and e.g. whether dcs have been hopeless/very wasteful with money.

We have helped both dds, and I couldn't imagine not doing so, since a) we could afford it, and b) we are all too painfully aware of how much more expensive property is now, relative to incomes, than when we were first buying.

What we'd have done if they'd been spendthrift idlers I don't know, but they never were.

I suspect that plenty of parents would love to be able to help if they could afford to. And it grieves them that they can't.

OTOH I have heard of parents (thankfully none of my own acquaintance) who refuse to accept how much harder it is now, at least anywhere around here, to be able to afford even a very modest family home, and say, 'We never had any help, so why should we help them?' And don't, even if they could well afford to.

They're the ones who give baby boomers a bad name, and encourage people to say we're all selfish and spend all our money on flash cars and cruises.

I think parents should consider helping if they can. Don’t forget that £1.5 might now be a pension pot. Not all money can be given away.

Some children don’t need much at all if they have good jobs and live in a cheaper area. The same job in London might pay more but buying a property is completely out of reach.

We had no help from parents but other friends did. Those that had spare money, gave some. We have many friends who retired before 60 and are giving money away and not spending it all on themselves. By and large, state employees seem to retire early with better pensions.

Not obliged, but if you can help why wouldn’t you?

This is a funny one because i was going to say if parents can of course they should and then i realised my parents habe accumulated a lot of wealth and didn't give me any deposit and i don't begrudge them that at all. What they did do though is lend me huge sums of deposit to enable us to buy (we were in the classic scenario of high salary, with stepped pay rises in near future, and thus high borrowing potential but little liquid cash for a deposit).

Anyway should a parent just hand over £50k? No. But if it's just sitting in the bank earning crap rates i think they should lend as long as the child(ren) can pay back in a reasonable timeframe.

Wealthy parents watching their kids struggle to buy a home feels weird to me.

No parents should not help their kids onto the property ladder, it just distorts it for everyone else who are not luckily enough to get financial help from anybody, you didn't need deposits given to you 30+ years ago you shouldn't need to do it now, that is one of the problems. All the parents giving their offspring house deposits is one of the main reasons why property prices are so expensive right now, along with the shortgae of houses, help to buy scams, btl's buying them up instead of a familys first home.
The past few years prices have gone off the charts, near me a 2 bed semi in 2015 was 150k,now the exact same houses are selling for 230k,I don't know who's paying those prices but it is not sustainable for it to increase so much in such a short time.

Unaffordable housing is a problem that needs to be addressed systematically. If its left up to families to help, only those coming from wealthy families will benefit anyway.

Family helping with deposits is probably one of the biggest reasons house prices have risen to the levels they have

@SassitudeandSparkle not enough gps or school places is one thing that needs to be worked out before planning permission is granted. It's unfair to oppose new homes being built due to these factors, it's obvious that infrastructure is needed to support the increase in population in a given area.

I can understand if opposition still exists if the council/local government have refused to provide extra services, but if that's not the case people should put themselves in the position of those who are homeless or stuck in the cycle of extortionate renting and wonder how they would cope.