The 70% club

dopester

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

But the average salary is not £20k

A full time male is £631.10 per week (£32,994 per year)
A full time fe-mail is £485.50 per week (25,381 per year)
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloa...08/tab7_1a.xls

Therefore, jointly and average male and female in full time employment have a family income of £58,375 per year

Those per week averages you give. I always find them difficult to believe.

Bootle of Capital Economics in Telegraph

Why should we assume that the market will nicely settle down to "fair value"? After all, it has spent a long time above it. Accordingly, it would not surprise me if the market now spent some time below it. The recession looks awful and unemployment is set to rise to well over three million. Average incomes are all very well, but the average is computed over those people who are in work, a number which is set to fall.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/rogerbootle/4560861/House-prices-have-much-further-to-fall-and-that-is-no-bad-thing.html

In your ideal world ISTL.. you'd have couples all working... everything to ensure house prices remain as high as possible. Go on... "service that mortgage", I can imagine you telling new entrants to the house ladder. " It is what you were born for."

If both choose to work then fine. I'd rather they work, enjoy, and have more money to spend on themselves, and their families, with lower house prices. Our lives here will revolve around both of us having to work as hard as possible, for as high money as we can attain, to service a fat massive mortgage. Too stressful, and I wouldn't like the pressure if one of us had to stop working for some reason, lost their job, got a pay-cut.

ukcarper

Looking back on nethouse prices houses in the road I bought in for £8000, the best price for a similar house was £220,000 in March 2008 dropping back to £195,000 in October.
Using my figure of approx. £153,000 the % fall would be approx. 30% a 70% drop would take it to £66,000
A 100% mortgage at 5% would cost approx. £385 per month you’d pay almost that for a room in a house share round here so 70% looks unlikely.

The best part about buying is that when you retire you have normally paid off your mortgage and are living rent free

IveSeenTheLight

dopester wrote: »

In your ideal world ISTL.. you'd have couples all working... everything to ensure house prices remain as high as possible. Go on... "service that mortgage", I can imagine you telling new entrants to the house ladder. " It is what you were born for."

I have no ideal world dopester. I do however realise that society has changed in the last few decades that generally there are two earning incomes, especially when talking about home owners.

Of course some will differ including myself now that my wife has stopped working to have a child.

You do not seem to comprehend that historically, it was extremely difficult to own property.
You seem to believe there is a right of passage that everyone should be a home owner.
I agree with you that ideally everyone should be able to buy their own home, unfortunately, that is not realistic and to an extent contributary to the sub prime mortgages that were available trying to provide people with homes to own that could not afford it.

dopester wrote: »

If both choose to work then fine. I'd rather they work, enjoy, and have more money to spend on themselves, and their families, with lower house prices. Our lives here will revolve around both of us having to work as hard as possible, for as high money as we can attain, to service a fat massive mortgage. Too stressful, and I wouldn't like the pressure if one of us had to stop working for some reason, lost their job, got a pay-cut.

Each to their own.
My wife and I have worked extremely hard and sacrificed a lot to "service our mortgage" and reduce it to a level where we can now live on one income.

If you choose to spend the money on yourself, then that is your choice

Dithering_Dad

mitchaa wrote: »

Lloyds TSB (C&G) were offering 5x joint income when i checked it about a month ago.

I'm not convinced that it's the salary multiples that are at fault (well, except if we go insane and start talking 10xsalary), more likely it's people exagerating/lying about salaries, including overtime or bonuses, getting secured or unsecured loans, building up credit card debt, etc.

If a couple had a 5xsalary mortgage over a 25 year period and were sensible enough to get income protection insurance and zero debt, then they would be fine.

I don't wish to generalise, but it does seem like over the last few years, FTBers have not been content to just buy the house and then furnish and decorate it as funds would allow - they seem to have to get it all fully renovated/decorated before they move in and have it furnished with habbitat or John Lewis stuff, and then of course they have to have a nice car sat outside and a massive TV set sat inside.

When I got my first house, it was second hand furniture (new, but cheap bed), no TV (the radio was fine) and I renovated it a room at a time whenever I had saved up enough. Took years to do but didn't put me in a precarious financial position.

carolt

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

I have no ideal world dopester. I do however realise that society has changed in the last few decades that generally there are two earning incomes, especially when talking about home owners.

Of course some will differ including myself now that my wife has stopped working to have a child.

You do not seem to comprehend that historically, it was extremely difficult to own property.
You seem to believe there is a right of passage that everyone should be a home owner.
I agree with you that ideally everyone should be able to buy their own home, unfortunately, that is not realistic and to an extent contributary to the sub prime mortgages that were available trying to provide people with homes to own that could not afford it.



Each to their own.
My wife and I have worked extremely hard and sacrificed a lot to "service our mortgage" and reduce it to a level where we can now live on one income.

If you choose to spend the money on yourself, then that is your choice

I think once you have children - not long now? - your ideas about typical couples containing 2 full-time workers will seem as quaint to you as they do to me.

IveSeenTheLight

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

When I got my first house, it was second hand furniture (new, but cheap bed), no TV (the radio was fine) and I renovated it a room at a time whenever I had saved up enough. Took years to do but didn't put me in a precarious financial position.

Sames here. Once completed our first home, we moved and started again on a 4 bed house. Once that was completed we moved abroad.

IveSeenTheLight

carolt wrote: »

I think once you have children - not long now? - your ideas about typical couples containing 2 full-time workers will seem as quaint to you as they do to me.

Absolutely will not.
We adapted to and chose our life to prepare for kids and ensure that we were financially in a good position to be able to have children and all the costs that that entails in a spacious home.

We do know many families that started earlier and have managed just fine to own property as well, including those that have 2 full time parents.

Its horses for courses, each have a seperate independent view.

I do not say you must have two incomes and I do not say one parent must stay at home, each family makes their own choices.

I do think predominantly, there are two incomes in families, even if the second is part time.

ukcarper

[When I got my first house, it was second hand furniture (new, but cheap bed), no TV (the radio was fine) and I renovated it a room at a time whenever I had saved up enough. Took years to do but didn't put me in a precarious financial position.[/quote]


Same here and survived 11% interest rates as well

Austin_Allegro

adr0ck wrote: »

you haven't provided any explanation at all
i challange any of you to advise how you can build a new home to code for sutainable homes level 3 for £56K

Building Regs and the Code aren't set in stone. IMO a lot of it was job-creation by New Labour anyway. A new government may not be able to pay the army of civil servants required in order to sustain that sort of thing, even if it was ideologically in favour.

If the bull argument about pent up demand, housing shortages etc is true, then it would also follow that the government might have to drop things like the Code for Sustainable homes in order to allow housebuilders to provide low-cost housing to meet this supposed demand. Like prefabs etc were used in the 40s and 60s. With low land and labour prices, it's possible that new build prices could go down a lot.

whathavewedone

I don't understand why, just because some people on this board want to have plenty of disposable income as well as a house that this should mean that the average house will fall to the levels being talked about (70k).

When I was single and bought my first flat I didn't want to spend all my money on a mortgage and so bought a 1 bed flat with a mortgage less than 3 times my salary. That was in 2003. My desire not to over extend myself did not prevent the housing boom.

Now I am married with 2 children. I have given up work for the time being but intend to work when they start school, not for the money particularly but more because I think I will go out of my mind with boredom if I don't. Horses for courses.

We don't resent the amount of money we spend on our outgoings because now that we have children living in a house that is big enough for our needs, close to good schools and in a nice area is more important than having lots of holidays.

People have different priorities and sometimes people's priorities change as they get older. Not all buyers will have the same mindset.

I just do not understand how people can say well this is what I want to happen so it jolly well will. It's just fantasising dressed up as a serious economic prediction.

I'd like to win the lottery it doesn't mean it's going to happen.

I do think house prices are going to fall further btw, I just don't think the fact that some people would like them to cost whatever it is that they can personally afford so they also have oodles of cash left over each month to buy clothes, go clubbing, have 3 holidays a year etc will have any bearing on what happens in the slightest.