More average salary stats to argue over.....

carolt

andykn wrote: »

The figure "always" used by the Halifax is Mean, Male, Full time, not the Median, Male & Female figure now preferred by the Office of National Statistics (ONS).

Yes, and 3.5 times current median make FT earnings does not = current house prices.

FTBs do not buy "average" houses, they buy 1 or 2 bed flats.

Says who? Given that the average age of FTB's is now over 30, that is unlikely to be suitable. It never was true either - my parents and older brother both bought houses as their first purchases. Very common.

Your point about OAPs is a good one and another reason the simplistic 3 times "average" earnings plus deposit is a poor measue of "average" house prices.

Yes - but that's hardly new, is it? Pensioners owning the most expensive properties is a long-term trend. So if the ratios were valid in the past, they're equally valid now.

Any consistent measure of earnings is useful as a trend, not necessarily as an absolute yardstick of prices.

Obviously, they can only be a guideline to price an individual house. But the point about averages is they are just that - taken over millions of transactions, they provide a very good yardstick for the market as a whole.

andykn

carolt wrote: »

Obviously, they can only be a guideline to price an individual house. But the point about averages is they are just that - taken over millions of transactions, they provide a very good yardstick for the market as a whole.

Yes, they do provide a good yardstick for the market as a whole. But a market of 17 million owner occupied houses cannot be simplistcally matched with the income of nearly 30 million earners.

Is it not reasonable to assume that a the 7 million or so rented households will be disporportionatley occupied by lower earners?

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

carolt wrote: »

Obviously, they can only be a guideline to price an individual house. But the point about averages is they are just that - taken over millions of transactions, they provide a very good yardstick for the market as a whole.

As Andy has pointed out, there are roughly 17 million owner occupied houses, and roughly 30 million employed adults.

Even if single average salary was still a relevant yardstick (it isn't), then the poorest 13 people out of 30 would have no chance of competing with the wealthiest 17 out of 30.....

50 years ago there is no way the employed adult to owner occupied house ratio was that high. No way at all.

20 years from now there will be an additional 5-7 million adults, competing for at best a couple of million more houses.

House prices rise and fall in fairly consistent cycles, but the underlying trend across multiple decades, and multiple cycles, has been upwards. To find out why, you probably don't need to look any further than the ratio of employed adults competing for houses.......

Really2

carolt wrote: »

Not sure I agree, Really.

I'm mostly self-employed these days and earn a lot less than I would working employed - but I do it because it gives me the flexibility to work when I like, as I like, which is beyond price. I'd rather have time with my family than wave goodbye to my son at a nursery door every morning - there'll be time enough for earning more when he's older.

So - astonishingly not everyone who is self-employed does it for the big bucks.

In fact, thinking about it, I know absolutely loads of mums who are self-employed; few jobs give you the same flexibility. Very, very few of them make anything like the same wage they would in a regular job.

So are you saying your hourly rate is lower than full time or part time employed equiverlent?

wolfman

andykn wrote: »

You cannot use median earnings as a yardstick to measure mean house prices (skewed by extremely expensive houses).

I used the median earnings, but show me where I mentioned average house prices. If you check my later posts you'll see I talk about median earnings and median house prices.

Average values can be skewed to easily so are not representative. The majority of houses and salaries are in the lower end of the market and the median reflects this much better.

IveSeenTheLight

wolfman wrote: »

I used the median earnings, but show me where I mentioned average house prices. If you check my later posts you'll see I talk about median earnings and median house prices.

Average values can be skewed to easily so are not representative. The majority of houses and salaries are in the lower end of the market and the median reflects this much better.

It would be okay to compare median house prices with median wages, however.......

The LR records the house prices as a mean average, henc ethe need to compare against mean wages

carolt

Really2 wrote: »

So are you saying your hourly rate is lower than full time or part time employed equiverlent?

Both. .

andykn

wolfman wrote: »

I used the median earnings, but show me where I mentioned average house prices. If you check my later posts you'll see I talk about median earnings and median house prices.

Average values can be skewed to easily so are not representative. The majority of houses and salaries are in the lower end of the market and the median reflects this much better.

Where do you get median house price data from?

And nearly 15 million people earn more than the median earnings figure; there are only around 17 million owner occupiers.

andykn

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

It would be okay to compare median house prices with median wages, however.......

The LR records the house prices as a mean average, henc ethe need to compare against mean wages

Even then you have the problem of "home owners" not being the same set of people as "wage earners".

Bloo_Loo

andykn wrote: »

Where do you get median house price data from?

And nearly 15 million people earn more than the median earnings figure; there are only around 17 million owner occupiers.

are you sure...that makes 30million earners.

I thought it was less than 20million and falling.