House Price Crash Website

Mr_Proctalgia

Absolutely right WickedK. I am obviously over 50 and my first house was a now demolished 2 up 2 down with an outside loo and back yard, the bathroom hung on a nail outside. I will not say life was bad then, but that is how a lot of people lived, it was the norm for thousands of working families - On occasions we even struggled with the £4pw rent, the electric was bought by the shilling (5p 12d) and the gas was 10p a go. I have never bought a new car, we started having foreign holidays about 8 years ago. Now I have managed to struggle up to selling a 6 bed victorian semi for almost a third of a million and bought a 3 bed semi for cash. I do not consider myself lucky - I have worked bloody hard to get where I am, compared to a lot of modern values I must look very dated but if something is unaffordable then it doesn't get bought, I do not get the plastic out, I save for it.
It may be old fashioned but it works for me.

movieman

I bet if there was a survey between people that are over the age of 50, and a survey between people under the age of 35, a lot of the former group wouldn't be saying their first house was a 3 bed semi which I also think is big part of the whole housing problem.

My parents' first house was a four-bed terrace, and it's been the only house they ever owned, bought when my mother was in her late 20s and my father in his early 30s. Today it's valued at two hundred times what they paid for it in the late 60s: have wages increased by the same amount in that period?

And they weren't lawyers or bankers, my father worked as a carpenter in a factory and my mother worked part-time in unskilled jobs when she wasn't bringing up kids. What chance would a similar couple have of doing the same today?

Ah... none. I earn about twice the national average wage, and far more than the vast majority of people in the town where my parents live, but even I couldn't buy their house without taking out a 5x income mortgage.

A large fraction of people who bought a house before 2000 are now living in a house that they couldn't afford to buy today. How long can a market continue to function when even many people who own (or at least have mortgaged) houses couldn't afford to buy them anymore? Surely that's a clear sign of an unsustainable bubble?

Jim_B_3

And what does happen when there finally are no more kids able to buy, as will happen eventually when each new set of kids hit the streets to find prices have gone up again since last year?

dudleyboy

Mr_Proctalgia wrote:

Absolutely right WickedK. I am obviously over 50 and my first house was a now demolished 2 up 2 down with an outside loo and back yard, the bathroom hung on a nail outside. I will not say life was bad then, but that is how a lot of people lived, it was the norm for thousands of working families - On occasions we even struggled with the £4pw rent, the electric was bought by the shilling (5p 12d) and the gas was 10p a go. I have never bought a new car, we started having foreign holidays about 8 years ago. Now I have managed to struggle up to selling a 6 bed victorian semi for almost a third of a million and bought a 3 bed semi for cash. I do not consider myself lucky - I have worked bloody hard to get where I am, compared to a lot of modern values I must look very dated but if something is unaffordable then it doesn't get bought, I do not get the plastic out, I save for it.
It may be old fashioned but it works for me.

I think most people, myself included, share your sentiments, Mr Proctalgia. The problem I find is that you can no longer find the sort of homes you describe. They're either all "luxury" appartment new builds or where BTLs and property developers have taken houses FTBs CAN afford and "transformed" them into houses that they can't.

We talk about properties and investments... but first and foremost most young people just want a simple and affordable place to call home.

poopscoop

Jim_B wrote:

And what does happen when there finally are no more kids able to buy, as will happen eventually when each new set of kids hit the streets to find prices have gone up again since last year?

I teach my kids to be more enterprising

Jim_B_3

Squat? Live on the streets? Let you subsidide them?

However you do it, your kids are fine. What about the other million or so kids?

poopscoop

Jim_B wrote:

Squat? Live on the streets? Let you subsidide them?

However you do it, your kids are fine. What about the other million or so kids?

Well you can do that if you're narrowminded. I just worry about things that I can change not the things that I cannot. My kids being enterprising and not listen to sorts like you whose glass is always half empty.

Why do you care about the other kids? Can their own parents not look out for them? Are you the government? A lot of people are worse off and you just complain at things you cannot change.

Jim_B_3

I know, I know. It's a problem I've always had, striving to make the world a better place.

poopscoop

Jim_B wrote:

I know, I know. It's a problem I've always had, striving to make the world a better place.

so how far have you got?

Jim_B_3

I'm going to make the world a slightly better place right here, by stopping this before it turns into a catfight.