House Prices, Interest Rates and Affordability

kriss_boy

Blacklight wrote: »

So nobody is in their 30's just 20somethings and old people? [edit] The more I think about it, the more profound a statement it is about younger peoples perception.

Youre missing the point.

The demograph Im refering to surely represent a substaintial proportion of potential buyers in the housing market.

Most of my friends and colleagues in their 20s dont have properties nor any considerable savings to go to a deposit on a house. Those of us that do have flats are all in the same position whereby the likelihood of us being able to afford a jump up the ladder is extremely unlikely any time soon.

kriss_boy

Its not a case of sour grapes- my girlfriend and I agree that we literally have to attempt to save about 10K a year for 6 or 7 years to get a nice family home. To us, having a family isnt financially viable for many, many years.

My parents on the otherhand have spoken about they and their friends getting married and buying bigger homes in their mid 20s, not 30s! And compared to them my girlfriend and I both work in better paid jobs.

Theres really no comparison with regards to just how overpriced homes are these days. 30 years ago I would be living in a detached house on my mortgage, not a flat!

phil_b_2

kriss_boy wrote: »

30 years ago I would be living in a detached house on my mortgage, not a flat!

You and countless others, but there arent enough of them to go around thus the price has been bid up by those who can afford that bit more. How can we seriously go back to a time where young 20'somethings can all go out and buy a nice detached house somewhere? If that was the case what about the established 40'something doctors etc? They could surely go out and buy a castle in that scenario.

I think we might just need to accept that times have changed since three decades ago?

Just because something was X price back in the day, doesnt mean it should still be that price now.

carolt

phil_b wrote: »

Just because something was X price back in the day, doesnt mean it should still be that price now.

Why not? How have conditions changed so drastically in the last 3 decades?

What a piece of unsubstantiated guff.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

carolt wrote: »

Why not? How have conditions changed so drastically in the last 3 decades?
.

Because population and numbers of households have increased far faster than the number of houses.

And it's still happening today.

408,000 more people in the last year, 250,000 new households in the last year, less than 100,000 houses built.

lostinrates

marc-h wrote: »

I've said it a couple of times but the situation most be so different across the country. I live in a pretty average northern city with house prices broadly the same as most places in the north.

I wonder how many people live in the north compare to the south? And the demgraphics beyond that (working ftbs etc etc ) We know that prices are particularly crazy in ''hotspots''...some mentioned here mainly but not exclusively in the south. I just wonder how a fairly average northern townor city compares really with a fairly normal southern town or city and what impact this has on perception and reality?

sss555s

lostinrates wrote: »

I wonder how many people live in the north compare to the south?

If you draw a line from Bristol across Watford to the east coast then i'd guess there will be somewhere between 11m to 16m below the line. The UK population is around 65m so it's around 20% in the "south".

The area of the "south" will be around 10% of the UK.

So the "north" of Watford has around 80% peeps on 90% of the land.

The real hotspot is the south east where you have around 8m people (12% of UK total) in around 3% of the land.

Scotland has around 8% of the UK people living on around 35% of the UK land.

Other points.

There are more people in London than Scotland.

There are more people in the central belt of Scotland than in Wales.

There are more people in south Wales than in N Ireland.


All rough calculations


Edit: @ Kriss boy

I have already looked at the calculations before and with the same % deposit i could now buy my house on the same wage multiples mortgage as i did in 1990.

The difference is that i couldn't get the same house for my money in London that i could have then.


As Hamish would say it's supply and demand and where there are bigger winners (people who bought before 2000) in the south east there are also bigger losers (FTB's).

silvercar

kriss_boy wrote: »

Its not a case of sour grapes- my girlfriend and I agree that we literally have to attempt to save about 10K a year for 6 or 7 years to get a nice family home. To us, having a family isnt financially viable for many, many years.

My parents on the otherhand have spoken about they and their friends getting married and buying bigger homes in their mid 20s, not 30s! And compared to them my girlfriend and I both work in better paid jobs.

Theres really no comparison with regards to just how overpriced homes are these days. 30 years ago I would be living in a detached house on my mortgage, not a flat!

But when we bought twenty-four years ago we didn't also run mobile phone contracts, broadband and sky TV, so we did save some of our income to have a deposit.

And we started off by buying a boring flat and staying in to afford the mortgage because interest rates had risen to 13%.

Our first mortgage was 2.5 x our joint salary and we had saved a 15% deposit. That got us a older style 2 bed flat in North London.

You can't have it all from day 1.

mbga9pgf

phil_b wrote: »

You and countless others, but there arent enough of them to go around thus the price has been bid up by those who can afford that bit more. How can we seriously go back to a time where young 20'somethings can all go out and buy a nice detached house somewhere? If that was the case what about the established 40'something doctors etc? They could surely go out and buy a castle in that scenario.

I think we might just need to accept that times have changed since three decades ago?

Just because something was X price back in the day, doesnt mean it should still be that price now.

Its quite simple. We shoot all the nimbys in the head, then build on greenbelt. Not masses of newtown towny housing, nice housing in decent areas.

7% of the land is used for housing in this country. I fly over the UK on a daily basis and am amazed when we describe this country as overpopulated.

Simply put, we need to build more homes.

Graham_Devon

silvercar wrote: »

But when we bought twenty-four years ago we didn't also run mobile phone contracts, broadband and sky TV, so we did save some of our income to have a deposit.

And we started off by buying a boring flat and staying in to afford the mortgage because interest rates had risen to 13%.

Our first mortgage was 2.5 x our joint salary and we had saved a 15% deposit. That got us a older style 2 bed flat in North London.

You can't have it all from day 1.

Oh god I so hate this comparison to yester year where comparisons are made on technology that wasn't even available then.

It seems to be the ultimate flippant excuse.

When used the other way, it always comes down to "hey laddy, in my day, a washing machine cost a months wages, we had to rent a grundig TV as we couldn't afford to buy one, and our beta max cost us 3 weeks wages, you don['t know how hard it was, infact it was harder to buy a house".

But it's used both ways, all the time. "In my day, we didn't have mobile phones, internettings, computers and expensive trainers, we went without (even though you couldn't have possibly gone with as the technology did ot exist) and were able to afford a house".