Well well....there's a shortage of "affordable" housing?

[Deleted User]

What does 'affordable' mean? Me and the gf are both mid-20s amd buying a house that is 3.5x our joint income, in London.

We make ~50K between us, had a 20k deposit and the house we're buying is 200k. It's a 2 bedroom house in a nice area of hertfordshire, with train links into London. We could have aimed for a cheaper flat, but I want a garden and no service charges.

Personally I don't know what all the fuss is about, people just want houses without going through the effort of saving a deposit.

MickKnipfler

Interesting question. They are talking about "affordability" right now on BBC news. I guess if you wanted a packet of wrigly chewing gum and the newsagent wanted £50 for it, it would still be "affordable". Then if he offered to lend you the money at 1% over 25 years, then the money would be cheap enough for you to buy the overpriced asset and thus the chewing gum would still be "affordable" even if you didn't have the £50 to hand

pigeonpie

'affordable' to me means a price for something that then doesn't keep me awake sweating at night knowing that I can't really pay this much for it. Of course it's a relative term; I read that Michael Ballack thinks London housing is unaffordable
Can you think of a better, single word for the media etc to use? You get left with formulae eg "Y x income" of average person/couple/family; not very soundbite.
imho almost everything in the UK is overpriced. As compared to other first world countries I mean. Houses, transport, cars, food, medical/vet bills. The only cheaper things are mobile phones & those are a luxury item.
It's all Mad...."shortage of non-madly-priced-decent-wellsituated housing".

PoorDave

lynzpower wrote:

yes but an Aston Martin isnt essential for living, wheras housing and shelter is

But owning your own house isn't.

I don't think anyone is complaining of a shortage of affordable rental housing, are they?

Bargain_Rzl

I agree with Pigeonpie.

I'm an FTB living in London, not fussy about which part of London, and not under the misapprehension that as a single person I need a 2- or even a 3-bedroom property.

Were I to choose to live outside London, the difference in property prices would not be enough to offset the higher travel costs; were I to choose to leave London altogether and live/work elsewhere, the difference in property prices would not be enough to offset the inevitable drop in wages.

I'm on around the average London household wage. In my price bracket, and not being a location snob, the absolute minimum I would be looking at paying for a one bedroom flat in a cheap area of outer London would be around the £120k mark, which is a little over 4 times my salary and would give me mortgage payments of around £700 a month. As it happens, this is not dissimilar to the amount it would cost me to RENT a similar flat. To have this kind of monthly outgoing would be just about comfortably manageable, for me as a single person with no other responsibilities.

If this is just about manageable for me, how on earth is somebody with a family - who NEEDS a bigger property, and who also has other claims on their income - supposed to manage? The big problem with unaffordability is that it isn't just house PURCHASE which is expensive, house RENTAL is crippling for some people too. If they're deemed too low priority for a council house, they're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Fortunately I have been lucky enough to get a nicer flat for my money than I might otherwise have managed, through a shared ownership scheme. But just because "I'm all right Jack" doesn't mean it isn't a problem for a huge number of people - and not just the fussy ones who think they have to live in a certain standard of area or live in a certain size of property they don't really need.

barnaby-bear

MickKnipfler wrote:

What on earth does that mean? How is it different to saying houses are overpriced?

They'll be saying there's a shortage of "affordable" Aston Martins next!!

AFFORDABLE has a legal definition for councils and alike, it means providing affordable accommodation for
- key workers
- people who couldn't rent or access permanent housing otherwise - ex-prisoners, benefit claiments etc, the disabled, single mums

it''s basically the modern HA equivalent of council housing

it doesn't mean that your average couple working should be provided with housing they can afford to buy, if they can afford to rent privately they can not access AFFORDABLE housing as there is no housing need as far as councils statatory obligations go.

In practice if 40% of a development is AFFORDABLE then the rest will have to cover costs so is big detatched/town 4-5 bed houses so very few 2/3 bed flats/ houses and so few not affordable to average working couple/single. So when people ask for votes of priced out people by saying we'll ensure 40% AFFORDABLE people think good for them but in practice exacerbating the low no. of starter/first homes available at reasonable cost that priced outers could buy.

So affordable housing forces private sale homes costs up so different to just houses being too expensive as affordable isn't about cost but about controlling supply and distribution of property types and who is eligible to live in them.

Bargain_Rzl

PoorDave wrote:

But owning your own house isn't.

I don't think anyone is complaining of a shortage of affordable rental housing, are they?

Sorry, my previous post crossed with yours.

Perhaps not in all areas of the country - but as I've said, in London at least, rental can also be crippling. In a run down area you could look at paying £600 a month for a studio flat, £750 for a 1-bed, and at least £900 for a basic family house (2-3 bed terrace). For somebody on less than the average wage, that is not affordable.

barnaby-bear

MickKnipfler wrote:

But.. what does a shortage of "affordable" housing mean?

Shortage available to those the council legally obliged to house on housing list or by government:

key workers
single moms with babies
homeless
those retiring and leaving tied-cottages/school caretaker housing
people on benefits
disabled
ex-prisoners
those in existing overcrowded social housing

Not a shortage of housing for general population able to afford, that's overpriced housing.

SammyD_2

ringo_24601 wrote:

What does 'affordable' mean? Me and the gf are both mid-20s amd buying a house that is 3.5x our joint income, in London.

We make ~50K between us, had a 20k deposit and the house we're buying is 200k. It's a 2 bedroom house in a nice area of hertfordshire, with train links into London. We could have aimed for a cheaper flat, but I want a garden and no service charges.

Personally I don't know what all the fuss is about, people just want houses without going through the effort of saving a deposit.

Someone who talks sense! I don't know where the expectation that everyone in their early 20's should be able to afford a house on their own comes from. I am sick to death of hearing first jobbers at work winge that they can't afford anything when I (a) know exactly what they and their boyfriends earn - very similar to your salary - (b) know how often they go out during the week and how much clothes shopping they do (c) know they have their sights set ridiculously high - Islington, Fulham etc.

My husband and I worked hard for our deposit - he did a second job, we moved into a shared house with friends so halved out fixed outgoings, had no holidays or meals out, and no new clothes. Once we had our deposit we worked out where we would like to live, looked at the prices, thought again, and worked out way down the tube line (then off the tube line!) until we found somewhere we could afford.

Two people earning £25k should be able to afford a property in/around London. In my area there are plenty of houses with 2 or 3 bedrooms under £200k. There is nothing wrong with the area - it is safe, has good transport and lots of parks. But it doesn't have an N1 postcode.

Bargain_Rzl

But there are a LOT of people around who aren't couples earning 25k each!