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

furby-2003

i guess i would mean.

years ago only my dad worked and managed to buy a good 3 bed house ina good location with little deposit. average waged job.
same goes for a lot of my friends parents who were buying in the 60's and 70's . and in many cases the woman didn't work.

now I earn a very good wage part-time and my boyfriends about to get a graduate postition with a company also good wages. we a a smallish deposit of around £10k. and we can't barely afford to get a house when i comes to it. We had one quote of £89k and round here that doesn't get a flat. and it's not a particually up market area really.

so in my experience there is no affordable housing.

headcase

i agree, there is no affordable housing at all. The cheapest in Leeds is a 2 bed back to back ( imagine a terraced house chopped in two ) in a poor area for £95000 upwards. Most of the new housing stock is one or two bed flats from about £150k upwards.... Very small though.. if we started again and brought our old house we could not do it. It's supid

tomstickland

"Affordable" means to me that someone with an average income can afford to buy a basic home. People are prepared to lower their expectations to a certain point until they find something they can afford. We are at a point where a typical lowest expectation is too expensive.

Hereward

As long as peolpe can afford to pay the rent on properties that suite their needs then there is not a shortage of affordable properties. This, of course, assumes that new rentals enter that market at the same time as people wanting rented accomodation.

Today's property prices are high, but as I have stated earlier no-one needs to won there own home. The UK is a strange place as everybody seems to think that renting is wasted money and that they must own their home, whereas across Europe they very happy to rent their homes. If you compare property prices here with those in Africa (in terms of costs to income) then our property prices can seem quite reasonable.

furby-2003

If I rent till i'm 60 say and this is without putting the rent up in the next 36 years which in highly unlikely ill have paid 273000 thats more than i'd ever want for my house. Thats why we don't want to rent. I haven't got money to just throw away into my landlords pocket

headcase

I agree, there is nothing better than owing your home. Land prices have always increased and always will. Say, buy house for £100k in 20 years time say worth £200k. If you have repayment mortgage - pay off mortgage and asset / home worth £200k. Renting - rents will always increase and you own nothing. Why do landlords buyto let ???. So its financially worthwhile buying. Always rememeber your buying your home.....

RHemmings

headcase wrote:

I agree, there is nothing better than owing your home. Land prices have always increased and always will. Say, buy house for £100k in 20 years time say worth £200k. If you have repayment mortgage - pay off mortgage and asset / home worth £200k. Renting - rents will always increase and you own nothing. Why do landlords buyto let ???. So its financially worthwhile buying. Always rememeber your buying your home.....

Can you be more precise about what you mean by "land prices have always increased and always will". If you mean the property and building on it, then land prices have not always increased. If you look at the last few land registry figures you'll see that quite a few areas in the UK, though not the majority, went down in price. And there was all that pesky negative equity in the 90s.

But even if a house you buy now for £100,000 is worth £200,000 in nominal terms in 20 years, that's only 3.55% inflation per year. Not impressive. And of course if there has been considerably more price/wage inflation in the meantime then the real value of your home has gone down.

In real terms house prices are at an all-time peak. Why should the real value of houses stay at or above the current historical peak forever?

lynzpower

furby-2003 wrote:

If I rent till i'm 60 say and this is without putting the rent up in the next 36 years which in highly unlikely ill have paid 273000 thats more than i'd ever want for my house. Thats why we don't want to rent. I haven't got money to just throw away into my landlords pocket

have you worked out how much interest you would pay to the bank for a property. And "throwing away" to the bank"

furby-2003

i really don't think thats a very good argument against owning a property worth that!!.

lynzpower

well Im not saying its an argument against owning property, but it certainly puts into perspective that "throwing money away on renting" argument thats trotted out time after time.