Generation Whine

ILW

The majority of 25 year old non graduates in the 70s never even considered buying a house.

ukcarper

the_flying_pig wrote: »

What a load of crap.

It is a matter of public record, never mind common sense, that it is far more difficult for an average earner to get decent housing housing today than it was for an average earner to get decent housign 30 years ago. Why do a handful of idiotic boomers have to insist that it's 'just the same'? Why presume this? Why not, if one is bothering to contribute to a debate of this sort, take the trouble to remember what both housing costs and wages were back then?

You mention holidays, that's something that's patently many times cheaper today than thirty years ago - did hundreds of thousands of average 20 year olds of the 1970s get the chance to routinely go on holidays to Thailand, or Mexico, or India, or whatever else in those days? Of course not, it's a new opportunity that today's young have and yesterday's young didn't... so why not apply the same rigour to housing when we've just seen how ridiculous it might potentially be to say that opportunities [of various sorts] have remained unchanged through the decades? Does today's average 25 year old have access to the same standard of accommodation as the average 25 year old of the 1970s? The answer is of course not - housing has become vastly more expensive and scarce, just as exotic holidays have become vastly cheaper and more widely available. Just look at the places that young average earners are living in today compared with then and look at how much debt they have.

And before anyone thinks of suggesting it, no the two things don't exactly cancel it each other out. The impact of house prices doubling in a short space of time blew any number of holidays, ipods, etc out of the water - the order of magnitude was vastly different.

Today is a better time to be a 15 or 20 year old than the 1970s in terms of the cheap gadgets, holidays, etc that are available just as it's a worse time to be a 25 or 30 year old in terms of housing costs.

I agree it is harder to get a house but out of interest what do you the the ratio of average house price to average wages was in 1973

the_flying_pig

ukcarper wrote: »

I agree it is harder to get a house but out of interest what do you the the ratio of average house price to average wages was in 1973

Well, 73 was a bubble and therefore housing quite unaffordable, probably as unaffordable as in the early stages of this bubble, but not quite on a par with today and only really a spike that lasted for a couple of years rather than almost a generational thing.

ILW

I suppose the internet wasn't around then for people to constantly moan about how hard done by they are.

ukcarper

the_flying_pig wrote: »

Well, 73 was a bubble and therefore housing quite unaffordable, probably as unaffordable as in the early stages of this bubble, but not quite on a par with today and only really a spike that lasted for a couple of years rather than almost a generational thing.

still not very good if you were buying then and prices could still fall now

ILW

I just did a quick Rightmove search for properties in London, over 1000 below £150k. Bearing in mind that London is the most expensive part of the country, what is all this rubbish about not being able to afford to buy?

Generali

@ILW - Apparently the average salary in London is £30,000 (link) so a couple each earning the average income buying a £150,000 house would be borrowing about 2x gross joint income to finance it. A concerted effort would see that mortgage all but repaid in 5 or 6 years.

ILW

Generali wrote: »

@ILW - Apparently the average salary in London is £30,000 (link) so a couple each earning the average income buying a £150,000 house would be borrowing about 2x gross joint income to finance it. A concerted effort would see that mortgage all but repaid in 5 or 6 years.

So can someone tell me what all the complaining is about then.

Linton

ILW wrote: »

The majority of 25 year old non graduates in the 70s never even considered buying a house.

And in the 1970s IIRC the non-graduates would have been about 80% of the population.

Even graduates would have been unlikely to buy a house before they got married.

StevieJ

the_flying_pig wrote: »

What a load of crap.

It is a matter of public record, never mind common sense, that it is far more difficult for an average earner to get decent housing housing today than it was for an average earner to get decent housign 30 years ago. Why do a handful of idiotic boomers have to insist that it's 'just the same'? Why presume this? Why not, if one is bothering to contribute to a debate of this sort, take the trouble to remember what both housing costs and wages were back then?

So you are just aiming at the 70's (but not all the seventies you exclude when there was a boom ). You don't include the 80's and 90's then even though there was never a better time than mid 90's to buy a house, that probably doesn't fit in with your attack on the boomers, and don't get me on the comparative interest rates between the noughties and the past. I think we need a affordability chart up for comparison.