Where can you afford to live in the UK?

crash123

Good and bad areas everywhere. Unfortunately the bad areas are brought down by a few families.

rabbit_burrow

fc123 wrote: »

...DITTO....:)

I am now 50, have 'owned' since I was 26 and still don't live in the location in the amount of space I would like or have the view/outlook I would like .....that's life I guess.


Dear me Graham......this really attitude really affects how I read your other posts now...and I think you are a well-meaning kind of guy but no-one is entitled to anything in life and you can choose location over living space.
In the London suburbs people and families do it every day...do they have a small house in a not so nice area or a flat in one that is seen as 'better'?



Yes it does and there is a great value in getting along with all sorts of people...you should try it one day.
The downside of renting forever is you one day you will retire and will be at the mercy of private LL and whatever Govt policy is in place to help you with your rent (unless you have a fat private pension).

The other assumption is that you can only have a neighbour from hell if you live in those types of low cost areas...and this isn't true ....a NFH can be anywhere. I know of someone who has one at the moment (noise etc) and they live in a house valued at a million+.

To live in a 'normal' area (not even necessarily 'nice') in quite a few places in Devon, not the rural ones though - they are far too expensive, you would need to cram your family in a 1 bed flat or spend months on a 'do-er upper'.

Is it really too much to ask that people can buy a reasonable place for the 'average' wage?

Incidentally, if you're earning NMW like a lot of jobs in the country, there are parts of the country where you can buy a reasonable size house for less than £80k.

People in Devon should not have to move away from Devon just to be able to buy a house. And rent is getting ridiculous.

I will most likely end up having to remortgage to be able to assist my children in buying their first homes.

fc123

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Theres another poster who obviously knows the area well and has described it as it is.



Should I instantly buy whatever I can afford? Or should I be able to choose to pay more to rent somewhere else?

To be fair I've not mentioned entitlements once, just stated I would rather pay more to live somewhere else. I don't see how that can be seen as thinking I'm entitled to something. I've merely accepted I'd have to pay more elsewhere.

Maybe you could explain how this means I feel I'm entitled to something?

Is this not something we have ALL done? Have we not ALL chose our locations and to pay the price for that said location?

People are making out it's somehow an issue to choose to rent somewhere as opposed to buying somewhere you simply do not want to live for various reasons. Theres enough people on this thread also stating they wouldn't live there, presumably because they know it. I'm baffled as to why people are so upset about this in all honesty or why it's caused so much fallout by saying I wouldn't want to live there. I don't, so why can't I say so without being labelled?

I am not having a pop Graham (cos you are a dude deep down ) but you live in one of the most expensive areas of the UK...now that could be seen as just good or bad luck (depending on your outlook) but you can't park yourself on here posting doomy threads that you hope will indicate a coming drop in prices....a drop that is enough for you to purchase what you would prefer.

To be informed is A Good Thing but you are just putting things off.......and you do come over as someone who would prefer to own.

Basically you have 2 choices (well 3 if staying in the same situation counts as a choice) of
1; upskill so you can earn more, at an extreme level, take a risk on something self employed..... so you can afford the property that is to the standard you would like or
2; move to a location that gets you more at your current salary level.
Whilst everyone has different tolerances of risk etc, I can say I lived and raised our 1st until he was 3 on one of the roughest estates in the UK. It was character building for sure but grim in the extreme.....being set upon by a pack of dogs whilst waiting outside one day, when he was only a few weeks old, is in my memory....and we had the above choices at the time too (and there wasn't the option to privately rent and get HB help back in the olden days).

Our option 3 was we could have grumbled to the council about terrible state of council housing and so on (and gotten nowhere) and waited..... they did knock it down recently and rehouse everyone....so we would have got moved 24 years later.

rabbit_burrow wrote: »

To live in a 'normal' area (not even necessarily 'nice') in quite a few places in Devon, not the rural ones though - they are far too expensive, you would need to cram your family in a 1 bed flat or spend months on a 'do-er upper'.

Is it really too much to ask that people can buy a reasonable place for the 'average' wage?

Incidentally, if you're earning NMW like a lot of jobs in the country, there are parts of the country where you can buy a reasonable size house for less than £80k.

People in Devon should not have to move away from Devon just to be able to buy a house. And rent is getting ridiculous.

I will most likely end up having to remortgage to be able to assist my children in buying their first homes.

...but it's always been like that.
Devon has evolved into a kind of honeypot in the UK as tourism is one of it's main industries now...it's just bad luck really but, unless you are involved in tourism, it does throw up the concept of an 'entitlement' to be able to live in the area you grew up in. Is that truly a right?

I remember up north in the 90's people we knew in our sector who owned enormous piles that cost the same as our tiny house in London.....also staff on very low wages affording cottages that wouldn't be possible down south. We even considered relocating for that reason in about '95 but we didn't want to move away from family....so we made a choice to stay down here.
Thing is, it is a choice, though you may not feel it is....but I really believe it is.

For what it's worth I would live in the most expensive street in Brighton tomorrow if I could...and I really wanted the crash to take those places down into our income bracket.......and they didn't get there but c'est la vie, compromised and chose somewhere else instead.

Graham_Devon

Thanks Fc, though to clarify, I already own...

My point was that, using the lowest denominator on the calculator will give you better results. I personally feel most people looking to make the biggest financial commitment of their life will look to mid range on such a calculator. Hence the very reason the other places are cheaper. The demand is lower.

I personally don't feel there are many of us who would actively try to buy in an area we just do not like for various reasons...the reasons for that area have been made clear by others who obviously know it. Hence I would raher rent somewhere else...meaning, for me, and the majority at a guess, most would look at mid range.

I don;t think that puts across a sense of entitlement. I feel it's perfectly normal.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I personally feel most people looking to make the biggest financial commitment of their life will look to mid range on such a calculator. Hence the very reason the other places are cheaper. The demand is lower..

So the market is allocating goods through price according to supply and demand.

If the people that can currently only afford to buy in the cheap areas could suddenly also afford to buy in the mid-price areas, what do you think would happen?

Do you think prices would rise until sufficient numbers were prices out that supply and demand equalised?

Or would we find some other way of allocating them?

Waiting lists or a lottery perhaps?

fc123

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Thanks Fc, though to clarify, I already own...

My point was that, using the lowest denominator on the calculator will give you better results. I personally feel most people looking to make the biggest financial commitment of their life will look to mid range on such a calculator. Hence the very reason the other places are cheaper. The demand is lower.

You know what? I wrote on this thread and hadn't done the calculator to see what it threw up (doh!)

I think I will butt in on more of your threads and regularly sprinkle you with some magic FC positivity dust....

I actually agree with your sentiment and when I look at OH's old family home bought with a traffic policemans wage + P/T auxiliary nurses salary....it is a standard 3 bed semi and now sell for about 380k...it can seem wrong but the knack is to adapt to the changing times and not look back but forward as our generation have different 'better' things than they had.

fc123

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

So the market is allocating goods through price according to supply and demand.

If the people that can currently only afford to buy in the cheap areas could suddenly also afford to buy in the mid-price areas, what do you think would happen?

Do you think prices would rise until sufficient numbers were prices out that supply and demand equalised?

Or would we find some other way of allocating them?

Waiting lists or a lottery perhaps?

That's the thing isn't it...the lines just change between bottom and top but there will always be a bottom and always a top.

Hamish, why the bold type?

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

fc123 wrote: »

Hamish, why the bold type?

Because Dev has been ignoring the question for the last few pages...;)

OffGridLiving

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Fair enough. If you are calling me a prude for not wanting to BUY a house and bring up my family in an area with the highest crime in Devon, what can I say? Nothing much, apart from accept your thoughts.

I don't think I'm the odd one out here though.

I really don't understand the point you're trying to make Graham. If you don't want to buy a house, then don't. No one is holding a gun to people's heads insisting that they buy a house instead of renting.

OffGridLiving

Graham_Devon wrote: »

So, to make a very basic point, looking at a family needing a 3 bed house, who can afford a 15k deposit and an £800 a month payment, they can afford to buy in 44% of the UK, but NO WHERE in the South bar South Wales.

This begs the question of why this couple didn't buy a house before they had children? The usual approach is to buy a small house and work your way up the ladder as your family grows. Where were this family living prior to wanting to buy a 3 bed home?

Can we have a bit more of a backstory to your example, otherwise it seems very biased to prove whatever point you're making?