Defeated and trapped. Young look on in despair at The Kingdom of the Boomers

GeorgeHowell

Cornucopia wrote: »

It was the deposit that increased by 300% - not the whole property value.

Don't understand. How does a deposit increase by 300% once it is paid ?

Cornucopia

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

Don't understand. How does a deposit increase by 300% once it is paid ?

I get my deposit of £30K and buy a £200K house with a £170K mortgage. 3 years later, the house is worth £260k, still with a mortgage of £170K, and my deposit has become equity of £90K - a 300% increase.

GeorgeHowell

Cornucopia wrote: »

I get my deposit of £30K and buy a £200K house with a £170K mortgage. 3 years later, the house is worth £260k, still with a mortgage of £170K, and my deposit has become equity of £90K - a 300% increase.

So it's the positive equity in the property which has increased to a value of three times the original deposit, and not the deposit itself which remains at £30K.

Percy1983

MrRee wrote: »

It is the baby boomers duty to pay for the next generation - indeed, I have helped my offspring to purchase their first property. It's no bother, just a gift ... they will get it later anyway - let it work for them as it did for me.

That financial investment in them has ballooned through 2013, that deposit has tripled in value ..... and it's been kept in the family.

If I had held onto it it would have increased by around 1.5% in value - by giving it away it has increased by 300% and given someone else their own property, their own investment in the country, their own little part of Britain.

You simply cannot lose ............. thumbs up for Baby Boomers wherever you are, you have the unique ability to change the young lives. Give and then give again ......

But what if your boomer parents have saved nothing and there mortgage is more than it started 25 years earlier?

How about just lower prices, then inhertance is less and more in importantly not needed to buy a house, therfore all can affrod to buy and those with wealthy parents get help but those withut still have a chance?

Jason74

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

Another uncomfortable truth which is conveniently ignored or misrepresented by the militant ageists is that virtually nobody in the Baby Boomer generation saw themselves as raking it in at the expense of future generations. Nobody foresaw that youth unemployment would reach such levels, that property would become unaffordable to many, that graduates would routinely end up working in burger bars, that our manufacturing base would be decimated, or that state welfare would spiral out of control.

With the benefit of hindsight it would be easy to say that signs were there, but with the hitherto traditional optimism of youth pretty much everyone took it for granted that living standards would continue to rise and that the next generation would be better off still. People bought houses, paid into pension funds, and saved where they could because the conventional wisdom had it that it was the sensible and responsible thing to do for the benefit of the whole family, not because it was a good way to prepare the ground for screwing the next generation. A great many of the Boomer generation now provide a great deal of help and support for their children and other younger relatives.

I believe that the majority of the younger generation realises this and does not share the horrible, ageist, resentful, spiteful views that we see expressed on these boards and elsewhere, mainly from typically leftist, agitprop merchants with massive chips on their shoulders.

I think this post is fair enough, until the last couple of lines. You're right that boomers never in a million years saw their actions as harmful to the next generation, and in many ways, it's not their fault that time has proven that to be the case. It's also true that many boomers are remarkably generous to younger members of their families. So I for one certainly don't "hate" boomers (for starters, I'm of an age where they're my parents!).

Where I do have an issue though, is where people of the boomer generation refuse to acknowledge just how much harder it is to acquire a foothold of weath for young people now relative to their own generation. Yes, the boomer generation worked hard in the main, and largely earned all they have. But their grandchildren have little or no prospect of attaining similar wealth through their own efforts, and that is a major problem. Boomers should not be blamed for that situation, but those members of that generation who refuse to acknowledge that reality (and we see examples of that on here and elsewhere) are imho a valid target for criticisim. And I say that as a member of the generation in between, who has managed to do just fine without parental help, but who knows full well I would have little chance of doing the same if I was 20 years younger.

But hey, I guess that just makes me a "leftist, agitprop merchants with massive chips on their (my) shoulders"

Cornucopia

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

So it's the positive equity in the property which has increased to a value of three times the original deposit, and not the deposit itself which remains at £30K.

Yes.

Although personally, I always consider the deposit as only having a meaning at the point of the initial transaction. After completion, there is equity and mortgage (or just equity, if you are fortunate enough).

Cornucopia

I suppose the issue is not just that these negative factors are not the fault of the boomers, but that (for some of the factors) they may well be inevitable, or at least have no plausible alternatives.

I personally benefited from the 5%-student, grant-aided situation of my youth. That was fully sustainable and allowed for significant social mobility. (We could argue about grammar schools in that context, too, but that's a whole other can of worms).

Once Government decided that 50% of young people would go to University (for perfectly understandable reasons), it became unsustainable overnight to support them through grants, and the student loan was born.

That, to me, is a major change that has had huge social implications - and although I understand it, I still question its wisdom. I'm pretty sure we won't be going back, though.

ukcarper

Jason74 wrote: »

I think this post is fair enough, until the last couple of lines. You're right that boomers never in a million years saw their actions as harmful to the next generation, and in many ways, it's not their fault that time has proven that to be the case. It's also true that many boomers are remarkably generous to younger members of their families. So I for one certainly don't "hate" boomers (for starters, I'm of an age where they're my parents!).

Where I do have an issue though, is where people of the boomer generation refuse to acknowledge just how much harder it is to acquire a foothold of weath for young people now relative to their own generation. Yes, the boomer generation worked hard in the main, and largely earned all they have. But their grandchildren have little or no prospect of attaining similar wealth through their own efforts, and that is a major problem. Boomers should not be blamed for that situation, but those members of that generation who refuse to acknowledge that reality (and we see examples of that on here and elsewhere) are imho a valid target for criticisim. And I say that as a member of the generation in between, who has managed to do just fine without parental help, but who knows full well I would have little chance of doing the same if I was 20 years younger.

But hey, I guess that just makes me a "leftist, agitprop merchants with massive chips on their (my) shoulders"

I think most of us realise things are hard, but a lot of younger posters will not acknowledge that there have been many difficult times in the past and that property has been almost as expensive in the past, remember in relation to earnings property was at it's cheapest in the 90s not the 70s and 80s.


You have no idea if the younger generation will acquire the wealth of the boomers and there is nothing to say they won't. But I would say the biggest problem they face is finding good well paying jobs not house prices.

dtsazza

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

So it's the positive equity in the property which has increased to a value of three times the original deposit, and not the deposit itself which remains at £30K.

If you're being that technical, George, there's no such thing as "the deposit" per se. It's the part of the house that the bank will not cover with the mortgage, the (100-LTV)% of the purchase price that you need to pay in cash because the mortgage provider isn't meeting.

In that respect it's always equity, right from the word go. So I don't think the claim "the deposit itself... remains at £30K" really means anything, as there is no "deposit itself".

CLAPTON

Jason74 wrote: »

I think this post is fair enough, until the last couple of lines. You're right that boomers never in a million years saw their actions as harmful to the next generation, and in many ways, it's not their fault that time has proven that to be the case. It's also true that many boomers are remarkably generous to younger members of their families. So I for one certainly don't "hate" boomers (for starters, I'm of an age where they're my parents!).

Where I do have an issue though, is where people of the boomer generation refuse to acknowledge just how much harder it is to acquire a foothold of weath for young people now relative to their own generation. Yes, the boomer generation worked hard in the main, and largely earned all they have. But their grandchildren have little or no prospect of attaining similar wealth through their own efforts, and that is a major problem. Boomers should not be blamed for that situation, but those members of that generation who refuse to acknowledge that reality (and we see examples of that on here and elsewhere) are imho a valid target for criticisim. And I say that as a member of the generation in between, who has managed to do just fine without parental help, but who knows full well I would have little chance of doing the same if I was 20 years younger.

But hey, I guess that just makes me a "leftist, agitprop merchants with massive chips on their (my) shoulders"

what exactly is a new born child 'entitled' to?

-is it that it has a moral right be part of the richest generation, in the richest country that has ever existed?
if so, is that equally true of all African born babies as well as UK born?

-why is it so appalling that a UK born child might only be part of the second richest generation that has ever been born?

-have UK born gen x&y done things that give them a moral right to be the richest ever?

-why doesn't this moral right apply equally to Syrian or African children ... are they less worthy or were they born in sin?

-age for age UK x&y are better off that 90% of world

and are better of than the equivalent boomers except for the issue of home ownership: a totally solvable problem which simply requires building more houses