"Generation rent" - did ppl really marry in their 20s and buy a house?

tanith

I was married at 20 and we bought our first house jointly with OH's parents, we had the top flat they had the bottom and then a few years later they bought us out and we bought our own 3bed semi using their money as the deposit...

PlymouthMaid

It certainly helps enormously if you do not live anywhere near London. This was actually part of my decision to leave Essex for Devon when i became a student in the mid eighties. By the end of the Eighties I was a working single parent and hated renting as every 6 months I seemed to have to move so I used every single penny I had to buy a flat for £36000. A few years later when I needed to sell ideally to move in with my children's father (who had managed to buy a large house for £34000 two years after my flat purchase), I had 10,000 pounds of negative equity so had to be a reluctant landlord for some years. When I moved into my flat (and indeed still today 20+ years later) I had second hand furniture and even cardboard boxes doubling as side tables

Fast forward to 2013 and my lovely lass and her husband were able to buy a super house for £150,000. They had some deposit help else they would have been saving for another 5 years or so. Their mortgage is only £6 dearer than the rent on their previous flat. One of the most noticeable differences is that there is not a shred of second hand about my daughter's house and it does seem that young people assume they will will fill their house with new stuff. Even in the 'house' I moved to, we had no carpets for two years as we could not afford them.

Deposits are the main issue as already identified. Outside of London it is still very possible to buy in your twenties so long as you can live at home still and save. For those paying rent it must be very difficult.

N1AK

tincans6 wrote: »

Like it or not, the older generation (my parents) is generally a lot more frugal.

No, it's just that things that were considered frugal at the time are now effectively pointless. There will have been just as many things that your grandparents did to be frugal that your parents didn't do because they were pointless as well.

Cooking cheaply today is easy, because food is far cheaper your parents generation spent far more of their income on groceries your generation those wasteful beggars!

Housing density (the amount of people living in each house) was far higher in our great-great-grandfathers generation. Were your Grandparents !!!!less and spendhappy for having more than a room for every two people living in the house?

jacci45

WE bought our first property, brand new 2 bedroomed maisonette in the outskirts of London when we married aged 25 in 1986. It cost 43000 and we got a 100% mortgage. Everyone I knew did the same and none of us were wealthy or graduates.
I do think its much harder for the youngsters of today.

N1AK

quantic wrote: »

I think the concept of living in a way which means you forgo certain things and feel ok about it for the greater good is lost on a lot of young people.

And it has ever been thus. The young people buying in the 80s were no more frugal than the youngsters buying now. Their parents generation would have seen the things they do as wasteful, just as their own parents would have thought the same of them.

wymondham

We bought in our twenties whilst having a young family. Back only as far at 1990 this could be done before the rocket was put in the housing market.....

Percy1983

Here is an example of being frugal which some on here would say isn't.

There is mention of iPhones and of course the contracts are usally £30+ a month with potential costs to get the phone.

While I was saving for a house my phone contract was £7 a month with a free phone (still paying the same now).

So is it wasteful as I am running a smart phone or frugal as I have cut the costs to 1/4 to 1/6 of what the none frugal have done.

I will say I haven't lived by many of the sterotypes posted in here, but I suppose I have bought a house.

Andypandyboy

It was the norm in my circle, we married in 1981 aged 21 and bought a house to move into after the wedding. So did all our friends, some graduates, some not. All of our kids and friends kids have all bought or could afford to buy in the mid twenties, but they are all graduates. I think it is a mindset as much as anything. We both had parents who had bought houses when they were relatively young and tbh, looking back, renting never occurred to us.

BJV

supermassive wrote: »

It's a symptom of the "let's crush the youth so we can stay in control" attitude of this country's middle aged rich right wingers.

Wish I was rich enough to class myself as a rich middle aged person.


Sorry sounds like the youth looking for an excuse. Things are difficult for young people today. True. Guess what they where difficult for the last generation as well.


You think that we can not understand, you think that things are so different. Guess what I said exactly the same thing to my parents and I bet she said the same to hers.!

Horseygirl123

I married at 20 in 1981 and bought our first home. But it was a struggle for us to get on the housing ladder just like young people today. My husband worked from the age of 15 and me 16. Only the very brightest were encouraged into further education and as I went to a secondary modern no chance - factory or shop. As I was taught by my mother to touch type I was lucky to get a job in an office.

Holidays abroad were rare amongst our friends and I had my first foreign holiday at 30.

Our first house was very run down and we spent every spare penny on improving it but we had to live in it in the meantime. Our kids were brought up on a building site.

Now my grown up daughters think they are hard done to. My youngest is enjoying herself swanning round the world and my eldest resents lodging with a friend but enjoys new cars, latest iPhone, clothes a d foreign holidays.

We were faced with huge interest rates on mortgages in the late 1980s and 1990s which saw many repossessed