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

the_flying_pig

slopemaster wrote: »

Thanks, flying pig, that's fascinating.
The way the curve levels off at age 35 is interesting.

Certainly seems to show the 3 cohorts born around 75 / 80 / 85 buying progressively later.
Not nearly so clear with the 60 /65 / 70 cohorts though.

Do you have any figures for earlier cohorts?

Not in the same level of detail. But I do know that the old (aged 65+) have on average the same home ownership rate as people in late middle age (e.g. those born in 1960, the oldest cohort in the earlier chart). I suppose this means that the people who were born so early that they didn't really consider home ownership are now mostly not with us.

slopemaster

Thanks all for sharing stories.
Flying pig is of course right that individual anecdotes are clouded by the atypical, so averages are necessary to get an overview.
But I like to have both.
As figures tell us more accurately what has changed, but those individual, fascinating stories can help us to understand the causes and effects of social change.

Waywardmike

My then fianc!e and I bought in 2004 using the Key worker scheme as she's a nurse, we were both aged 25, standard 2 up 2 down.... Married a year later, 2 kids in quick succession 3 years after that.

We have since moved to a new house (slightly bigger but far from extravagent) but have kept the old one as an 'investment' as were able to so it seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. we worked hard for what we have and are very frugal with our outgoings, stoozing etc to eek out as much cash from what we have as possible.

All my friends bought in their 20's...

I work with a lot of people in their 20's now, and I really feel for them as even though we're in the same industry with same earning potential in the same part of the country, home ownership is a distant dream for them... And then similarly I work with people in their 40's/50's who live nearly mortgage free in huge houses that I can only dream of owning when I reach their age.

House price inflation is insane IMO and only helps the few people downsizing or leaving London.

michaels

the_flying_pig wrote: »

Not in the same level of detail. But I do know that the old (aged 65+) have on average the same home ownership rate as people in late middle age (e.g. those born in 1960, the oldest cohort in the earlier chart). I suppose this means that the people who were born so early that they didn't really consider home ownership are now mostly not with us.

Interesting stocks and flows consideration this throws up. Even with a constant proportion of oo/rented in the housing stock, if we lose a cohort of older people who traditionally rented there by defnition must be fewer OOs amongst the younger age groups to make up for the higher proportion amongst the older age groups. Add in an aging demographic and again there are simply less OO properties available for the younger age groups.

Simply put, because your parents grandparents rented there was a property available for your parents to buy. Because your gandparents own there are no properties available for you to buy so you have to rent.

ERICS_MUM

My 2 siblings and I all bought our own properties. My sister married in the late 1970's, they lived in our "family home" for a year while they finished saving and found a house. They were about 22.

My brother left home to get married aged 24 and they bought a small flat, not a very nice area but it was a foot on the ladder.

I was at home until I was 25 because as a single woman in the 1970's it was difficult to get a mortgage. I bought my flat and have moved twice since.

Two of my nephews have bough their first flats in the last 2 years, they are 27 and 30. They both have well-paid jobs but scrimped and scraped for several years for the deposit.

The whole family's background is very much working class, my Dad was an immigrant with very poor English and was a labourer.

swingaloo

I married in 1972 at age 20 and we bought a large terrace 8 months before the wedding and worked on it at night and at weekends. Didn't move in till after the wedding.


The house cost 2,225 which we got knocked down to 2,175 and we put down a £200 deposit. It cost us a mortgage of £13 a month but our weekly income was on £26 between us.


All our furniture was second hand apart from our oven which the in-laws bought us. We had a moth eaten sofa for the first year and a half and no carpets upstairs.

LydiaJ

michaels wrote: »

I wonder if you were in the typical demographic even for graduates of that period?

Perhaps the same pool of graduates can afford houses at the same point now if they choose to buy. Don't forget the graduate pool now not only still contains the 14% of graduates who used to go to less prestigious unis and polys a couple of decades ago but also another 35% of the population who didn't go to uni at all in decades past.

Quite possibly we weren't typical graduates. I'm afraid I've no idea to what extent Oxbridge graduates like my brothers and me find getting a secure job and/or a house easier than those with degrees from other places of various kinds.

lazer wrote: »

The difference is that people IMO tended to stay at home until they got married (and hopefully saved!).

For those who left school to go into a job, that's very likely. Those who went to uni, however, left home to study and mostly never lived at home again (apart from uni holidays etc). Today's young people seem to go away for 3 or 4 years to get a degree and then move back in with parents. I don't remember anybody in my generation doing that.

Prothet_of_Doom wrote: »

Oh, but our weddings were not lavish affairs.

Indeed. Somebody at my work is getting married this year. We were discussing how different weddings were back in the early 90s when I got married. I said the whole process was a lot cheaper. One example I gave was that hen parties didn't involve going away for a whole weekend (mentioning hen parties rather than stag parties merely because she and I are both female). She said she thought it was quite reasonable of women to have a whole weekend because the stag parties are like that. I explained that back in the day, such parties were a single meal out somewhere for each gender. It didn't seem to have occurred to her that things had ever been that simple. Then she started telling me that really they were economising a lot. She explained various strategies for taking flights at odd hours and to random airports so as to save on the flights to afford nicer hotels on the honeymoon. I didn't have the heart to tell her that it had never crossed our minds to include either flights or hotels at all on our honeymoon (well, apart from the first night in a hotel). I don't grudge it to her - she and her fiancee have decent jobs and earn enough to be able to afford these things if that's what she wants to spend her money on, whereas we were students on grants (he an undergraduate and I a post-grad). But I did find it funny how much she assumed that things had always been the way they are now.

the_flying_pig

michaels wrote: »

...because your parents grandparents rented there was a property available for your parents to buy. Because your gandparents own there are no properties available for you to buy so you have to rent.

there may be something in those kind of supply side arguments.

there's a demand side argument too - when the baby boomers were FTBs, they didn't find that their parents, older neighbours, & whatever were frantically trying to outbid them for houses, armed with a combination of massive housing equity of their own and the BTL loans that came into place circa 1996.

quantic

While I do think that the knee jerk "give up your phone and tablet" argument is a little daft at times. I do think there is actually a little truth to it, of course giving up a £500 phone isn't going to make a dent in the deposit required to buy a home.

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. When I was saving up to buy my first place there was quite a lot of peer pressure and people couldn't understand why I was being so frugal.

I am still amazed at how many people think you just have to earn a lot of money, and the rest will take care of itself. I do however, know for some the numbers just don't add up no matter how they live. I earn significantly less than my peers but because we have been frugal early on and set out on a good path the difference is not noticeable.

I think one of the biggest problems of the current generation is the whole, buy stuff you don't need with money you don't really have to impress people on Facebook that you don't really like. The perception of "doing well" seems to be all that matters at times.

GunJack

swingaloo wrote: »

I married in 1972 at age 20 and we bought a large terrace 8 months before the wedding and worked on it at night and at weekends. Didn't move in till after the wedding.


The house cost 2,225 which we got knocked down to 2,175 and we put down a £200 deposit. It cost us a mortgage of £13 a month but our weekly income was on £26 between us.


All our furniture was second hand apart from our oven which the in-laws bought us. We had a moth eaten sofa for the first year and a half and no carpets upstairs.

so back then your mortgage was half-a-week's salary.... I wish...
not only that, you would have benefitted since from massive house price inflation


In fact,I remember my wife saying her and her siblings were forced to not continue education past secondary school but to get a job to contribute £20 a week each (3 of them) so £240 a month, when her parent's mortgage was all of £25 a month :mad: