Boomers at my work boasting of property wealth

ess0two

PasturesNew wrote: »

Forget the generation stuff, that's a red herring. You have the advantage of age ....and cunning. Simply run off with the wife of the one with the most equity, she'll divorce him, marry you. Job done, instant equity.

All because you're younger. Unless you're an 4rse, then no woman will want you however young and handsome you are.

The last paragraph sums the OP to a tee.

Herzlos

the_flying_pig wrote: »

the real, valid, concern is that today's [say] thirty year olds (e.g. born in 1985) have far less property wealth than yesterday's (e.g. born in 1965)'s thirty year olds.

You mean, comparing a 30 year old in 2015's wealth to a 30 year old in 1985's wealth, factoring in inflation? Is there any source to that?

Or are you just saying that 30 year olds have less property wealth than 60 year olds?

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but at 30 I could have bought the same house my parents bought at 30 with approximately the same household income.

meer53

SailorSam wrote: »

While you're living in it, the value of your house is irrelevant. You're only going to get your hands on the cash when you sell it. Then you're going to have to go out and buy another property to live in.

You don't have to buy another property. I'm planning on selling my house when i retire and using the proceeds to travel wherever i like. In between travels, i'll rent somewhere. I'm going to be loaded !

I don't understand these pensioners who struggle on in a house that is worth a fortune just so they can leave it to their kids My kids want me to enjoy my retirement, they don't want my money.

BobQ

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Two boomers at my work were boasting about their property wealth this lunchtime, loudly so the whole office could hear. One and a half million quid plus between them. Both on lower positions than me as they near retirement.

All the other boomers were nodding and smiling in satisfaction. Meanwhile the Gen X'ers and Millennials had their heads down, seething or just mulling over despair.

It would take every graduate in the room almost 4 years of pooling 100% of their net salary together to buy one of these blokes houses. And by then the price would have gone up again and it wouldn't be enough.

No amount of hard work will enable anyone else to catch up to the enormous handout the boomer generation have had from property. Mainly at the expense of the young who must scrape every penny to make rent.

Cannot defend anyone overtly bragging about how wealthy they are (one of the tenets of Thatcherism in my view). But it is not their fault anymore than it is your fault that you are wealthier than others.

A house is only of value when you sell it. For most people this is when they die so hardly a benefit to them just their beneficiaries. I only invested in a house because at the time it was cheaper than renting and I was fed up with moving because my private landlords decided they wanted the house back. The fact it has appreciated in price is not my fault.

BTL is just an investment. You may as well complain that people have invested in unit trusts.

If as a society we want to stop people benefiting from HPI the solution is higher IHT and building more houses that both curb prices and rents, together with building more decent and affordable social housing.

PasturesNew

SailorSam wrote: »

While you're living in it, the value of your house is irrelevant. You're only going to get your hands on the cash when you sell it. Then you're going to have to go out and buy another property to live in.

Nicely written down ... but there are spikes in lunacy. One spike was on the telly the other night (£million homes), ex-council, bought it for £155k, now he's selling up - and getting £1million.

And, while you have to buy another house, if you've been geographically lucky, then you'll spend a fraction of your proceeds on the next place. e.g. that bloke with £1million could buy a nice, small house, close to me for £300-400k and pocket £600k. Certainly never has to work again.

My house is somewhere to live for now - but, before I bought it, I did check the price of OAP flats locally so I could compare the prices.... when I sell this I'll pay 50-70% on a nice little flat and have some spare for bingo and chips. On the other hand, where I'd have liked to have bought, which is an OAP restricted small estate, I couldn't afford those... they're for posher people than me (or couples).

kabayiri

onlyroz wrote: »

Yup, my boomer in-laws bought their council house under right-to-buy, and have recently given all the proceeds back to the state paying for MIL's care-home fees. The way to get rich is to open a nursing home, it seems...

So many of them are in dire straits though. The staff ratios required ensure a large chunk of received go on labour costs.

No...better to crowd source and invest in my patent-pending-shiny-techy-shiny-roboCarer-2100.

BobQ

PasturesNew wrote: »

Nicely written down ... but there are spikes in lunacy. One spike was on the telly the other night (£million homes), ex-council, bought it for £155k, now he's selling up - and getting £1million.

And, while you have to buy another house, if you've been geographically lucky, then you'll spend a fraction of your proceeds on the next place. e.g. that bloke with £1million could buy a nice, small house, close to me for £300-400k and pocket £600k. Certainly never has to work again.

My house is somewhere to live for now - but, before I bought it, I did check the price of OAP flats locally so I could compare the prices.... when I sell this I'll pay 50-70% on a nice little flat and have some spare for bingo and chips. On the other hand, where I'd have liked to have bought, which is an OAP restricted small estate, I couldn't afford those... they're for posher people than me (or couples).

True, but this only applies to those who want to move to a cheaper area. If you live in that £1m house and want to buy another nearby if will cost much the same. Many people also downsize and get money from it but that applies to everyone not just those in expensive ex-council houses.

Loughton_Monkey

ruggedtoast wrote: »

......It would take every graduate in the room almost 4 years of pooling 100% of their net salary together to buy one of these blokes houses. And by then the price would have gone up again and it wouldn't be enough.....

You never give up, do you? Yet another post clearly steeped in jeaousy and or ignorance comparing chalk with cheese.

Why would anybody go through a thought process that involved adding up how long a few young so-called 'graduates' would have to work to pay cash for a house owned by someone who has worked for 40-odd years longer?

Us boomers didn't do anything special at all. We had incomes which in real terms today would have people running off to DWP for benefits. We also 'drooled' at the houses occupied by people even less than a generation older than us. But we did a couple of really key things. Like recognise that we must try to get on the property ladder early. Like never go entering commitments like children/renting 'decent' properties because in doing so, you are permanently denying yourself an opportunity to buy. Like saving as if there were no tomorrow, and then buying any sh[thole that we could afford. And move in with a second hand bed and one kitchen table as furniture. Like getting married at a cost nearer to £300 rather than the £30,000 Caribbean wedding of today.

After that, ordinary house price inflation takes care of the rest, together with the odd up-sizing.

There is nothing in that behaviour that today's younger people cannot emulate. There is nothing to say that HPI will not follow the same track for the next 40/50 years as for the last.

Wealth is cumulative. Particularly property wealth. It doesn't get destroyed. It passes on. To postulate that any generation - on average - is going to be worse off than the one before them defies any rational mathematics. It defies common sense.

Each 'boomer' has been through 3 or 4 recessions/bad patches. So will your generation.

There are rich boomers, there are poor boomers, and there are very rich boomers. The reasons for this [for any one person] will easily be traced to things like education, choices, lifestyle, and financial behaviour over 40-odd years. When all of us are busy turning in our graves, your generation will reach retirement, and I can guarantee you will discover the reality of a wealth profile far higher than today's boomers enjoy.

With your attitude and totally unrealistic perceptions of 'how wealth works', I can make my own predicitions about where in that wealth spectrum you might sit. But I'll keep it to myself.

audigex

To those on this thread asking for evidence that the current younger generations are any worse off than previous generations, I'll put this simply: house prices and rental rates have absolutely annihilated wages in terms of growth over the last 30 years.

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Or with a more complicated discussion/rant:

Find a sensibly sized geographical area: one holding perhaps 250,000 people, so we have enough people to filter out any irregularities. Now compare the median salary for 20-40 year olds with the median house price in that area. In fact, compare it at the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentile.

Go ahead, I'll give you a minute. Right, now go and do the same thing for 1980.

I rest my case, your honour.

The simple fact is that the young are being priced out of the market, because boomers have bought all the property up and are now doing very nicely indeed out of renting them back to the same people who should be buying them but can't afford to.

If Fred Fiftysomething has 1.5 million quid's worth of property, and a fairly typical yield of 5-8%, he's making 75,000-120,000 a year. So every year or two he can afford to go and buy another house, and he can easily outbid Joe Twentysomething trying to save a deposit while paying £500 a month to rent one of Fred's houses.

The fact is that the person renting is paying more towards their landlord's next house, than they are towards their own. If I can save £200 a month towards my house, and am paying my landlord £800 a month, he can outbit me every single time.

So not only can I not afford to save for a house, because I'm renting from Fred, I also can't afford to outbid him. So he gets to buy a new house to sell to me.

Housing in this country is a major problem. I mean, I'm in a relatively good position compared to most my age (25). I have a £15k deposit, I earn a couple of thousand above the average salary in the UK, live in one of the cheapest areas for houses (£120k for a 3 bed semi detatched will get you a fairly nice one...), and under my own steam I can still only just about afford to buy an ex-council end of terrace which needs a bit of TLC. I'm about to buy a house, but only because I'm able to "inherit" equity as a parent downsizes from a 3 bed semi to a 2 bed terrace, and because I've returned home to live with parents at the age of 25 in order to save... not everyone is so fortunate.

ruggedtoast

Pete9501 wrote: »

You're right and life isn't fair. The bloke that delivers your parcel tomorrow morning probably thinks the same looking at you with your own home whilst he rents a bedsit.

The bloke who delivers my parcels is a boomer. He always seems cheerful and wears shorts in winter. He probably has four bedrooms and a Skoda Superb I shouldn't wonder.