Harder now for 1st time buyers?

bigfreddiel

It's as easy now as in the 70's.

The thing that youngsters find hard to get their heads around is that you need to start at the bottom. You don't start with a four bed detached near to your work.

You start in a tiny little terrace or flat, miles from your work place, and build up so that twenty years later you finally get the house you want.

In the 70's as a graduate aerospace engineer I was paid less Thant a primsry school teacher! You try buying a property on £50/week income, save for deposit, buy house 3 times salary, so it's going to be small. Miles from work, petrol cost me £5/week, then there was rates, heating, food, and all the usual expenses, and don't forget 15% interest rate, the tree day week, power cuts. Actually I think it was harder back then, you you getters have it easy, just get on with it and stop whinging.

Cheers fj

ukcarper

always_sunny wrote: »

I don't think things are harder, though I look at them with an outsider eyes. I think things are maybe different and that's fine, people who get on with things will keep doing and those who are caught in the past will just keep on waiting.

here, another one in Leighton Buzzard, 30/40 min from Euston for £130k affordable for a single on very basic salary in London. If both buy a one bedder, when they meet and when decide to start a family can sell and buy something bigger.

I do think things are harder now I wouldn't be able to buy the house I bought in the 70s even with the larger amount I could now borrow.

littlegreenfrog_2

always_sunny wrote: »

I don't think things are harder, though I look at them with an outsider eyes. I think things are maybe different and that's fine, people who get on with things will keep doing and those who are caught in the past will just keep on waiting.

here, another one in Leighton Buzzard, 30/40 min from Euston for £130k affordable for a single on very basic salary in London. If both buy a one bedder, when they meet and when decide to start a family can sell and buy something bigger.

Sorry but I think you're the one who is caught in the past. I don't know a single couple my age who have both separately bought starter flats and then sold up and bought a bigger place together. What is happening with people my age is that the couple buying together can only afford a one bed starter flat by the time they really want to be starting a family, meaning that by the time they can afford to buy it, it's already too small. Or in the case of some of my friends, they are so far off being able to afford anything that they are just giving up altogether and starting families while renting.

[Deleted User]

I don't know how people in their 50s/60s can't recognise that buying a home is exceptionally hard now, when I've watched house prices rise 50% (in the SE) within 10 years.

always_sunny

littlegreenfrog wrote: »

Sorry but I think you're the one who is caught in the past. I don't know a single couple my age who have both separately bought starter flats and then sold up and bought a bigger place together. What is happening with people my age is that the couple buying together can only afford a one bed starter flat by the time they really want to be starting a family, meaning that by the time they can afford to buy it, it's already too small. Or in the case of some of my friends, they are so far off being able to afford anything that they are just giving up altogether and starting families while renting.

That's fine, expectations are different and expectations lead to choices... so we are back to FTB hoping to buy the perfect pad in the perfect location on a very little budget with a dramatic population increase! Good luck.

littlegreenfrog_2

always_sunny wrote: »

That's fine, expectations are different and expectations lead to choices... so we are back to FTB hoping to buy the perfect pad in the perfect location on a very little budget with a dramatic population increase! Good luck.

No, that's not really where we're back to, is it?

I am not looking for a place in central London, or even greater London. But I do need to be able to commute there, so I am restricted to the south east, which happens to be the most expensive part of the country. I am not looking for "the perfect pad in the perfect location". I am looking for somewhere within a reasonable distance of where I work which is big enough for me to live in with a partner and one child. That doesn't sound like very much to ask for someone on my salary.

My friends who work in the city are looking for somewhere in London (because they both regularly have to work until after the last trains have gone) which is big enough to have a child in. That doesn't seem unreasonable given their combined income.

My friends who have given up all hope of buying a place before they start a family don't even live in London, but they live in another city where house prices and rents are also skyrocketing, and despite being well-educated people who have been working in graduate jobs for the last eight years, they are priced out.

This is not about people my age wanting the moon on a stick. This is about us wanting to have a reasonable standard of living and level of financial security in order to raise children, and finding that this is all but impossible for anyone who isn't gifted a large sum of money to start them off.

Why is this so difficult to understand?

I'm sorry, but it really winds me up when people suggest that this is about unrealistic expectations.

ukcarper

ringo_24601 wrote: »

I don't know how people in their 50s/60s can't recognise that buying a home is exceptionally hard now, when I've watched house prices rise 50% (in the SE) within 10 years.

I'm not sure they can't I can and most of my friends do. Although it was not as easy to buy in the 70s as some younger people think.

littlegreenfrog_2

bigfreddiel wrote: »

It's as easy now as in the 70's.

The thing that youngsters find hard to get their heads around is that you need to start at the bottom. You don't start with a four bed detached near to your work.

You start in a tiny little terrace or flat, miles from your work place, and build up so that twenty years later you finally get the house you want.

In the 70's as a graduate aerospace engineer I was paid less Thant a primsry school teacher! You try buying a property on £50/week income, save for deposit, buy house 3 times salary, so it's going to be small. Miles from work, petrol cost me £5/week, then there was rates, heating, food, and all the usual expenses, and don't forget 15% interest rate, the tree day week, power cuts. Actually I think it was harder back then, you you getters have it easy, just get on with it and stop whinging.

Cheers fj

No, I think what your generation doesn't understand is that we are not starting at the bottom when it comes to buying property. Just getting to the bottom so we can get started is the problem.

I don't know a single person who is renting and hasn't seen their rent go up exponentially in the last 7 years. Why? Because the cost of their landlord's borrowing has gone up? Pull the other one. Most of us are at the mercy of landlords trying to bleed us dry whilst desperately saving for a deposit from whatever is left at the end of the month and watching house prices race further and further away from us as we are priced out by investors and people who are helped out by their families.

We can't even get to the bottom rung of the ladder. That's the problem.

ukcarper

littlegreenfrog wrote: »

No, I think what your generation doesn't understand is that we are not starting at the bottom when it comes to buying property. Just getting to the bottom so we can get started is the problem.

I don't know a single person who is renting and hasn't seen their rent go up exponentially in the last 7 years. Why? Because the cost of their landlord's borrowing has gone up? Pull the other one. Most of us are at the mercy of landlords trying to bleed us dry whilst desperately saving for a deposit from whatever is left at the end of the month and watching house prices race further and further away from us as we are priced out by investors and people who are helped out by their families.

We can't even get to the bottom rung of the ladder. That's the problem.

Not sure what you can afford have you looked in Aldershot there are flats around £200k there.

littlegreenfrog_2

Yeah I've looked there, think I would prefer Farnborough though because the commute's better.