Debate House Prices


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It's as easy to buy a house now as it ever was!

135

Comments

  • chucknorris
    chucknorris Posts: 10,793 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    edited 2 October 2016 at 11:53AM
    SailorSam wrote: »
    Morning Rupert,
    I think i'm very lucky. I paid £6.5k for my first house. But i couldn't just walk into it and have a house warming party that weekend, it needed a lot of work but at that time it was all i could afford.

    More or less the same for me, I bought a 2 bed semi bungalow in Newcastle for £28k in 1988. It needed an awful lot of work, which I mostly did myself. I could have afforded a flat, but I thought it was better to get the traditional second home first, but at that time I couldn't afford one, except one that needed a lot of work, and in a less desirable area.

    Replacing the rotten floors
    Building a driveway
    Replacing rotten window frames
    Replacing old gas fires with central heating
    Rewiring
    Injecting a chemical dpc
    Building built in wardrobes
    New carpets
    New bathroom (previously there was a tin bath in the kitchen)
    New kitchen
    Completely re-decorated
    New fireplace
    Lots of other minor work too


    I did everything myself except:
    1. Replacing the windows (I laboured for my father).
    2. Building new built in wardrobes (as 1 above).
    2. Installing the central heating boiler and connecting radiators etc. (I did everything else to do with the central heating).
    4. The driveway.
    Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one birdThe only time Chuck Norris was wrong was when he thought he had made a mistakeChuck Norris puts the "laughter" in "manslaughter".I've started running again, after several injuries had forced me to stop
  • Okay but what is the data on % yearly earnings compared to house prices?

    If you do it as a ratio I guarantee now is higher. If I'm wrong I'm wrong but I don't think I am.
  • ukcarper
    ukcarper Posts: 17,337 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    For many of us in the 70s and 80s it was impossible to buy in those areas - becoming more impossible doesn't really change much on a practical level.
    Where I lived would be just inside the M25 and I worked in south west London. Couldn't afford to buy there so I moved 20 miles further out and commuted. I admit prices are higher the house I bought was 5.3x my earnings, it would now be about 8x the earnings of someone in a similar job, saying that 6 months after I bought a similar house would have been 7.5x my earnings. Also you could not borrow as much in relation to your earnings as you can now and interest rates were higher.
  • ukcarper
    ukcarper Posts: 17,337 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    SailorSam wrote: »
    I grew up on a Council estate, my Mum rented her house as did my Nan. When Maggie decided it was only fair that all those people who had been paying rent for years, should be allowed to buy, we thought she was wonderful. A great leader helping the poor get on the housing ladder. Probably without Maggie they'd never ever afforded to move from the Council estate to something better. But looking back, although selling off all those homes was great for us, i think she did the wrong thing. Many of our housing problems of day can probably be put down to the Iron Lady.
    I agree and it would not have been so bad if she had allowed councils to use the money raised to build more houses.
  • ukcarper
    ukcarper Posts: 17,337 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Okay but what is the data on % yearly earnings compared to house prices?

    If you do it as a ratio I guarantee now is higher. If I'm wrong I'm wrong but I don't think I am.

    Here is a graph showing earnings to house prices https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=uk+average+earnings+to+house+price&client=safari&hl=en-gb&prmd=nisv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjww9y9o7zPAhVZGsAKHXJUAlMQ_AUICCgC&biw=1024&bih=671#imgrc=Qx3YwwZp7xdzoM%3A I think it is better that last one I posted.
    Figures from 2005 are available here http://www.nationwide.co.uk/~/media/MainSite/documents/about/house-price-index/2016/Sep_Q3_2016.pdf
  • Im not saying that the baby boomers didnt have it hard. Black outs, second hand clothes, third hand furniture. My gran who was born in the 1950s tells me all the time how her& my grandad made do with a fiver a week & that was considered wealthy! She says she had to put down a 25% deposit. But this was also the time where credit scores didnt come in to it. The days where you could walk into the bank and tell them what your job was. My granny didnt work so it was all on my grandads job & wages.

    I did go to college & got good grades. But i had to get a job to fund my travel to college. So i worked Saturday & Sunday as well as evenings & i had to fit college & homework in around that. I had to move out as soon as i finished college & get a full time job. Yeah i could have gone to uni but in 2008 when it was my time it didnt seem worth it as there were barely any jobs out there. I didnt have an amazing job although it was minimum wage, & i understand minimum wage is a farely new thing that the baby boomers wouldnt have had. In my town it just about covered my rent & to feed me. It has taken me until now to raise a 10% deposit on a shared ownership house. House is worth £200k, the ownership is 50% so ive had to save 10k & its taken me a very long time! & i still cant own the whole thing! I made a few financial mistakes along the way. But all the baby boomers i know of stayed at home with their mum & dad. Saved up then bought a house as renting was pretty much unheard of back then?
    I dont have massive luxuries for todays standards. I have the internet & netflix. We have second hand furniture & some second hand clothes. We dont go on holidays as our goal has been to buy a house. Our incomes arent huge but i think if we dont buy soon we will be priced out of the market! I have had two jobs, office job by day & bar work at night. I think i work damn hard in comparison to some people my age.

    I think both generations have had it tough.
  • cells
    cells Posts: 5,246 Forumite
    ruperts wrote: »
    Yes and what it shows is that house prices were generally stable at around 3.5 times earnings until the 2000s where they rocket up to 7 times earnings. Your graph finishes in 2011 assuming it will continue to fall after the recession but clearly that hasn't happened. House prices have continued to rocket while wages are stagnant so it'll still be around the 7 or 8 mark now, more than twice as expensive relative to wages as in the past.


    Yet for most the country the average terrace costs from ~£80k (northern Ireland) to ~£140k (E-Midlands) with another 6 regions (Wales Scotland NE NW Y&H W-M) in between those prices. In those 8 regions home to more than half the population buying a house today is cheaper than council rents. If council rents are affordable which of course they are then by definition buying the average terrace in those regions is also affordable.

    At beat one can make the argument that house prices went from very cheap to cheap in those regions. It doesn't matter if prices have doubled or tripled or gone up 100x if its still cheaper to buy than to rent the local social homes then it's affordable/cheap to buy.
  • Conrad
    Conrad Posts: 33,137 Forumite
    10,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    In the 70s couples generally bought where only the Male worked, and so 3.5 times income was pertinent. Later on people bought as working couples and so pushed up prices obviously, and them Blair opened the immigration flood gates and pushed up prices further.

    'Twas always hard, people saying otherwise are ignorant
  • HornetSaver
    HornetSaver Posts: 3,732 Forumite
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    Conrad wrote: »
    In the 70s couples generally bought where only the Male worked, and so 3.5 times income was pertinent. Later on people bought as working couples and so pushed up prices obviously, and them Blair opened the immigration flood gates and pushed up prices further.

    Whose fault is it that previous generations were rampantly sexist, among other things? It's certainly not the youth of today.
  • bigfreddiel
    bigfreddiel Posts: 4,263 Forumite
    edited 3 October 2016 at 6:48PM
    Conrad wrote: »
    In the 70s couples generally bought where only the Male worked, and so 3.5 times income was pertinent. Later on people bought as working couples and so pushed up prices obviously, and them Blair opened the immigration flood gates and pushed up prices further.

    'Twas always hard, people saying otherwise are ignorant

    I thought immigrants were all taking handouts etc, that's what the Daily Mail says!

    Cheers fj
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