Homes in the UK still very cheap/affordable

chucknorris

lisyloo wrote: »

and sometimes even the coal hole.

It's time for the Monty Python 4 Yorkshire men sketch again:

We used to dream about having our very own coal hole. But you try and tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you, they'll just say that house prices were cheaper then.

[Deleted User]

worried_jim wrote: »

I know! My Brighton flat has now cracked £250k, more than double what I paid 13 years ago. I am moving back north to buy a house, a place in the Sun and a Porsche!

I bought my 3-bed semi 5 years ago, and it cost £50k less than my parents 4 bed detached in North Manchester. Now, it's worth £100k more than theirs is worth now.

It's pretty silly.

MobileSaver

CLAPTON wrote: »

is not the standard we would like.
there is no technical reasons why we can't have a higher standard of housing and no reason not to aspire to that.

Of course, however there is always a higher price to be paid for a higher standard...

This fundamental economic reality seems to be lost on certain parts of the population.

hildosaver

westernpromise wrote: »

You don't have "an absolutely enormous mortgage hanging over you for the rest of your life" - you have it for 25 to 30 years, and its gross size only ever reduces versus the level you took it out at. At current rates it diminishes very fast. You pay off 15% in the first five years.

If you rent, in contrast, you certainly do have an enormous debt "hanging over you for the rest of your life", in the shape of all the future rents you'll be paying till you die.

The advantage of spending a big London salary on a pricey London property is that when you retire, you can flog it, bank the inflation, downsize into the sticks and live on a pension based on the contributions you and your employer made. The bigger the salary, the bigger the contributions they made and the bigger the pension even if no longer final salary.

You are objectively better off earning £5000 a month and spending £3000 on a London mortgage than earning £3000 a month, and spending £750 a month on the mortgage in the sticks and £250 a month on the commute. Either way you've got £2k a month left over, but in the former case you end up owning a property worth probably 4x as much as in the latter, plus you can flog the London house and live in the cheap one while trousering the price difference, plus your pension's going to be based on contributions of x% of £5k a month rather than x% of £3k. If at any point you get bored of working you can probably retire earlier as well.

The thing is to think intergenerationally. What best amasses and preserves the family capital? I want my children to be prosperous, my grandchildren to be wealthy and my great-grand-children to be filthy rich. All of this starts here and now.

OR you could live somewhere away from the SE of England, live in a much bigger home for perhaps half the money it would take for a flat in London - have a much better quality of life throughout your working life as a result while having around the same disposable income and a home at the end of it (with more space both inside and out). Oh also not have the worry needing to have £1500-£2500 mortgage payment every month - it could be perhaps half that.


Yes you would get more money later in life selling off your overpriced London pad but is the 25-30 years of living in a small flat vs a big family house worth it? I'm not so sure.


It's not all about the end game of what you will do in retirement, what about those best years of your life in-between?

cells

hildosaver wrote: »

OR you could live somewhere away from the SE of England, live in a much bigger home for perhaps half the money it would take for a flat in London - have a much better quality of life throughout your working life as a result while having around the same disposable income and a home at the end of it (with more space both inside and out). Oh also not have the worry needing to have £1500-£2500 mortgage payment every month - it could be perhaps half that.


Yes you would get more money later in life selling off your overpriced London pad but is the 25-30 years of living in a small flat vs a big family house worth it? I'm not so sure.


It's not all about the end game of what you will do in retirement, what about those best years of your life in-between?

it depends on your job.
As Westernpromise points out there is no gain in moving out of London if you are going to take a significant hit on your income.

Its better to earn £10k more post tax in London and pay £10k more in mortgage payments for the same house than it is to earn £10k less post tax out of London and pay £10k less in mortgage payments

Of course if your job pays exactly the same in London as it does outside of London then its perhaps better to be outside and live in a larger house. However That would have been the wrong choice over the last 20 years as London prices have boomed a lot more than elsewhere. Its hard to say with confidence that it will hold true again over the next 20 years.

cells

CLAPTON wrote: »

as I've explained many times; I am a pragmatic person and at the present time, immigration is a major problem in the SE/London.
A foreign population of 40-45% in London puts emormous pressure on housing and on the UK citizens.
The people of the UK would have a better life with far fewer immigrants.

houses might be a little cheaper had we had fewer migrants over the 2005-2015 period however you can not look at one variable and conclude it alone acts onto the wealth and quality of life of the uk

What if we had much fewer migrants in the 2005-2015 period, how would the recession have gone?

What about most the country, the north midlands scotland wales NI where prices are down or flat what if without the migrants prices had crashed another 20% on top of what they did in 2008-2010? How would that have impacted the banks and the recession and government finances?

how would pension costs relative to taxation be now without the migrants improving the working population vs the pensioners? what would that do to taxes?

What would prices be like for everything from transport to tesco shop if the uk had 3 million fewer people?

The migrants doing the crap jobs that pay low wages, waiting tables, cleaning toilets, gutting fish, picking strawberries. Who would be doing them now?

What would have happened to the new build rate if we had the extra -20% crash in house prices that the migrants prevented how would that impact jobs and the economy?

What would have happened to the share price of those companies and the pension funds that owned them?

What would have happened generally to the UK FTSE100/250 with an economy and population some 5% smaller than today and the pension funds that own those shares?

gfplux

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn wrote: »

Couldn't happen in today's economic environment.

Today's economic environment is already beginning to change. The BOE has a delicate job to do. Inflation will rear its ugly head due to higher oil prices and ALL imports costing more due to the present very weak pound in 2017.
Interest rates could rise then. Post Brexit we are in uncharted waters.

CLAPTON

MobileSaver wrote: »

Of course, however there is always a higher price to be paid for a higher standard...

This fundamental economic reality seems to be lost on certain parts of the population.

The price of housing in the SE and London is effectively determined by supply and demand of the land and of the bricks, materials and labour.

If there were less than 3-4 million foreigners in London the demand would be less and the price less too.
so NO in this case higher housing standards can come at a cheaper price

Fundamental economic reality is lost of some of the population

cells

CLAPTON wrote: »

The price of housing in the SE and London is effectively determined by supply and demand of the land and of the bricks, materials and labour.

If there were less than 3-4 million foreigners in London the demand would be less and the price less too.
so NO in this case higher housing standards can come at a cheaper price

Fundamental economic reality is lost of some of the population

The existing Londoners left London with bags of money willingly

The current Londoners are happy to come/be here

So whats the problem, its not like the foreigners invaded with pitchforks and stoke the homes and drove the locals out


Arguing for less migration into London so house prices can be lower is a disservice to existing London owners (majority). They can sell if they want or they can stay. The current renters could be at a disadvantage but as you keep crying they are all foreigners anyway. So is your heart bleeding to keep renters lower than they otherwise would be for the foreign renters in London?

If anything things have been great for Londoners and the government. There is now an opportunity to sell 800,000 council properties in London for somewhere in the region of £280 billlion. That is sufficient money to build ~1.5 million units within the M25 or to build maybe as much as 3 million untis elsewhere.

Plus the higher prices have effectively given the councils a way to renew their social stock for free. They swap with developers crap 1960 solid concreate damp holes for brand new flats for free. Reducing social housing costs

CLAPTON

cells wrote: »

The existing Londoners left London with bags of money willingly

The current Londoners are happy to come/be here

garbage

many left with zero in their pockets as they were renting with no prospect of owning.
many left having sold a one bed flat but in depair at being able to start a family there

So whats the problem, its not like the foreigners invaded with pitchforks and stoke the homes and drove the locals out

truely, you really do NOT know what the problem is

Arguing for less migration into London so house prices can be lower is a disservice to existing London owners (majority). They can sell if they want or they can stay. The current renters could be at a disadvantage but as you keep crying they are all foreigners anyway. So is your heart bleeding to keep renters lower than they otherwise would be for the foreign renters in London?

If anything things have been great for Londoners and the government. There is now an opportunity to sell 800,000 council properties in London for somewhere in the region of £280 billlion. That is sufficient money to build ~1.5 million units within the M25 or to build maybe as much as 3 million untis elsewhere.

Plus the higher prices have effectively given the councils a way to renew their social stock for free. They swap with developers crap 1960 solid concreate damp holes for brand new flats for free. Reducing social housing costs

there ae 3-4 million foreigners in London: clearly they have an enormous impact on the availability and price of property.

The great majority of Londoners who own property that they bought years ago gain NOTHING from its value: instead they see their friends and family moving miles away from them because they can't afford to live there.
The fact that their children will inherit a lot of money when they reach 60-70 years old is a poor compensation for a life spent apart.