House prices

ukcarper

GreatApe wrote: »

And on the other side of the spectrum almost everyone I know who has married, mostly people in their late 20s early 30s have gotten cert significant early Inheritances (aka gifts) in one case the couple were gifted a while house probably worth half a million.

Anyway its best to look at the data and it shows over £73 billion left in estates (this excludes spouse to spouse transfers) and that is a bit out if date. Half this £73 billion were homes the other half mostly pensions and cash. The data is a few years old and is likely to be closer to £100 billion annually now. And that only includes Inheritences bit gifts which my guess is about the same size. So overall there is a transfer of some £200 billion annually from old to young.

I accept that if life expectancy is age 82 then most of the people getting the inheritances are in their 50s.

Also as I have pointed out before we need about 14% private rental and we are at 19% so any housing problems we have are found in the difference between the two. That means a max of 5% of households are renting who might otherwise in a perfect world be owners. But even that is a bad model because we know a lot of this 5% are recent migrants and divorced people and even ex-owners and even people who rent but also own property and also many rentals (about 500,000 iirc) are renters who pay no rent or very little rent they rent off family and these people are often old frail parents or disabled kin and I am not convinced someone living in a house rent free is a renters the usual meaning. That means any housing problems we have a well below the 5% difference between the min needed 14% rentals and the 19% we have.

So the market and systems are working. Housing isn't a problem.

We've been through all this before and we are not going to agree so we might as well leave it here.

buglawton

GreatApe wrote: »

...Also with regards to affordability it is just FALSE to say 1971 was more affordable...

I started this mini thread talking about how affordable the late 50s/early 60s were in a London suburb and how completely normal young middle and working class people were buying proper semis on a mortgage.

Not sure where you got 1971 from unless that was earlier in others posts.

By '71 the economy was faltering badly and the earlier house building surge - new towns, massive new private and public housing estate building - had been over for a while. So comparing '71 with now is comparing bad with worse - which may be a more comfortable argument for HP apologists.

ukcarper

buglawton wrote: »

I started this mini thread talking about how affordable the late 50s/early 60s were in a London suburb and how completely normal young middle and working class people were buying proper semis on a mortgage.

Not sure where you got 1971 from unless that was earlier in others posts.

By '71 the economy was faltering badly and the earlier house building surge - new towns, massive new private and public housing estate building - had been over for a while. So comparing '71 with now is comparing bad with worse - which may be a more comfortable argument for HP apologists.

He probably used 71 because I said early 70s in response to your post about 50/60s and things changed a lot in the early 70s. I bought my first house in 1972 I was earning above average earnings and there were 2 of us buying. I live in an area which is just inside the M25 now and worked in outer south west London. I had to move 15 miles further out be able to aford a 3 bed terrace and prices increased so much in 1972 if I had not bought that house I would have had to move further out. House prices more than doubled between beginning of 1971 and end of 1973.

House prices in relation to earning have varied over the last 50 years and although now they are higher than they now they have been almost as high in the past.

GreatApe

buglawton wrote: »

I started this mini thread talking about how affordable the late 50s/early 60s were in a London suburb and how completely normal young middle and working class people were buying proper semis on a mortgage.

Ownership in Great Britain in 1961 was 42.7%

So yes you did start this thread talking about how affordable the late 1950s early 1960s were but you were just talking nonsense. Less than 43% owned in 1961. Are you now willing to change your mind now that you know the actual figure?

By '71 the economy was faltering badly and the earlier house building surge - new towns, massive new private and public housing estate building - had been over for a while. So comparing '71 with now is comparing bad with worse - which may be a more comfortable argument for HP apologists.

1961 had lower ownership than 1971
1951 even lower than 1961

Fortunately we have actual data and need not rely on your confirmation bias of when was affordable and when was not affordable. Today has much higher ownership than any time between 1950-1980 you care to cheery pick

Now be a decent man and admit you were wrong that things are a dam lot better today than they were in the late 1950s early 1960s

GreatApe

ukcarper wrote: »

He probably used 71 because I said early 70s in response to your post about 50/60s and things changed a lot in the early 70s. I bought my first house in 1972 I was earning above average earnings and there were 2 of us buying. I live in an area which is just inside the M25 now and worked in outer south west London. I had to move 15 miles further out be able to aford a 3 bed terrace and prices increased so much in 1972 if I had not bought that house I would have had to move further out. House prices more than doubled between beginning of 1971 and end of 1973.

House prices in relation to earning have varied over the last 50 years and although now they are higher than they now they have been almost as high in the past.

One of the problems is linking house prices to affordability (especially in nominal figures).

For instance I can agree that 1981 was probably more affordable in pounds and pence (both in real and nominal terms) than now. However taking all other factors into account (higher food costs clothing costs transport costs electric goods etc etc lower gifted and inherited wealth etc) things were not more affordable and this bares out in the fact that home ownership in 2011 was higher than in 1981

I know I labor the point a lot but private renting is just a transitional tenure I myself was a private renter for 14% of my adult life and the private rental stock is 19% of the stock overall not a particularly unsustainable or undesirable figure. The primary reason renting went up post about 2004 onward is the mass migration since 2004. 3-4 million more migrants needed private rentals they can hardly buy the day they step on England grounds however in time they too will buy and ownership will again go up assuming the migrant taps are turned off/down

GreatApe

ukcarper wrote: »

We've been through all this before and we are not going to agree so we might as well leave it here.

There is nothing to agree or disagree about wealth transfers from the old to the young it is a fact and a reasonable estimate would bring the figures to some £200 billion annually and it plays a significant part in housing.

As for it not helping the young, they dont really need help to buy their first home many manage it without help. The inherited wealth however does allow many of them to jump up from the FTB home to the bigger end home.

I go back once more to private rentals being about 19% of the market and we need some 14% to allow for mobility. If there is any housing problem/s its to be found in the 5% point difference between this 14% and 19%

buglawton

GreatApe wrote: »

Ownership in Great Britain in 1961 was 42.7%

So yes you did start this thread talking about how affordable the late 1950s early 1960s were but you were just talking nonsense. Less than 43% owned in 1961. Are you now willing to change your mind now that you know the actual figure?

1961 had lower ownership than 1971
1951 even lower than 1961

Fortunately we have actual data and need not rely on your confirmation bias of when was affordable and when was not affordable. Today has much higher ownership than any time between 1950-1980 you care to cheery pick

Now be a decent man and admit you were wrong that things are a dam lot better today than they were in the late 1950s early 1960s

I've not talked about things being better. This is a house price thread not a things one. And what I'll repeat is my own anecdote - that while I was growing up, neighbours and family friends from a very moderate class background were buying decent and by todays standards spacious houses. Not just a few but in large estates. My experience is based on when and where I grew up and I've not made any further claims or defensive rebuttals.

Stats are one thing. To be able, as a youngish ordinary couple to buy a decent house on the outer London suburbs is another thing altogether. I'm putting the cause down as lack of planned living space.

GreatApe

buglawton wrote: »

I've not talked about things being better. This is a house price thread not a things one. And what I'll repeat is my own anecdote - that while I was growing up, neighbours and family friends from a very moderate class background were buying decent and by todays standards spacious houses. Not just a few but in large estates. My experience is based on when and where I grew up and I've not made any further claims or defensive rebuttals.

Stats are one thing. To be able, as a youngish ordinary couple to buy a decent house on the outer London suburbs is another thing altogether. I'm putting the cause down as lack of planned living space.

Your very limited anecdotes of friends and family buying in the 1950s/1960s is not of much use when we have actual data. I can only assume there is selective memory at play or you simply did not know the ins and outs of the finances of the people you claim were just simple working class people buying big homes for small money

Also the size/quality of homes issue you have wrong too, homes were not materially bigger or better in the 1950s and most importantly we now have about 30% more residential floorspace per capita than we did in the 1950s

pertgave

As I understand it, homes in London may finally moderate to more affordable levels. On the other hand, in Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Mainz and Wiesbaden, people are complaining that price rises are getting out of hand....

buglawton

GreatApe wrote: »

Your very limited anecdotes of friends and family buying in the 1950s/1960s is not of much use when we have actual data. I can only assume there is selective memory at play or you simply did not know the ins and outs of the finances of the people you claim were just simple working class people buying big homes for small money

Also the size/quality of homes issue you have wrong too, homes were not materially bigger or better in the 1950s and most importantly we now have about 30% more residential floorspace per capita than we did in the 1950s

If this thread were for the purpose of us quoting stats at each other and see who's the winner, then yes my contribution is not of much functional use. But I just remembered, this is a discussion thread.

I can well believe that there's more floorspace today though. When I last visited my childhood street, practically every semi had an extension over or instead of the garage space. There's your extra living space.

On a Sold House Prices site I see that not one semi of that design in the street has changed hands since 2006. In 2006 the price was 150 times higher than 1959.