Houses are affordable!

Cakeguts

The problem is that people who blame others for their problems tend not to see the opportunities because they aren't looking for them. There are people in this country who came here with nothing. So no bank of mum and dad no boomer parents. Nothing and yet they have managed to buy houses because they took the opportunities that were there. So how have they managed to do that?

tooldle

My parents bought in 1963 for the sum of £3k. To get the house they put down £1k deposit. A huge amount for a family whose joint earnings were less than £500 per anum.
My OH and i bought our first house in 1996 with a 5% deposit and a mortgage at 1.7 times our joint income. We definitely found it easier to buy. That said there are so many factors at play, depressed areas, popular areas, availability of work, security and progression within work, a boom in the economy or a depression, mortgage interest rates etc.

LdnFtB

Cakeguts wrote: »

Where did he teach? Was it a state school or a private one?

He was headmaster at King Edward IV boarding school if you must know.













Just kidding, he taught at the local primary.

leslieknope

even the current conservative government has acknowledged there is a housing crisis, so i don't understand why so many of the forum have their heads in the sand about it and think there is affordable house ownership across the board.

i work in childrens services which i believe is a valuable service but i cannot afford a house in my area, especially while paying market rents in my area. (not london)

perhaps i could move 200 miles north and abandon my entire network of family and friends, but why should i have to do that?

ukcarper

leslieknope wrote: »

even the current conservative government has acknowledged there is a housing crisis, so i don't understand why so many of the forum have their heads in the sand about it and think there is affordable house ownership across the board.

i work in childrens services which i believe is a valuable service but i cannot afford a house in my area, especially while paying market rents in my area. (not london)

perhaps i could move 200 miles north and abandon my entire network of family and friends, but why should i have to do that?

The problem is property in London has only been affordable to people on average earnings for short periods although saying that even more people are priced out now. I don’t see any easy solution to solving the housing problem in London it would need a very large number of homes to bring prices down to an affordable level.

Cakeguts

LdnFtB wrote: »

He was headmaster at King Edward IV boarding school if you must know.













Just kidding, he taught at the local primary.

He could have bought an unmodernised house in what was then an unpopular area. We don't know.

A relative bought a house in Oxford around 1977 and had to have the whole house modernised. It had dry rot, an outside toilet, needed new windows, central heating and she had the cellar water proofed. It was an end of terrace. She was downsizing from a much bigger house and by the time she had bought the house in Oxford and spent the money on the repairs there wasn't much left from the sale of the much bigger house. So either she paid too much or houses in certain parts of Oxford were very expensive in 1977.

grant89uk

As many people have already pointed out in this thread, you cant compare a time when you had access to 100% mortgages to today.

In my local area the private rents for !!!! hole areas is more than what a mortgage in a respectable area would cost you.

But if your struggling to pay the exorbitant costs of private rent i.e. someone elses mortgage plus profit, then it proves difficult to accumulate the deposit required to get on the ladder.

Those buying before the credit crunch had it significantly easier to get on the ladder. Even with some at times paying particularly high interest rates I'm sure the huge increases in property prices at the time has seen them alright.

Cakeguts

grant89uk wrote: »

As many people have already pointed out in this thread, you cant compare a time when you had access to 100% mortgages to today.

In my local area the private rents for !!!! hole areas is more than what a mortgage in a respectable area would cost you.

But if your struggling to pay the exorbitant costs of private rent i.e. someone elses mortgage plus profit, then it proves difficult to accumulate the deposit required to get on the ladder.

Those buying before the credit crunch had it significantly easier to get on the ladder. Even with some at times paying particularly high interest rates I'm sure the huge increases in property prices at the time has seen them alright.

You are talking about people buying in the early 1990s and the early 2000s. The interest rates were not high then. That is when it was easiest to buy.

LdnFtB

Cakeguts wrote: »

He could have bought an unmodernised house in what was then an unpopular area. We don't know.

They bought a semi detached house which at the time was about 10 years old so had all the mod cons.

Any more straws you'd care to clutch at? Or can you accept that what my parents and grandparents were able to do - buy an average house on a single average salary in a city with jobs - is tough for our generation.

ukcarper

LdnFtB wrote: »

They bought a semi detached house which at the time was about 10 years old so had all the mod cons.

Any more straws you'd care to clutch at? Or can you accept that what my parents and grandparents were able to do - buy an average house on a single average salary in a city with jobs - is tough for our generation.

When did he buy that house, as I have already pointed out prices quadrupled in the 70s.
I first bought in 1972 the house was 5.3x my income, if I was in a position to buy 1 year earlier it would have been 3.5x but a year later it was 6.3x and would have been out of my price range.