Houses are affordable!

lincroft1710

In 1976 my first house cost £8,250 exactly 3 times my salary of £2,750 p.a. Today that house would be around £180,000 about 6 times what my salary would have been if I was still working and would reflect a promotion.

glasgowdan

Short sighted older generation viewpoints galore!

Young people now are NOT going to see a huge rise in the value of their house.

Young people now are NOT going to get a healthy pension.

Therefore they are significantly worse off than people like the OP realise.

LdnFtB

capital0ne wrote: »

At your age back in the 1970's I could only dream of buying a property in London. It was way out of my reach even as a graduate engineer. I moved out of the London area to an affordable part of north Hertfordshire/Cambridgeshire and commuted - this and my mortgage (5-7%) took over half my salary.

A 12 month rail season ticket from that far out - I put in Peterborough, feel free to choose somewhere else - is around £7k including tube travel. That will limit your mortgage on a median London salary - £34k - to about £88k according to the Nationwide. Flats within walking distance of the station seem to be around £130k. So that leaves a deposit over about 120% of the median salary required to buy somewhere similar to what you bought.

How much was your deposit as a % of your salary?

capital0ne

lincroft1710 wrote: »

In 1976 my first house cost £8,250 exactly 3 times my salary of £2,750 p.a. Today that house would be around £180,000 about 6 times what my salary would have been if I was still working and would reflect a promotion.

In 1957 the average wage was £7 10s - equates to £390 per year
The average house cost £2,000 - 5 times salary

Fast forward to now

2 bed dwelling £100,000 Salary £20,000 = 5 times salary for a property - nothing has changed, just a few fluctations in the middle.

And don't forget the interest rate in 1976 was between 10-15% - just imagine what size house you could have afforded at 1%!

capital0ne

glasgowdan wrote: »

Short sighted older generation viewpoints galore!

Young people now are NOT going to see a huge rise in the value of their house.

Young people now are NOT going to get a healthy pension.

Therefore they are significantly worse off than people like the OP realise.

Obviously you cannot remember when house prices dropped massively in the 1980's

Young people can get a nice healthy pension (odd wording) by investing in a SIPP - don't pay excessive charges.

With interest rates at .05% those who need to borrow have never had it so good, back in the day I could not even buy a colour tv, it was rented, I couldn't afford a landline, I used a public call box, I rented my video recorder, but mainly I only took on what i could afford, and I wanted a house, albeit a two up one down terrace, no double glazing, storage heaters, no garden, miles from my 'rents, miles from work, but I could afford the house

Pay rises, yes indeed one year I got a 17.5% interim pay rise in December, sound great doesn't it. Inflation was running at 25% - we were 7.5% down.

So nothing has changed, youngsters today have it just as easy or as hard as us oldies had back in the day, it's just dealing with what you want most and getting on with it. If it's not a house stop banging on about house prices.

capital0ne

LdnFtB wrote: »

A 12 month rail season ticket from that far out - I put in Peterborough, feel free to choose somewhere else - is around £7k including tube travel. That will limit your mortgage on a median London salary - £34k - to about £88k according to the Nationwide. Flats within walking distance of the station seem to be around £130k. So that leaves a deposit over about 120% of the median salary required to buy somewhere similar to what you bought.

How much was your deposit as a % of your salary?

Travel was expensive even back in the good old days of BR - but that's another story

I think I put down a 10% deposit which was about 35-40% of my salary - but I'd been saving for many years with a building society which is what counted in those days, loyalty.

sulphate

capital0ne wrote: »

Travel was expensive even back in the good old days of BR - but that's another story

I think I put down a 10% deposit which was about 35-40% of my salary - but I'd been saving for many years with a building society which is what counted in those days, loyalty.

Indeed, I saved with my building society for over 10 years before being ready to buy a house and they were not remotely interested in helping us get a mortgage!

katebl

capital0ne wrote: »

In 1957 the average wage was £7 10s - equates to £390 per year
The average house cost £2,000 - 5 times salary

Fast forward to now

The average wage is about £20,000 per year (starting point for a civil servant in their early 20's)
A quick search on Rightmove and you can find two bed terraced houses or similar for under £100,000 (not in London of course)

So where's the problem?

Apparently all of us oldies are now glorying in our 'cheap' houses we bought back in the day in our twenties. Well it was just as hard for us back then as it is now, so what's different?



The difference is that we had a bit of discipline, we wanted to get our own place, and we saved, we bought what we could afford and where we could afford, and we didn't look for our four bed detached forever home full of brand new furnishings.

We bought second hand and made do for the first few years.

Sadly youngsters today 'need' and iPhone X (£50/month), Netflix/Amazon Prime £100+/year), gym membership (£100+/yr), Costa coffee(£60/month), Takeaways (£100/month), new card (£199/month) plus others - this is all adding up to £5,000+/yr, which is your 5% deposit saved in one year.

It is doable - you just need to do it - get out of your parents house now and get on with your life while you know everything!:D

Ignoring the fact you are an obvious troll (or a complete tool), it's people like you who make me laugh when I come to view your house you bought 15-20 years ago, have spent about 50p on in that time maintaining it, and delight in telling me your retirement plans all the while thinking I'm going to buy your tired old pile of bricks for 3 times what you bought it for.

And I've kept laughing as it sits unsold for weeks/months until you reduce it multiple times or remove it from the market

Sorry, is that not your situation, just that of an odd few of your generation? Did I stereotype you there? My bad

Scotbot

lincroft1710 wrote: »

In 1976 my first house cost £8,250 exactly 3 times my salary of £2,750 p.a. Today that house would be around £180,000 about 6 times what my salary would have been if I was still working and would reflect a promotion.

And the base rate averaged out at 13% or 26 x todays rate

LdnFtB

capital0ne wrote: »

I think I put down a 10% deposit which was about 35-40% of my salary - but I'd been saving for many years with a building society which is what counted in those days, loyalty.

So by your own figures, young people these days need to amass a deposit three to four times as much as you did before they can get on the ladder.

So we need to save three to four times longer.

If in those days it took three years to save for a deposit, then today it takes nine to twelve.

This is the real issue. Mortgage payments are affordable - it's the time it takes (and the costs ensued whilst doing so) to save an appropriate deposit which is the obstacle. It's certainly not our entitled attitude or profligacy.