Is it really THAT important to own your own home?

carolt

Am I the only one to find all these posts about how the young now just want to have everything on a plate, can't be bothered to save, etc, really annoying?

Please don't forget that the young now have to pay for their university education - previous generations got that free. And that university education now is less 'optional' than it was - with widening access comes the fact that for many of even the most basic jobs, these days, a degree is expected. So that means many young people, unless they've got rich parents to support them, start their working lives with 10 grand + of debt.

I think also, that unless you've experienced it - ie wanted to be a FTB within the last 5 years or so - it is very hard to understand quite how soul-destroying watching house prices go up monthly often by more than you earn, can be. There is very little incentive to knuckle down and save hard for a the ultimate goal of buying your own home, when the goal recedes more quickly than you can save for it. So I think pinkshoes et al have their cause and effect mixed up. Young people go and get a plasma screen, or whatever BECAUSE they know they haven't got a cat-in-hell's chance of buying their own property.

It is simply nonsense to say that past generations had it as hard - they DIDN'T. For example, from today's Guardian:

the average home (is) now worth an extraordinary nine times average earnings.

When my parents bought their first home, they did it on one (manual worker's) salary, and the building society would not lend more than 2 and a half times that salary. They were able to buy a 3 bed house in Finchley (nice London suburb, zone 3) on that. Value today? About £500,000. Not many manual workers earning £150,000 today....

By all means, argue that buying a house requires some saving. But to patronise a whole generation who have already put up with enough through nothing other than an accident of birth...stinks.

The only way we could have bought a house would have been to stretch ourselves to dangerous levels, or buy somewhere wholly unsuitable. We have children, so a tiny flat would not have been suitable. We chose to rent instead. But don't stigmatise us as lazy - on the contrary in not risking our family's security by taking on huge mortgage debt, we (and I include all those in a similar situation) have demonstrated sensible financial planning, not laziness and waste.

Bogof_Babe

Sapphire, I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned marriage. In the old days, young people either lived with their parents or rented a small flat or bedsit. Then they got married, and the two wages (because they generally got married before they had kids or pregnancies) enabled them to get a mortgage on a starter home.

You never seem to hear the term 'starter home' these days, do you? The natural progression of things was 2 x salaries = 1 or 2 bed flat or house, then in a few years time when earnings had increased, people thought about having a family and moved to a 3-bed home.

It's all the wrong way round nowadays.

I do agree that modern day houses are not designed for multi-generational living, as they tend to be pretty cramped anyway, not to mention poor sound-proofing and short on bathroom facilities. Many 3-bed houses don't even have a separate dining room or second reception room, so it is hard to envisage a couple of grandparents in their 70's fitting in well with a couple in their 40's and assorted teenagers, all sharing the same space.

Many bedrooms are just a foot or so up from boxrooms. You couldn't expect gran and grandad to sleep in bunk beds with nowhere to keep anything, could you?

carolt

No, Bogof_Babe, as I explained in my post, and several others in theirs, my parents bought a 3 bedroomed house on a 2 and a half times multiple of ONE salary - not two. They didn't buy a 1 or 2 bed flat or 'starter home' and it wasn't in a crummy area - they didn't need to. They were ordinary working people, earning what I would guess was pretty much the average wage at the time. And they were able to buy a nice 3 bed semi in a pleasant area.

That WAS possible then, contrary to what you suggest. It clearly is NOT now.

Bogof_Babe

Sorry carolt, I was already typing my post before I saw yours.

When we married in 1974 we were both working (okay only fairly junior office jobs) but we got laughed out of the Halifax when we went in to see about a mortgage, and had to trawl around two or three other BS's before we found one that would consider us.

We bought a modest 3-bed semi (tiny kitchen, tiny garden), for £8,250, but both lots of parents gave us £1,000 each towards it. Even so it was a real struggle to make ends meet for the first year or so. I think our combined take-home pay was about £45 a week, and the mortgage was half of that. OH worked as a bus cleaner for about 20 hours a week (mostly weekends but also evenings after work) for £1 an hour so that we could eat and pay the bills. Thank goodness for the works subsidised canteen so we got a cooked meal once a day.

I know wages have not kept up with house price inflation, and I think landlords are being somewhat disingenuous taking advantage of people who have little or no alternative than to rent.

jyonda

Pinkshoes: was your post about the 'me me me' generation a brilliant example of your sarcasm? If so I tip my hat to your dry wit genius.

If you were actually serious then, perhaps you'd like to explain to those with children why they should live in accommodation smaller than the council would provide just to get 'a foot on the housing ladder' (pyramid).

You seem to think that FTB'S are all twenty-somethings with designer clothes, ipods, plasma screens, holidays and new cars who if they just stayed in the odd weekend would easily afford a 3 bed semi.

Speak for yourself.

I'd like to add that the most materialistic people I've come across are those who can't help but grin smugly from ear to ear as they tell you how much money they 'made' from property.

Ipod £200
Car £10,000
Holiday £1500
Clothes £500
Plasma telly £1000

3 bed semi £300,000
Stamp duty £10,500
Legal fees £1500
Surveyor £1000

Next to the cost of housing, Ipods look like staggeringly good value.

pickles110564

jyonda wrote: »

If you were actually serious then, perhaps you'd like to explain to those with children why they should live in accommodation smaller than the council would provide just to get 'a foot on the housing ladder' (pyramid).

We waited to have children until we could afford to buy a house big enough to fit everyone in, you lot can't wait and blame everyone but yourselves.
Go without holidays etc like we did,work all the hours God sends and save up.

carolt

How dare you preach, pickles110564? When I got pregnant with my eldest (now nearly 8), house prices were easily affordable - we had been working abroad and so did not already own our own place. As luck would have it, we returned to the UK at the exact same point that house prices went through the roof. Of course, had we had the benefit of hindsight, we would have begged, borrowed (from family), if not stolen, to buy our own place, as prices which had just shot up in by 33-50% in the 3 months since I'd been looking at various properties to buy, were destined to go up by another 300% on those levels. But of course I didn't have the benefit of hindsight. I've since had more children because I wasn't going to plan my family on the basis of when, if ever, house prices stabilised, or returned to long-term average levels re incomes. Shockingly - to you, at least, I chose to do that in rented accommodation. My children are no worse off for it, and I would rather have them than a dozen houses at any price.

What makes you think we HAVEN'T gone without holidays, worked all the hours AND some more, saved up?

What gives you the right to patronise us????? :mad:

You really don't get it, do you? NO MATTER HOW HARD WE WORKED AND SAVED UP, OUR HOUSE PRICES WOULD STILL BE 3 TIMES THE PRICES YOU PAID, IN REAL TERMS!!!!!

Instead of criticising others, on no grounds whatsoever, try appreciating your good fortune for what it is.

LUCK.

lieutenant_dan

I think pinkshoes is getting a lot of unfair flak.

She's quite right about the attitude that exists now, about buy now and pay later. And I'm not sure you can attribute young people splashing out on plasma screens and expensive holidays/designer clothes with the impossibility of buying a property. See it more as a symptom of an easily obtainable credit culture and the MTV generation seeing these lifestyle programmes of the rich and famous, the plastic in their wallets lets them live out these dreams.

And when people say their parents and that generation had it hard, it was hard but not impossible, as has been shown with numerous examples in the thread of average wage earners being able to still buy houses. Point is now it is virtually impossible for that scenario to occur. But it was probably hard back then in different ways because the credit card culture did not exist, so you literally had to spend what you had and if you couldn't afford something, then you went without. I don't think that's such a bad thing at all, as you will know a lot more about the value of money in these instances and appreciate things more than if you just whack something on the plastic. And managing debts and the stress it can cause was not an issue. But the main thing is they had their own roof over their heads, so as long as the mortgage got paid, that was the important thing.

I do empathise though with many of the sentiments in this thread because I too am stuck on the outside of the housing market, and it is demoralising.

But think the lines are getting blurred a bit and the debates are entirely different issues, the easy credit buy now pay later culture and the out of reach house prices. Pinkshoes is right in the sense that saving up for a deposit/making sacrifices is alien to this generation generally when you can have things straight away with credit. Haven't heard that saying "saving up for a rainy day" for a long, long time. But on the other hand, it is virtually impossible to save the figures needed now on even above average wages.

Turnbull2000

No use trying to reason with a clown, carolt.

Lavendyr

pickles110564 wrote: »

We waited to have children until we could afford to buy a house big enough to fit everyone in, you lot can't wait and blame everyone but yourselves.
Go without holidays etc like we did,work all the hours God sends and save up.

How very dare you! :rolleyes:

Seriously, I find your post pretty patronising, not to mention a completely inaccurate generalisation. While I have no doubt there are some people out there much like you describe, it is definitely not the case today that the reason FTBs can't afford houses is that they don't work hard enough!

My partner and I both have stressful full-time jobs which often involve significant unpaid overtime to meet requirements. We work hard at them and we have good salaries - 50k gross, between us. We are limited in our choice of areas in which to live by the fact that we work in different towns and need to live in a location which is reachable by both of us. We do not go on *any* holidays, expensive or otherwise - when we take holiday, we stay at home or visit relatives for free. We do not fritter away our money, we are extremely tight with it. We cook for ourselves, from scratch, we go out for dinner once a month at most, we save as much of our salaries as possible. Oh, and we are not in debt (aside from my own student loan), pay all credit card balances in full each month, budget carefully and have some quite substantial savings given our age (which we have earned ourselves, through our own hard work - not through inheritance).

In the area in which we live, we could just about afford to buy a grotty 1-bed flat in a dodgy area by borrowing 3.5x our joint salaries. For the privilege, we would be paying more in interest alone each month to the bank than we are currently paying in rent to live in a 2-bedroom house in a safe area. So yes, theoretically we could "get on the ladder" but we have to think of what makes most financial sense, not just in the short term but over the next few years - as opposed to giving into the "must get onto the ladder" mentality.