Houses more affordable than 1970s

GreatApe

ukcarper wrote: »

Home ownership increased from 30% to 50% between 1950 and 1971 then to over 60% by 1991 so a lot of people were buying.

I bought my first house in early 70s if I was in a similar position today I could not buy same house even using present day mortgage rules. That tells me it is harder to buy now than It was in the 70s.

The UK overbuild homes especially in London (which saw big population declines from 1945-1991) so much so that by the mid 1990s you could buy ex local homes for less than material cost (you were getting the land the labor the utilities all for free)

Now you can make an argument if the state should mass build council homes so we have a true excess of homes but that is what is required if you want 1995 type prices and if you want London 1995 prices we need mass excess and mass exodus

Would ownership go up? Probably not by much but homes would be cheap.
The problem you face is building 10 million homes over ten years is going to be virtually impossible. But let's say you manage to do it. What is the outcome is it really that great? If we built 10 million homes in ten years we would have a similar homes per person figure as Germany the result won't be cheap homes the result seems to be with lots more homes many many more people just live alone. Germany has a crazy number of single person households.

Would a boom in single person households really be that much of an improvement in life for UK citizens? It seems just to result in a super low birth rate. Houses and rents would be cheaper but bills will be much more expensive per person. Germans pay lower rents but have much higher per person other housing costs.

Personally I think things are more or less OK in the UK
Life is hard if your a first gen migrant or are from a dysfunctional family but that is true the world over. For everyone else life is good life is easy in the UK

GreatApe

ukcarper wrote: »

You are talking absolute rubbish again and your take on inheritance is incorrect most people are in the 50s or older when they get a inheritance.

As for your last paragraph yes house are allocated on income and wealth but that doesn't effect the relative affordability between now and 70s.

Well there is a lot more capital in the system today than there was fifty years ago and since people buy with income and with capital if you look at just income you will draw the wrong conclusion

More simply when would you prefer to have been born 1950 or 2000?
You'd have to be mad to pick 1950 over 2000

GreatApe

westernpromise wrote: »

It was improving from a low base because it was so hard to achieve. So hard that only 50% did...

For all their complaints ownership for UK born persons is very close to peak levels only a few years before 2008 was ownership higher and that was because pre recession the black and grey market was given mortgages via no questions asked self certs.

There really is no problem the country has never been housed better than it is today

ukcarper

GreatApe wrote: »

Well there is a lot more capital in the system today than there was fifty years ago and since people buy with income and with capital if you look at just income you will draw the wrong conclusion

More simply when would you prefer to have been born 1950 or 2000?
You'd have to be mad to pick 1950 over 2000

Well I was born closer to 1950 than 2000 and am very happy with when I was born.

spadoosh

Malthusian wrote: »

Passing Economics AS level requires a bit more than picking up a copy of The Economist and repeating the widely-known fact that there was a sub-prime bubble.

Everyone who took an interest in the subject was aware of the risk that sub-prime lending posed to the global economy; the bit that was impossible to predict was that it would burst in 2007. For every person that correctly guessed the year and had a film made about them, a dozen shorted the markets in 2006 or 2005 and lost their shirt.

Tell me about it, i got 94% on the exam and still couldnt manage to pass it. I remember that score because for obvious reasons i was a bit bitter about it, it was weighted 60:40, youd think i did actually just hand over a copy of the economist.