In work poverty due to overpriced housing costs

westernpromise

PasturesNew wrote: »

I've always been a single female, so I've been annoyed at 3-4-5x JOINT salary mortgages making it tough on one sole income.

Both could still work, but only one count towards a mortgage. It used to typically be (3x main salary + 1x 2nd salary), which was hard enough to compete with as a single female (men on average earning more than women to start with).

Mind you, even saving's hard for any single. £1500 take home salary of one, after roof over your head paid, council tax paid, basic bills paid, food paid, travel to work paid, clothes/haircuts for work paid, you can end up with £300/month for "everything else including saving, socialising, holidays, fripperies". TWO people with £1500 apiece would come out of it with closer to £1500 between them each month. A single buys a £900 sofa and that's 3 months they have to save/wait.... a couple buys a £900 sofa and they've still got £600 that month left over to buy a big telly, go out for meals and socialise.... start again on the 1st of the next month.

Hard saving by a single could therefore be, say, £300/month, but a couple could save £1500. And if house prices are going up by £4-500/month, that's the single finished before they started and the couple are still in the game.

The irony is bitter, is it not? The feminist assumption of the 1960s was that men going out to work had all the fun and all the economic power. If women could have careers, they could have all that.

In fact what men had was 45 to 50 years of drudgery paying for everything. The effect of two salaries has chiefly been to inflate the price of the one, very large thing whose price was always explicitly linked to salary. The result of all that economic freedom is that we're all indentured serfs now. Two salaries are required to fund what one used to, because of course couples are going to bid up the price of property, and the expansion of the workforce has caused the value of jobs to be offered down because there is a greater supply of labour.

As I've observed before, where the 3.5x main / 2.5x main + 1x second formula originated was with sexist taxation. Wives' earnings were historically a line item on their husbands' tax returns. They had no personal allowance of their own; instead, he had a married man's allowance and her earnings were added to his and taxed at his marginal rate. If he was a high enough earner to get into the 83% level that Labour took us to, that meant that the working wife lost £6 out of every £7 she earned, because in effect her entire salary was taxed at that level. Amusingly, if she overpaid tax, hubby got the refund.:rotfl::rotfl:

There was clearly no point any wife working on those terms. By the time she's travelled to and from work and bought a work wardrobe, she's probably net paying rather than being paid to work. If he earned less, there might be some point, but nonetheless the relative ability of a married woman to fund a mortgage versus a married man was demonstrably less even if both were on the same salary because no PA + his marginal rate.

The lending multiples simply reflected reality. This wasn't changed until 1988, when the Tories gave married women their own tax allowance and hence tax independence. Labour, predictably, voted against it.

The only way we'll see a return to 3.5x one salary is if the state goes back to a policy of confiscating wives' salaries via taxation. There might be some support for this among troglodytic Labour voters, who were happy for women to be kept out of the workforce, but probably not among the other 80% of the electorate, so it ain't gonna happen.

Malthusian

PasturesNew wrote: »

Mind you, even saving's hard for any single. £1500 take home salary of one, after roof over your head paid, council tax paid, basic bills paid, food paid, travel to work paid, clothes/haircuts for work paid, you can end up with £300/month for "everything else including saving, socialising, holidays, fripperies". TWO people with £1500 apiece would come out of it with closer to £1500 between them each month. A single buys a £900 sofa and that's 3 months they have to save/wait.... a couple buys a £900 sofa and they've still got £600 that month left over to buy a big telly, go out for meals and socialise.... start again on the 1st of the next month.

Obvious solution: house-share.

I've no idea where this recent idea that a single person below the median income should easily be able to afford an attractive studio flat without sacrificing in other areas came from.

And I rented a studio flat straight out of university - but I am an introvert and after uni I was willing to pay a premium (probably at least £200pm in 2007 money) to not live with strangers.

My sofa cost me £0 because it came from Freecycle. It would have been stark raving mad to spend £900 on a new sofa to sit on by myself in my fairly grotty flat.

MEM62

I understand the economics having been a single man for 20+ years. Fortunately, in my case I was able to purchase a flat on a single income (in 1987) but, at the age of 57, I probably come from the last generation that was able to do that. Within a few years of me buying you really needed two incomes.

Single people also typically pay more for holidays (single room occupation) and, as you have pointed out, any household and general expenses are often a set cost work out much less per head for a couple.

The thing it is a consequence of your choice to remain single in the exactly the same way that it was for me. A sofa cost what a sofa costs. A TV costs what a TV costs. Manufacturing is not cheaper because they are being sold to an individual and not a couple or family.

Will all make our life choices and have to deal with whatever life brings as a consequence of that.

lisyloo

Good for you.
I don’t think that everyone chooses their predicament but it seems ridiculous to expect businesses to sell their wares for 1/2 price.
Single people are in a better position to move to cheaper areas with only one set of family and one job to change and possibly no kids to uproot either.
So whilst I think it’s harsh the option to move is there.

Malthusian

Sofas cost anything down to £0 if you are a single person because you can get a tatty one from Freecycle and nobody is going to question your decision.

If you are the social type and regularly have friends come round and thus need a decent sofa for them to sit on, then you will probably houseshare.

lisyloo

By houseshare do you mean buy with other people?
Isn’t this fraught with difficulty?
E.g. people fall out or one wants to exit?

edgex

Malthusian wrote: »

Obvious solution: house-share.

I've no idea where this recent idea that a single person below the median income should easily be able to afford an attractive studio flat without sacrificing in other areas came from.

And I rented a studio flat straight out of university - but I am an introvert and after uni I was willing to pay a premium (probably at least £200pm in 2007 money) to not live with strangers.

My sofa cost me £0 because it came from Freecycle. It would have been stark raving mad to spend £900 on a new sofa to sit on by myself in my fairly grotty flat.

House/flat share makes sense if you can find a 2bed somewhere & arrange to share with someone you know.

Anything bigger than that & your looking at HMOs, which vary considerably.
It used to be that there were boarding houses, big houses with a live in owner.

Malthusian

lisyloo wrote: »

By houseshare do you mean buy with other people?

No, I mean rent a bedroom with shared facilities. As many people in their 20s or 30s who have not yet reached the stage of moving in with a long-term partner always have done.

Until economic growth and rising prosperity made it possible for more people to rent a self-contained property as a singleton. The unfortunate side-effect of which is silly entitlement complexes.

The context was the question "how does a single person save up while spending x hundred per month on a studio flat plus £900 every so often to buy a posh sofa to sit on all by yourself" and the obvious answer is "don't".

Unless you place a premium on living alone. Which is a perfectly sensible decision, it just means you either have to sacrifice in other areas, or wait longer to afford a house deposit, or never buy a house at all. Just make a decision.

edgex wrote:

Anything bigger than that & your looking at HMOs, which vary considerably.

The quality of everything varies considerably, especially at the mass-market end, which is what someone who earns below median income but wants to save up for a house deposit in addition to all their other expenses is looking for.

AG47

edgex wrote: »

House/flat share makes sense if you can find a 2bed somewhere & arrange to share with someone you know.

Anything bigger than that & your looking at HMOs, which vary considerably.
It used to be that there were boarding houses, big houses with a live in owner.

Until the house price correction comes there will be more multi occupancy homes, sometimes a couple of families in one house sharing

Cakeguts

ska_lover wrote: »

I know what you mean OP.

I think there is a lot of in-work poverty in everything - not just housing.

It seems to be the norm for young couples to stay living with parents whilst saving or get a pay out from Bank of Mum and Dad for the first deposit - and that is fantastic for them, however, not everyone is lucky enough to have any of these options

Not everyone has the opportunity to go to University, to Save, or to get handouts, or to extended stay at parents

Whatever your background, you are entitled to be housed - either rented or brought. Yes I used that buzz-word - entitled. Everyone is entitled to be housed

I am literally sick of hearing the word 'entitled' used incorrectly or overused. It has become the new snooze-worthy buzzword. Like 'Snowflake' or 'Random'

Life is a lot harder going down the generations - it was harder for me to get housed than my parents and it is harder for my adult kids to do same. Yes, each generation has it's hurdles, but in reality, there is less of everything to go round these days than there was ten, twenty, thirty years ago

Shoot me now.

Actually I think the entitled to be housed only applies to under 18s who have no control over housing themselves.



You are not entitled to be housed by someone else. You are expected to arrange your housing yourself.



I think much of the housing problems in the UK at the moment are being caused by this expectation that you are entitled to be housed by someone else. No one is entitled to be housed by someone else they are all entitled to arrange their own housing.



No one is entitled to be housed by any local authority or housing association or private landlord. Adults are expected to make their own arrangements unless they are vulnerable adults but many of the people who expect someone else to house them aren't.