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Interest rates at historical lows, housing prices through the roof, wages stagnant and Brexit.
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I’m 33 and we got our 3 bed house through hard work and a long and drawn out plan. 4 of us bought a house, the savings allowed us to save like mad, didn’t spend anything for 2 years. Then we sold out and our split of that allowed for our deposit on our own place, just the two of us.
Living in a house share is not for the faint hearted, it got us here by my god did we pay for it
It can be done though. Oh and by the way, mid-terrace is pretty normal in densely populated areas. You’re going to have to move out, away from it all to have an affordable detached house. Like north Cambridge or something at minimum. You can’t have the hustle and bustle and a detached house unless you’re fortunate or minted (or both).
Work out what you want and where you want it, we considered moving up north a bit but it all worked out in the end.
Good luck!0 -
If Help to Buy is seen as a waste of taxpayers money, Housing Benefit is almost twice as much money from the taxpayer and arguably just supplements landlord's profits. A strange free market.
Yes but it's a necessary evil, rather than a bribe to the middle classes.
Having said that in many areas it is incredibly inefficient. My view is that I don't mind my taxes helping a low income family to keep a roof over their heads across most of the country at a few hundred pounds a month. The idea that thousands is being paid in London to landlords by councils is troubling, people might otherwise call it driving the poor out of London but how do you justify taxing people on far lowe earnings to spend on excessive rents in the capital and surrounding areas.
Provision of social housing should be better and needs to be better regulated; of all the inequities in housing then right to buy is certainly up there, the most profitable option for many people is to find an elderly relative, buy their house and then sell when they pass away, potentially hundreds of thousands in a couple of years.
Very interesting documentary a few weeks ago by Russell Kane on his parents property, though not a fan of him as a comedian. His parents bought their house in Essex in the eighties, £22k reduced to £14k by occupier discount. His mother sold in the last decade for £260k, current occupier rents and valuation is £450k. If the money had gone into building more social housing then it wouldn't be such a problem, but that's where most of the housing benefit is now going, if council housing had been retained or replaced then rent to landlords would be a fraction of what it is now.0 -
Even after excluding London as a special case the situation is England remains poor value in terms of quality of life. For England to be normal we need South East's salaries and North West's house prices.
There are some valid counterarguments to OP and I would generally be on the side against "snowflake generation" but there are several replies here totally detached from reality. Until the late 90s a home was four to five multiple of a salary. A home not a palace but also not the pathetic excuse of a "starter studio flat" under the guise of "affordable". To criticise a 30 year old for not being able to afford a house in England and blame as "poor life choices" one must either be ignorant of salaries and house prices.
Low mortgage rates alone are useless. Lack of enough supply and affordable credit benefits BTL and older not first time buyers.
True inflation is low as are interest rates so comparing net result is not much worse than 70s or 80s for a saver but the real winners have been those rich enough to invest in the stock market.
No I won't vote for Corbyn's Labour because Socialist style is not the solution. Yes the salary and housing balance in England is unsustainable and unhealthy. The political manipulation to keep house prices high is not in the country's interest and has very negative social and life consequences not just simply economic.0 -
Clearly house prices are affordable now. If they werent large numbers of houses would be standing empty. The market ensures that the number of people who can afford to buy a house approximately equals the number of houses available.
If that were true the private rental market would be tiny, catering only to those who didn’t want to buy for whatever reason.0 -
onwards&upwards wrote: »If that were true the private rental market would be tiny, catering only to those who didn’t want to buy for whatever reason.
The private renting market is large because there are not enough houses to accommodate all the people who would like to buy one. Therefore the market restricts the number of people who can afford to buy as those with access to more money can outbid those with less. Renting overall enables more people to fit in fewer houses.
People will always be complaining that house prices are too high. Even if there were enough houses they would then be upset that they could not afford a 4 bed detached with parking for 2 cars and had to make do with what they considered to be a “grotty” 3 bed semi.0 -
If you want to know why house prices increased rapidly in the 1990s and early 2000s have a look at http://www.tylermm.com/mortgage-borrowing-limits.html
The operation of the lending market enabled larger mortgages. Those people with the larger mortgages could pay more for the houses they wanted pushing up prices.0 -
Very interesting documentary a few weeks ago by Russell Kane on his parents property, though not a fan of him as a comedian. His parents bought their house in Essex in the eighties, £22k reduced to £14k by occupier discount. His mother sold in the last decade for £260k, current occupier rents and valuation is £450k. If the money had gone into building more social housing then it wouldn't be such a problem, but that's where most of the housing benefit is now going, if council housing had been retained or replaced then rent to landlords would be a fraction of what it is now.
Similar kind of issues with military housing sales... and the absolute travesty that is the conservatives 'Right to buy' policy for social housing tennants..
Wins a few votes tho0 -
Yes but it's a necessary evil, rather than a bribe to the middle classes.
It's the middle classes who own the companies that get to pay lower wages to low earners because the Government will top them up. So yes it is a bribe to the middle classes.
If Housing Benefit disappeared overnight the middle classes wouldn't allow their shop staff, cleaners and ambulance drivers to freeze on the streets. They would increase their wages to the amount necessary to survive, and get it back via reduced tax.
All subsidy is middle-class subsidy because all money flows to those who own the means of production. (C) John McDonnell.0 -
To the OP:
I understand your frustration but you're not going to get a lot of sympathy from this forum because the majority of posters are older, well off and don't want to be told their wealth was built on luck as well as hard work.
There's no point getting angry as it's not going to change how people are or your situation, so get practical.
1) Vote for a party which represents the younger generations interests and encourage your friends and family to do so too.
2) Cut costs where you can to build up the biggest deposit you can in the shortest timeframe you can.
3) Don't overlook moving out of London, you'll probably be glad of that when you're past 30.
If all else fails, don't get too disappointed about renting. A lifetime of that may not cost you too much more than home ownership as you won't be financing things like roof repairs, new boilers etc, and if you're not saving for a deposit then you should consider hard pension salary sacrifice instead which will give you the benefit of avoiding 32%+ in tax and will be a necessity if you do end up having to rent in your later years.0
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