Non - House prices

It is ridiculous that if an older couple do want to downsize they have to pay stamp duty on the smaller property! Maybe fuel increases will incentivise people living in smaller properties.
 
RobTrent said:
What about your lorry driver mate?;-)

And I wasn’t comparing house prices with wages.
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He's in West Yorkshire but tbf there are lorry drivers all over the country and all their wages will have gone up the same.

You were responding to a post that was talking about house prices.
 
SlowDownDerek said:
He's in West Yorkshire but tbf there are lorry drivers all over the country and all their wages will have gone up the same.

You were responding to a post that was talking about house prices.
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Any thread will have lots of topics. I queried the wages differential not house price rises.
 
Case study:

My folks bought a 3 bedroom house with good size garden and garage in Ensbury Park in 1995 for £70k.

My Mum was a bit younger than I am now back then. My Dad slightly older.

My wife and I have both worked full time since we were 18/19 - about 20 years - and rented that whole time. Only my Dad worked at all.

My wife and I have a deposit greater than the total price my parents paid for the house.

And we still cannot afford to buy that house.
 
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kirsikka said:
But, you know, I saw a young person buy a coffee in Pret once so it's all their fault.
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I kind of get this i kind of don’t! My eldest moans a lot about how hard it is to get on the housing ladder. She works full time in the care industry. I sat with her the other day to do a bit of a financial sort out. She has a 45 quid phone contract, Netflix and Amazon prime, eats out once or twice a week, goes clubbing and pays nightclub booze prices, loves a Starbucks, goes to Ibiza, gets McDonald breakfasts on Deliveroo. Id say knowing her friends and my middle child that she isn’t unusual with all of those things for someone in their early 20’s.

At her age the only thing available like that to me was nightclubs…apart from eating out which was something you only did with parents, and in those clubs we didn’t buy any booze just water :). Had all those things been available I probably would be sat writing this in rented accommodation still!
 
simonhpieman said:
Case study:

My folks bought a 3 bedroom house with good size garden and garage in Ensbury Park in 1995 for £70k.

My Mum was a bit younger than I am now back then. My Dad slightly older.

My wife and I have both worked full time since we were 18/19 - about 20 years. Only my Dad worked at all.

My wife and I have a deposit greater than the total price my parents paid for the house.

And we still cannot afford to buy that house.
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Don't doubt that at all, although obviously depends on your personal earnings, equity from a current property (if any) etc. But the point is that in many other parts of the country your £70k deposit would go much much further towards the total cost of that equivalent 3 bed house and you would be able to buy it.
 
Neil Dawson said:
I kind of get this i kind of don’t! My eldest moans a lot about how hard it is to get on the housing ladder. She works full time in the care industry. I sat with her the other day to do a bit of a financial sort out. She has a 45 quid phone contract, Netflix and Amazon prime, eats out once or twice a week, goes clubbing and pays nightclub booze prices, loves a Starbucks, goes to Ibiza, gets McDonald breakfasts on Deliveroo. Id say knowing her friends and my middle child that she isn’t unusual with all of those things for someone in their early 20’s.

At her age the only thing available like that to me was nightclubs…apart from eating out which was something you only did with parents, and in those clubs we didn’t buy any booze just water :). Had all those things been available I probably would be sat writing this in rented accommodation still!
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Bottom line is that its a totally different world with totally different ways to spend your money these days compared to the 70's and 80's. Credit cards - never had one until I was in my 30's, bank loans you had to go and see the Bank Manager and prove to him you could afford it.
Made me smile when you said about eating out, that never happened apart from a once or twice a year special event. Phone contracts, Uber, Netflix, holidays abroad, Starbucks, Deliveroo etc etc so many ways to spend that hard earned - I suppose its all about choices and lifestyles.
 
redharry said:
Bottom line is that its a totally different world with totally different ways to spend your money these days compared to the 70's and 80's. Credit cards - never had one until I was in my 30's, bank loans you had to go and see the Bank Manager and prove to him you could afford it.
Made me smile when you said about eating out, that never happened apart from a once or twice a year special event. Phone contracts, Uber, Netflix, holidays abroad, Starbucks, Deliveroo etc etc so many ways to spend that hard earned - I suppose its all about choices and lifestyles.
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These comparisons will always look stark across generations - as they would if you compare 70s and 80s lifestyles to the 40s and 50s. What's inescapable though is that houses are massively more expensive relative to wages these days and that means that, on average, people are much less wealthy now compared to their parents at a similar age.
 
redharry said:
Don't doubt that at all, although obviously depends on your personal earnings, equity from a current property (if any) etc. But the point is that in many other parts of the country your £70k deposit would go much much further towards the total cost of that equivalent 3 bed house and you would be able to buy it.
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Sorry, amended the post. We've rented for 20 years.

We could buy a house in a different part of the country but we don't want to live somewhere else. Should we have to? Cut all family ties just to own a house or wait until both my folks die. I could be well into my 60s when I take my first step on the housing ladder. Hooray! Go capitalism!

It's often overlooked, but the long term effects of renting a property where you can't put pictures on your wall, make any alteration to fit your lifestyle/work needs or even buy furniture you like to fit a space because a landlord can turf you out at any time with two months' notice and you find yourself with a load of furniture that won't fit in the next space you find to live, plus it costs a fortune to move it all... It can often feel like a really odd kind of limbo.

Another fun fact: I managed to save 10k last year. Due to house price increases, I'm further away from buying a property now than I was a year ago before I'd saved that 10k.

Regardless of what anyone says about the situation and interest rates and blah blah (fyi I'd rather pay 15% interest on a 20k mortgage in the 80s than the previously forecast 7% on a 200k+ one, thanks), my fingers are well and truly crossed for a collapse in house prices.
 
Neil Dawson said:
I kind of get this i kind of don’t! My eldest moans a lot about how hard it is to get on the housing ladder. She works full time in the care industry. I sat with her the other day to do a bit of a financial sort out. She has a 45 quid phone contract, Netflix and Amazon prime, eats out once or twice a week, goes clubbing and pays nightclub booze prices, loves a Starbucks, goes to Ibiza, gets McDonald breakfasts on Deliveroo. Id say knowing her friends and my middle child that she isn’t unusual with all of those things for someone in their early 20’s.

At her age the only thing available like that to me was nightclubs…apart from eating out which was something you only did with parents, and in those clubs we didn’t buy any booze just water :). Had all those things been available I probably would be sat writing this in rented accommodation still!
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I may have frequented some of the same clubs, and I seem to remember entrance fees and another 'off books' expense for which you maybe forgot to account.

Then there was music. We used to buy a lot of music because it wasn't all at our fingertips. People tend to forget how much you put into it because it was your era, and there were limited ways to hear it back then.

Plus printed media, people would buy weekly and monthly magazines, along with a daily newspaper rather than getting it all for free like now.

In the area I was working, people would buy their lunch every day from a local sandwich place, and often something at breakfast as well on the way in to work.

Then every summer people would go away. Depending on your preferences that could have been Ibiza, Ayia Napa or, if they weren't your scene, then some boozy Greek island or the like.

People would rent lots of movies from a store like Blockbuster in place of having a streaming sub. Two video rentals a month = about one Netflix sub.

There would usually be a meal out somewhere over the week as well, although more likely a small local restaurant with mates and a few drinks rather than one of the chains that dominate now.

Phone costs? No mobile phone, but you'd certainly rack up a bill organising stuff, unless you did it all from your work phone. Calls were expensive in the past! Then, when mobiles arrived for the masses with the 3210 it was another expense.

20-somethings still spent a lot back then. I know I did. I caned it pretty hard, and used every last red cent having a good time for a number of years. There was also the arrival of cheap flights to Europe and the mass spread of weekend city breaks. I partied in lots of European cities on the back of that.

Then there was rent. Cheap as chips compared to now. I was living in a house share in London zone 2. I had a massive attic room all to myself and was paying £60/week. That was all in, including all bills like electricity and water. The landlady even bought us a case of beer at xmas.

Then when I met my wife and we lived in different countries, we spent six months hopping back and forth from Helsinki of a weekend before she moved over.

After a few more years of partying we both decided to chill a bit and maybe find a place to call home. It didn't take too long of a staid lifestyle to scramble together money for a deposit between us. IIRC, £7k was all we needed.

That's the stage that is different now. Young people can do all the modern equivalent of what we did and piss their money up the wall. Good luck to them. Have a bit of fun whilst you're young. Everyone should get to experience it a bit. We're shouldn't be in a Victorian economy. However, now when they want to move on and settle a bit it's different. We could have a realistic chance of getting a deposit in a relatively short time if we put our minds to it.

Faced with the prospect of needing to save for 10+ years to get a deposit for a first place, I don't think I would have had the staying power. And whilst I'm sure we'll hear Yorkshiremen style stories of people who did, for most people in their 20s it would have been the same.
 
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kirsikka said:
I may have frequented some of the same clubs, and I seem to remember entrance fees and another 'off books' expense for which you maybe forgot to account.

.
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Depends who you knew ;)

Don’t mistake what I’m saying for ‘it was as hard in our day’, I know it wasn’t. I’m just saying there are a load more ways to spend money these days that are part of ‘essential’ everyday life. If it’s harder you need less not more. A coffee a day is about the equivalent of a 2k pay rise (to get the same net benefit). Having McDonald’s come to you is just unnecessary if you are saying you wish you had more money. Some generations have it harder than others, no point in moaning about things you can’t effect was what I was trying to tell my daughter. Her great grandparents mended socks and made a chicken go four days to afford a house. It’s unlucky but you have to adapt with it.
 
Neil Dawson said:
Depends who you knew ;)

Don’t mistake what I’m saying for ‘it was as hard in our day’, I know it wasn’t. I’m just saying there are a load more ways to spend money these days that are part of ‘essential’ everyday life. If it’s harder you need less not more. A coffee a day is about the equivalent of a 2k pay rise (to get the same net benefit). Having McDonald’s come to you is just unnecessary if you are saying you wish you had more money. Some generations have it harder than others, no point in moaning about things you can’t effect was what I was trying to tell my daughter. Her great grandparents mended socks and made a chicken go four days to afford a house. It’s unlucky but you have to adapt with it.
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Ban second homes. :fish:
 
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