Young people can't afford to buy homes

[Bosscat]

My username was in memory of those terrible curry pies they used to sell at Turf Moor.

However, I think there is a huge market for a real curry in a pie.

Pukka's Chicken Balti pies are OK

[Rileybobs]

Just had a read through some of this. Clearly there's not enough affordable housing in areas where people want to live. There is affordable housing in some areas. In Nelson and other areas families have moved in to deteriorate the area to drive down house prices so their extended family can buy them cheaper. If you want to live in more affluent area then you have to pay the going rate.

In years gone by people scrimped and saved more and did without many things just to keep a roof over their heads. Now many young people who could get on the housing ladder spend money on the latest technology. expensive nights out boozing, expensive finance on brand new cars that they could otherwise not afford. People could make more sacrifices in where they choose to live and what they spend their money on. They want everything they want immediately generation driven by social media and reality tv.

Not strictly true. In Harrogate, for example, new housing developments are subject to 40% affordable housing provision.

As for your comments about young people, I think you’re just making that up. Do you know many young people who complain about being unable to afford to buy a home whilst splashing the cash on cars, technology and nights out? Can you imagine how difficult it is for a young person to save £15k, for example.

[Woodleyclaret]

John Prescott came up with a part ownership idea that was a good idea.The buyer bought a percentage of the house and the mortgagee /building society owned the rest.Gradually as the salaries rose more and more of the house was purchased till the buyer owned 100%.
Unfortunately this was distorted by the idea of mortgage and rental payments causing serious hardship and crippling payments.
Our areas homes have 60% mortgages and a price of over £300,000 laughing described as starter homes.A£40,000 deposit is needed.
Londoners sell flats and move out to Sunny Woodley and the benefit to locals of all the multiple house building is zero.I rent a 3 bed house at £1200 pcm.
I work in Thame and own a house on a buy to let in Nelson which is rented out with just enougj income to pay the mortgage.On a good day my house will sell for £120,000 but produce no profit due to lower prices.
I moved for work of which there is lots here.Renting is the price I pay and put up with my 500 mile round trip to the Turf.
100% mortgages got us on the property ladder originally and that's the only realistic solution ,that and council house lets with subsidies wont be happening anytime soon either.

[South West Claret.]

I see a few still don’t get it

[Imploding Turtle]

Just had a read through some of this. Clearly there's not enough affordable housing in areas where people want to live. There is affordable housing in some areas. In Nelson and other areas families have moved in to deteriorate the area to drive down house prices so their extended family can buy them cheaper. If you want to live in more affluent area then you have to pay the going rate.

In years gone by people scrimped and saved more and did without many things just to keep a roof over their heads. Now many young people who could get on the housing ladder spend money on the latest technology. expensive nights out boozing, expensive finance on brand new cars that they could otherwise not afford. People could make more sacrifices in where they choose to live and what they spend their money on. They want everything they want immediately generation driven by social media and reality tv.

[dsr]

Well of course more young people can’t afford to buy homes as their wages and conditions are a lot lower in general then say in the 70’s.

Quite simply if you have lived through those periods you will have witnessed it in person and well aware, although an awful lot of those people didn’t realise the so called drip drip slowly slowly way it came in by successive Governments.

These Governments did it by making it virtually impossible for an awful lot of people to improve wages & conditions by banning Trade Unions from actually helping their members (and non- union members if they only new it)! to improve their lot.

Thatcher’s Government was responsible for this dumming down of rates for the majority of workers, sadly the Tory Blair Government did little to bring back that regulater of the economy for employees .

That is the historical evidence if you actually want the truth and not another spurious and frankly excuse from the obvious quarters.

Presumably if wages are a lot lower than they were in the seventies, it will also be very rare to see young people running a car, going on a foreign holiday, or getting drunk?

[boatshed bill]

Hasn't this always been the case?
You either share with mates and save, don't p!ss half your wages against the wall, or fall short. It's that simple.

[South West Claret.]

Presumably if wages are a lot lower than they were in the seventies, it will also be very rare to see young people running a car, going on a foreign holiday, or getting drunk?

No sorry dsr it doesn’t work like that if Young people find themselves not able to fund a large project like buying a house then they find a cheaper way of living (at home for accommodation) for instance and then spend money that they do have spare on other things instead, think they call it “a lifestyle choice” these days.

In the vast majority of cases the “basic rate” of wages (the hourly amount) are just to low now a days for the reasons I have given in my original post.

Thankfully I was born when I was fortunate enough to benefit from a much more fairer run society, not like now sadly not for just young people but for older people as well who because they have (less rights at work) they do struggle.

An employee has to have more clout at work to use against the employer...it’s as simple as that.

Only way it’s been done in history that I know about in the last 50 odd years is as I have said is by sticking together in a trade union and staying out of debt.

[Rileybobs]

Hasn't this always been the case?
You either share with mates and save, don't p!ss half your wages against the wall, or fall short. It's that simple.

In 1992 the average house price was 3 times the average salary. Now it is over 5 times. Add in the fact that banks used to offer 100% mortgages and it really isn’t simple.

[dsr]

In 1992 the average house price was 3 times the average salary. Now it is over 5 times. Add in the fact that banks used to offer 100% mortgages and it really isn’t simple.

It's a lot less simple than you have made it, certainly. You have ignored interest rates and income tax.

In 1992, average salary was £12,088 and £2,166 (18%) of that went in income tax. With interest rates at 10%, a mortgage of three times salary would cost a further £3,995 p.a. (33% of salary) which means that you are left with £5,927, or 49% of salary.

In 2017, average salary is £26,260 and £2,892 (11%) goes in tax. With interest rates at 3%, a mortgage of five times salary would cost a further £7,540 p.a. (29% of salary) and what was left was £15,828, or 60% of salary.

£5,927 in 1992 would be worth £11,661 today based on RPI, so in spite of the house price increase, the house buyer has an extra £4,167 in his or her pocket. You see, it isn't what you would expect.

(If you had chosen 1990 instead of 1992, when interest rates were more like 13-14% and house prices 20% higher, the results would have been even more encouraging for the now-buyers.)

[Burnleyareback2]

Young people seem happy with paying for £50 mobile phones a month, sky TV etc etc.

It’s all just a myth, save up like we all had to

[Rileybobs]

Young people seem happy with paying for £50 mobile phones a month, sky TV etc etc.

It’s all just a myth, save up like we all had to

Getting rid of sky and a mobile phone isn’t going to go very far in helping a young person to save £15,000+.

[dsr]

Getting rid of sky and a mobile phone isn’t going to go very far in helping a young person to save £15,000+.

A couple of grand a year goes quite along way in helping a young person save £15,000. If they are expecting to do it in 5 years, for example, it'll bring it down to 3 years.

[taio]

Getting rid of sky and a mobile phone isn’t going to go very far in helping a young person to save £15,000+.

Yes it will. Wrong

[Rileybobs]

OK, I concede that it would obviously help but that isn’t the issue. Smart phones and subscription-based TV are part of everyday life. Obviously people could get rid of their phone, watch only terrestrial television and war beans on toast every night but should that really be necessary. Getting onto the property ladder is becoming harder and pretending it’s because young people are lazy and wasteful is ignoring the problem.

As for the point above about interest rates, the issue isn’t the affordability of the repayments, it’s about saving the money for a deposit.

[dsr]

OK, I concede that it would obviously help but that isn’t the issue. Smart phones and subscription-based TV are part of everyday life. Obviously people could get rid of their phone, watch only terrestrial television and war beans on toast every night but should that really be necessary. Getting onto the property ladder is becoming harder and pretending it’s because young people are lazy and wasteful is ignoring the problem.

That's a different argument. Arguing that young people nowadays can't afford houses while 25 years ago people could afford houses, that's one thing. Arguing that young people can't afford houses because they have spent all their money on very expensive phones and satellite TV? (Not to mention cars and foreign holidays. Which you didn't mention.)

Your argument is that young people nowadays can't afford houses because they choose to spend their money on other things. So is mine. So we agree.

[SmudgetheClaret]

Maybe if we stopped increasing the population by 350000 a year that might stop people fighting over houses..

[Rileybobs]

That's a different argument. Arguing that young people nowadays can't afford houses while 25 years ago people could afford houses, that's one thing. Arguing that young people can't afford houses because they have spent all their money on very expensive phones and satellite TV? (Not to mention cars and foreign holidays. Which you didn't mention.)

Your argument is that young people nowadays can't afford houses because they choose to spend their money on other things. So is mine. So we agree.

No, my argument is that a house now costs 5 times a persons salary rather than 3. So a person would need to save for nearly twice the duration.

[Rileybobs]

Maybe if we stopped increasing the population by 350000 a year that might stop people fighting over houses..

How exactly would you propose that we do that?

[SmudgetheClaret]

How exactly would you propose that we do that?

Build a wall of course ...

[duncandisorderly]

OK, I concede that it would obviously help but that isn’t the issue. Smart phones and subscription-based TV are part of everyday life. Obviously people could get rid of their phone, watch only terrestrial television and war beans on toast every night but should that really be necessary. Getting onto the property ladder is becoming harder and pretending it’s because young people are lazy and wasteful is ignoring the problem.

As for the point above about interest rates, the issue isn’t the affordability of the repayments, it’s about saving the money for a deposit.

Quite the image.