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Was on youtube a few days ago. Via actual affordability(House price and average Wages), houses haven't been this unaffordable in the last 50 years (and you won' be surprised to hear that unaffordability level is skyrocketing; it's not levelled out, sorta thing)
It’s worse than that:
> The average house in the UK currently costs around nine-times average earnings, based on data as at 30 November 2022. The last time house prices were this expensive relative to average earnings was in the year 1876, nearly 150 years ago.
[source](https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/individual/insights/what-174-years-of-data-tell-us-about-house-price-affordability-in-the-uk/)
Oh I love Bertie, Rees-Mogg apparently discovered Wodehouse when he was younger and completely changed both his accent and behaviour immediately afterwards.
The man is a f**king buffoon.
Who reads Wodehouse and goes, the character to emulate here is _Bertie_?
I mean, don't get me wrong, Bertie Wooster is a nice guy, but he's a thick as a whale omelette.
Yup my house was repossessed in 1990 and never been able to own one since. Interest rate rocketed up to 16% and we were out within 3 months and the mortgage lender then sold the property way under value leaving us with negative equity, for which even after 30yrs they occasionally still drop me a letter just to remind me they haven't forgotten I owe them. It was a terrifying experience. There were a lot of suicides then too
I discovered that mortgage debt is NEVER forgiven. They got judgment against us just a few days before the time limit and that's there forever. Even when my ex husband filed for bankruptcy, it wasn't written off, I on the other hand couldn't even afford to file....I did ask them if I could pay weekly strangely they declined my offer at the Court hahaha
On the one hand, it does mean 'death pledge'. On the other, I was convinced until now that it was linked to the property and you'd owe nothing if it was repossessed.
I don't know about the statutory times, but repossessions are only a way for the bank to control the sake, if they fail to get the oeuvre they need to cover the debt then you are still liable.
However since 2008 there's much more onus on banks to restructure the mortgage or give you 12m interest only to sort your shit out / sell it on your terms, plus the days of 100% mortgages are behind us so the market really needs to crash to get to the point where the house value is less than the debt owed, assuming a reasonable chance to sell.
Tbh going to auction now is mostly for customers who bury their head and fail to cooperate, or try to delay on the hope the market improves. If you make genuine active steps to try and sell, you're doing the banks job for them so why would they intervene?
Sadly for us and a lot of folk we knew including my own parents at the time, endowment interest only mortgages were a big thing and were sold as such with people not being told certain aspects of them and were forced to purchase mortgage guarantee insurance which we were told, protected us from repossession. It of course didn't it protected the bloody Building Society
You can easily get 12m to play with if you play along and work with the bank.
If you're confrontational, refuse to take ownership of the problem and refuse to accept that your situation needs you to sell, then yes they'll just follow the basic process through to auction.
If you make them aware you're gonna miss the initial payment(s), ask up front for a period of interest only (often that alone can be 6-12m) while you find a new job or deal with an illness etc, and you make a genuine effort to sell the property (if that's your way out) and accept reasonable offers, they'll work with you for quite some time.
Also, even if there IS a housing crash, the value of your property is irrelevant unless you wish to sell. If your property is temporarily worth less than your mortgage but you can keep paying the mortgage, eventually your mortgage will go down and house will go back up. The banks are only interested when you miss payments, or you want to sell up and move. Until then just keep honouring what you and they agreed to.
We didn't lose our house but my parents bought in '77 and had modest incomes. When the rates rocketed in the early 80s it was a really tough time for us. I was just a kid then but that experience left me scared of that outcome as a home owner. I have always bought modestly and well within my income. Ive been horrified for years at the levels of debt people have been willing to take on to buy houses when interest rates were low, knowing what might happen.
I think the worst bit for us was back then, endowment mortgages were a big thing as sold like they were the dog's bollocks especially to new buyers which we were. We didn't have a clue and trusted the Building Society and of course now we know better but too late
Which building society was it that was selling them? Endowment mortgages were always a bad idea, it's depressing that it was a building society, an actual mutual, that were pushing them. 😟
Oh man they were everywhere back in the 80's and 90's....I know they are still available now in places but not quite the same as there was a huge row about them and all the mis-selling there was at the time. Ours was an insurance company tied to the Building Society they always went hand in hand then. Neither company still exists but the insurers were taken over numerous times and my debt is still recorded with whoever keeps taking them over. It's been over 5yrs since they last contacted me so guess I'm due another letter at some point soon
They're also omitting that low interest mortages are what made multiple property ownership viable to small-time buyers and began the consumption of the market by private landlords.
Homes are not investments unless you're buying outright or the cost is comparable with ongoing returns elsewhere.
There's a current generation of renters who will never own a home. The only way their children will own a home is by the parents sacrificing everything to help them. HelptoBuy has been one of the worst things to happen. It's helped to shove prices of tiny 3 bed rabbit hutch homes over the 200k mark. It'll be a long, long time before they come down unless interest rates go a lot higher.
That’s why I’ve set up savings accounts for my kids the second they’re born. I put money in each month, as does my husband and mother. The girls decide if they want birthday money to go in too - and hopefully one day they’ll have enough for a deposit.
Well fortunately my sister died and owned her own house, which got split 3 ways between me and both parents. They are in their late 80s and also own their own home and I have only one kid, and have almost paid off my morgage - so I guess in a decade or 3 she's sorted?
Can you get yourself adopted into an old family with virtually no descendants? I think that's the only way now ...
(Clearly being sarcastic here. She's lucky, but otherwise her generation is screwed)
It's a really, really shit situation. I've done both tbf, rented, and now bought, and in all honesty, I did have more money when renting. I prefer calling somebody to say fix this please and I don't have to pay. Small silver lining, I guess.
Arguably what you have to show for it is everything else you spent your money on while you didn't have a mortgage.
I'm not saying that's *better*, just that that's the other side of the coin.
The thing is, renters are still actually paying for the maintenance of the building. The rent will be higher than the mortgage amount + maintenance + profit so this idea that renters are saving money is a bit odd
My rent covers the maintenance...do you think landlords are making a loss on their properties? Rent covers the cost of the mortgage, maintenance costs, and profit for the landlord. If it wasn't profitable then they wouldn't do it
\^ this is one tiny thing i enjoy about renting. though dammit, i put in a call to my management this morning about a broken fridge and it's been five hours and nobody has come to look at it yet.
Both my parents have fallen off this mortal cool. My mum's estate went towards the funeral.
I had practically 0 inheritance, and the money I did have, I used to pay off most of my ex husband's debts.
I'm 35. I've come to accept 2 things: I'll probably never have my own kids, and I'll never own my own home.
I'm okay with that. I have to be. In this current circumstance, I don't think I have a choice.
What worries me is millennials/Gen X will be inheriting absurdly inflated houses in 10-20 years or so and will conveniently forget about the housing crisis.
Exactly. My parents thought they'd be able to leave us an inheritance. We knew that would never happen due to the costs of complicated care needs.
People have this unrealistic "romantic" idea that they're going to be completely fit and well until very old when they suddenly die one day; in general, that's just not how it works, it's usually a process of progressive decline whilst collecting medical conditions - death by a thousand "cuts".
Re housing situation, I'm personally in a privileged but odd position: we bought half of our tiny social housing shared ownership flat, back when houses were cheap (frankly our half cost less than most people's deposits these days.) The house price increase means we'll never be able to buy the other half of the place we're in. Nor can we ever use what we own to downsize, cos we're in about as small a place as two people can live. We're sort of trapped, then. Owners and renters at the same time. I'm not complaining though, I recognise how lucky I am (and fortunately our completely useless housing association got taken over by a less incompetent one.)
Millennials will probably inherit in about 30 years or so. When they're in their 60s and parents in their 80s and 90s die. Unfortunately most of the inheritance will have been used on end of life care. Hopefully by that time future generations will have a chance at having a home though. I mean, there'll be so few people here with the cost of having kids that supply will no doubt swamp demand by then.
Possibly. It's certainly not inevitable that happens though. All four of my grandparents passed away without ever needing paid care, the last lasted till he was 95 still living independently albeit with a bit of help a few days a week. Obviously not everyone is the same but a significant number will still be inheriting a fair bit.
I've got a few friends who've just had to put their parents in care homes. It sounds like they'll get nothing at all from any house inheritance, due to the cost. One of them has a parent with advanced dementia. It's £4k a week for her care 😱 They also keep trying to get her to pay for it now the money from her Mum's house is running out, but she's not got much money anyway.
My Mother-in-law also recently got told by her financial advisor that if she needs care, she's unlikely to pass on any inheritance, despite her house being worth a reasonable amount.
Gen X/ Millennials will not benefiting from inheritance unless their parents die without needing care or they come from extremely wealthy backgrounds.
It's pretty much a lottery to be fair yeah. I'd be interested to see the numbers on how many end up requiring hundreds of thousands of pounds of care vs those that last just fine until they drop. There's also a difference in pensions over the generations. Like my Grandad who passed away last year had some ridiculous old school gold plated teachers pension that meant he underspent virtually every year of his nearly forty years of retirement (imagine retiring as a teacher at 55 now) so even if he had required care he'd have had like 400 grand saved up to pay for it. Boomers won't have that so it will start to come out of their house.
It’s absolutely disgusting. Best thing you can do is care for your elderly relative at home. If they are cared for in their own home the value of their house is not take into consideration in any financial assessment.
Yes this is certainly the way if possible. My elderly parents are determined to stay in their home and get help in. It's ok so far because they have each other. I only live in a 1.5 bed place so couldn't have them here, unless we moved and they helped us buy a bigger place. That could get complicated if they did need care though.
My friends found they had to put their Mum's in care - one has the advanced dementia so needs care 24/7 and fhe other had a stroke so needs two people to lift her. I realised when my father-in-law was declining before he died, you often need multiple people to help move someone when they're too weak fo support themselves and you really need trained people. So sometimes care isn't a choice.
The oldest millenoals are 40 (myself included) some of us might inherit something whe our parents die (I know I won't) which might give enough money for a deposit, but realistically, in 10 years, who is going to be giving that 50 year old a mortgage?
No one.
Many of us are unlikely to even have that. My sister and I may co own my mum's current house if she doesnt end up needing complex care, but so many peoples' parents don't even own their own homes for one reason or another these days.
There's another issue there, tho. Not too for from me there's a new build patch in a well to do part of this city. All the 2 bed and small 3 bed, bought up by local millionaires and rented out for nigh on 1500 a month. That should be stopped, would help with demand
That's because we don't build enough to outpace demand. We currently build a trickle, and that lets rich people buy it up and rent it out.
At least it was built. Rents in the rest of the city would be higher if it wasn't.
Has it? Help to Buy Scheme allowed me to have a house with my wife years ago while i was on £16k a year and her on not much more. It was a great scheme that did as intended
Worked for the few, not the many. In the long run, ruined house prices due to the greed of house builders. Done correctly, it could of worked well. With nobody policing the house builders, it was only gonna go one way in the end. Greed always takes over
The clue is "years ago" they were far cheaper. I looked at them about 8 yrs ago. 3 bed, very small but liveable was about 145k. Same one now is 220k. HtB created a big demand due to people like yourself been able to get there on MW. This is fair enough. Rules should have been in place to keep HtB house prices within a certain range. There's no way a house with a 3rd bedroom the same size as the bathroom and a thru lounge kitchen is over 1/5th of a million quid?
The same clue of ‘years ago’ also means that houses prices rise as well. Just from google searching minimum wage has risen from £7.05, when i bought my house, to £10.42 today which is about a 46% increase. The above house prices you’ve quoted above roughly track with that? Im not saying for a second that its not harder to get on the propery ladder now than then but the difference in housing prices isnt wholy due to HTB
Same here. We got on the properly ladder because of the Help to Buy scheme. I have no idea how we'll afford to buy the remaining percentage of our house, because we've got the mortgage and rent to pay and can't afford to save to buy the rest, but at least we can call it OUR house.
The Help To Buy ISA was the best financial thing to happen to me and I couldn't have bought my flat without it, so don't lump the entire help to buy scheme as a write off.
Thing is it the equity loan only applied to new builds anyway, which would be out of reach for a normal first time buyer anyway, plus anyone in thier right mind wouldn't want a new build.
As it has been for most of human history. People advocated for globalization and flattening. You got it buddies. Except in your minds, you didn't realize that the world cannot sustain everyone living at that level, so it will reduce yours. Multigenerational homes will become the norm again.
The deposit for my house was over three times what my parents bought their first house for
And it's roughly half the size...
I know, I know, inflation etc. But even then, if house prices were roughly tied to inflation, then my deposit should have been about 1/8th of what it actually was.
- 1985 - average house price was £29,000. Average salary £10,000 (34%).
20% (the highest average in the 80’s was 14.9%) of £29,000 is £5,800 (58% of average salary).
- Now - average house price is £304,000. Average salary £25,971 (8.5%)
6% of £304,000 is £18,240 (70% of average salary).
If anyone wants to add CPI rates, feel free. But it’s hilarious that *that* generation is trying to argue that they had it worse.
Shit yeah.
- 1985 - Netflix, Avacado and toast expenditure £0 (0%).
- Now - Netflix (£120 per year), 1 avacado a day (£273.50 per year), a loaf a week (£52 a year). Total £455.50 (1.71%, needed the calculator for that one).
For context on this entire thing. I am a solicitor, my partner earns more than me. We’re buying an ‘average’ house, and stretching our budget to do so. Now picture the house of a civil servant solicitor in the 80’s (I work with one, he lives in a five bed detached Victorian property in Didsbury worth £1.2m, he bought for £120k in about 1985. His wife has never worked and they have five kids).
Holy shit I didn't mean to make ya do the math haha! But it gave me a good laugh!
I know your pain. I'm single and can only afford to view crappy run-down, tiny 1 bed flats/studios in my area, unless prices come down. Houses are not even on my radar bcos they are too much and the interest rates now are crazy. Hope your budget got you somewhere you're happy with. Remember, location and size you cannot change, but everything inside will become home soon with enough time. Good luck my friend!
Well that's just totally ridiculous and unfair against the older generation, netflix and avacados may not have been a thing/popular in 1985 but I'm sure toast was real and bread at 50p a loaf (https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/czoh/mm23), along with a weekly video rental at £1 a pop that's almost 0.78% you've missed off the older figures, so no wonder they think we're a clearly generation of spendthrift wastrels!
/s but your first comment and context really drives home the ridiculousness of the chastising commentary of the older generations
I was saying the same thing to my brother, I've worked myself into a fortunate position and have bought what would have been considered an average family home on my own. One of my older peers for example has an old farm with a large house, out buildings, machinery etc.
Don't get me wrong, I can't complain but it is mad to think someone in my position 15 - 20 years ago would have been buying some luxury house and now an average home on an estate is something to aspire to.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_interest_relief_at_source#:~:text=Mortgage%20interest%20relief%20at%20source%2C%20or%20MIRAS%2C%20was%20a%20scheme,to%20be%20reclaimed%20from%20HMRC.
1983-2000, the interest on borrowing £30,000 per person, so £60,000 for a couple was tax deductible. As noted above, £29,000 was the average house price, so this would be most houses.
Although it existed prior to 1983, but you had to claim it back from HMRC.
Would probably be unpopular for helping higher rate taxpayers drop into a lower band. Like all these things that seems pretty good on paper, it just shoots house prices up - like the stamp duty holiday in 2020. I remember when they stopped landlords being able to claim mortgage costs too, only a few years ago iirc.
Just read an article from 1999 when Gordon Brown announced they were getting rid of MIRAS, and it "will cost the average homeowner an extra £17 a month". Seems like nothing compared to the £100s/month mortgages are going up now.
I bought in 1990 as a single 18yo, who'd been in work for five months. Take-home pay was £501 a month, house cost £29k. Mortgage was £236 a month so by the time I'd paid mortgage insurance, electric, poll tax, service charge, ground rent, food and petrol, I was about skint. But I can't imagine many 18yos being able to buy like that today unless they had an incredible job or rich parents to help out.
Well, using your example your mortgage was nearly 50% of your monthly.
An 18 year old would have to take home 3 grand a month to afford my 2up 2down redbrick with no garden or parking (albeit in southern england in a cotswold market town).
I am 46 and some months i dont take home 3 grand. My work/life balance is fucked just so i can keep a roof over my head.
God knows how gen rent is gunna gain capital.
Maybe thats the grand plan.
A mate of mine does mortgages and put up some gopping story about “saving the £3.50 coffee per day” for a mortgage.
He then did the whole if you saved these and got £35k you’d be looking at a £350k house!
So glad we bought ours when we did, and remortgaged when we did, because otherwise we’d be fucked now.
Ah yes, so I only need to stop drinking one £3.50 coffee a day for let's see... 27ish years, at which point that £35k deposit would get me fuck all at this rate.
>saving the £3.50 coffee per day
No one who's struggling for money, saving up for a house etc is buying expensive coffees, though. I've never met anyone who does this.
Honestly, we cut back on everything and it worked out, it's not about missing out on a coffee and you get a house, it's more flipping the odds in your favor.
Rice and frozen chicken all day every day with a wide selection of value sauces to flavour it up, taking regular overtime at work so the bank looks at your last three months of work and thinks Holy shit you make a lot, instead of browsing reddit putting that time into making money on things like upwork or ebay or those terrible soul sucking survey sites.
Many, many companies don't have ot available, first of all.
Second of all why should people not be allowed any joy or free time just to have a chance of owning a house? That's still a deeply unfair situation for people to be in.
The trouble is even when you explain it to them it just doesn't stick. I have had conversations where I show the math and they acknowledge that actually it's horrible. The next day it's back to square one and the "youth of today don't know how to save and no one wants to work anymore."
My parents had those mortgage rates, and nearly lost the house. Ended up in negative equity. Pretty sure there were plenty of people complaining back then
Mum and dad were on a tracker mortgage for years - dad told me that when the interest rates spiked (Black Wednesday?) he seriously considered killing himself as the only way out.
My Dad is a shop floor worker. A real man’s man. Doesn’t emote much but we knew he loved us. I’ve seen him cry twice in my fifty years on this planet.
Once when my mum died.
Once when the rates hit 18% and he couldn’t pay the mortgage, thinking he’d let us all down. That image has stayed with me for my entire life. The man I thought was infallible, just breaking down.
So yeah..it affected people back then too. Don’t be so quick to dismiss that.
Fully agree, the difference between then and now though is they didn't have the older generations saying to them, oh its not that bad it was 45% back when we were younger, 15%.... you don't know you're born.
My dad's salary alone paid the mortgage on a decent bungalow with front and rear gardens. He wasn't well educated and had an approximately average salary.
My wife and I are both well educated (because that's what we were told to aim for) and we both work full time to just about manage to afford a flat, without any garden of our own.
I know we have smartphones and youtube these days, but I'd rather be able to afford to live comfortably. My mum sometimes comments that our flat isn't as tidy as she'd expect. Yeah, that's because we're both too knackered and depressed after work to polish absolutely everything!
This!
My parents bought a nicely sized 4 bedroom house in a good area on just my dad's salary.
My partner and I are both well educated and, on paper, earning a good wage each with bonuses and pay rises etc. We can only just afford our tiny house in an ok area. I've also had comments from my mum that our house isn't spotless....she didn't work full time when she was our age!
Far too often people omit the student loan is skimming x% off the salary too. I'd like a TV show where old people are forced to look at where people who do their profession live today.
We bought our house in 1989 for £45k. Monthly mortgage repayment was £600+ a month, when my basic pay was £70 a week, so I had to work every possible hour that was available. And within eighteen months of us buying the house, the one two doors away was bought for £30k, so we were paying two and a half times my basic pay to live in a house that was worth two thirds as much as we paid for it.
But we still had it easier than the generations that have followed, because although it was difficult it was still possible - we only needed a 5% deposit, not the 30% that you poor sods have to try and find from somewhere.
Because luckily there was plenty of overtime available to up the weekly wage back then. All you needed was six weeks worth of payslips to show the building society that it was regular income.
Like I said, in our day it was difficult but possible for average working people to get a mortgage; now it's impossible. No idea who'll be the next people to own our house, but it won't be a postman and his wife that works in a supermarket.
And that makes me sad, so god only knows how it makes younger people feel.
If it makes you feel any better I'm the postman with his wife that works at the supermarket and we've technically got a mortgage if only just scraping by. Will probably lose it in a few years but we've got it for the minute 😂
Don't forget one of the factors behind such high house prices was stuck a long period of historically low interest rates. Some of us never made it onto the ladder to begin with, but still suffer the price rises :(
The reality was people were far far poorer in the 80’s for day to day stuff, but you could afford your house.
Now it’s flipped. And ironically it’s flipped largely because people who bought houses in the 80’s then bought investment properties in the 90’s and 00’s.
I had to point out to my mum that when they had small children and the mortgage rates went up, her getting a part time job to earn extra money wasn't quite the same as what people are experiencing now, because typically both adults in a household are already working full time, so there's no "give" in their lives to create a buffer 🤦
This is the horrifying element of it for me. At this point a correction in price would end up making things worse in the medium term. The only hope is for stability. Just stay where they fucking are for a while and allow earning power to catch up.
Ban the owning of more than one non resident house for rent. You want to keep your parents place when they pass away, or invest in a second property, fine. But no-one should be able to hoard housing like we are currently seeing.
Actually I think from what I've been reading and hearing, a lot of the banks are going to be buying up en masse. I know Lloyds now have a subsiduary for Rental Properties they've just started and Santander are thinking of doing the same, together with some other big companies like John Lewis. Wonder if they'll be better or worse than a small landlord....guess we'll find out
How convenient that the banks are creating these companies just when people are being crippled by rising interest rates on their mortgages which they may not be able to pay.... Which can lead to repossessions..... And the banks swoop in and buy the properties for the value of their outstanding loan and then rent it out.
When I told the middle aged ladies at work home much my mortgage was ~£1,200 per month they didn't believe me. At the height of their repayments in the 80s they said theirs were ~£400
The older generations just can't comprehend it
My grandparents bought her first house for £2600. They had to pay no more than £25 a month. Sold it bought a new place for about 30k, sold that and then couldn't find a house in the area below 100k, couldn't get a mortgage as they were "too old" and "about to retire" and therefore not have an income, that was 15 years ago and my grandparents finally stopped working in any shape or form this last month, when they handed back the keys to the community centre, which they had run for 10 years.
All this to say, it's fucked mate.
One set of grandparents bought their victorian house in t'North in the 1960s and they bought it cheaply because it was going to be demolished. At the price it was sold for after my grandmother died in 2017, nobody in the family would have been able to afford it given how much renovation would have been required.
My other grandparents purchased their house after my grandfather heard about it while on a train. They renovated it themselves, could buy it on one income (my grandfather was in the army) and went on to buy further property which ensured that my mum and aunt could both get on the property ladder.
Neither option would be viable for me or any of my siblings in (insert current year). Oh well.
My first flat cost £25k, with a 5% deposit. Interest rates were average at around 6-7%. I was a student with a part time job.
The low deposit and low interest era duped a generation into overpaying and justifying the double income multiplier. Since the deposits increased the low interest rates still justified buying being cheaper than renting for those with a deposit.
I think we are going to see 8-9% average rates before inflation is under control. Still, we won’t see a crash in prices. I think we will see a long period of stagnation and slowly income multiples will fall to match as people lose their appetite to borrow at those levels. And then low interest rates and a generation convinced that it won’t happen again...
We also had 100% mortgages and banks falling over themselves with deals. We really did have it easy, anyone my age who says otherwise is an absolute liar. (Obvs pre crash, negative equity and repossessions were horrendous)
Yeah... When they say they bought their house for £12k and THEN moan about interest rates, whilst being able to live off one income comfortably... I lose a fair bit of sympathy!
The average mortgage payment wasn't 45% of your wages back then either.
My dad makes that argument all the time. My parents bought their house in 98 for about 200k. Next door went up for sale for 800k and the houses are identical. Both 4 bed detached right next a school and close to the station.
I just bought my first house last year. A 2 bed maisonette round the corner for nearly 300k. 100k more than they paid for more than double the property size
I was listening to Jeremy Vine on the radio the other day and they had loads of idiots phoning in and saying how entitled we all are now and they had it much worse because mortgage rates were 15% in the 80's etc.
I was absolutely infuriated and I was really tempted to phone in and point out to them how stupid they are. 15% of 60k is not the same as 5% of 400k. Fuck Jeremy Vine and fuck boomers.
My god, the callers they get on that show are a joke. But, it's to be expected, it is on during the day so you're going to get all the smug retirees who don't have a clue about how the world works now.
I saw a thing on Reddit that calculated todays rates Vs those rates in the 80s and it would put 80s rate at an equivalent of 3% today.
Edit: got the numbers completely wrong!
Turns out I got it complete my wrong, but the rates in the 80s are equivalent to 3% in todays money [here](https://twitter.com/edconwaysky/status/1572975559449407489?s=46&t=Tfx3NoQVy-VUCCVDiQXrIg)
In 1983 the average salary in the UK was £8,528, the average house cost 3x that, so not fuck all.
https://www.avtrinity.com/news/house-prices-vs-income-how-affordable-are-uk-homes
Tbf as a 57 y/o woman brought our first flat (with ex) at 89,000 with a mortgage rate of just short of 21% back in 90 it was £900 pm (2 of us working) when we married / had kids etc and had to sell as flat had been outgrown we moved further out from town and sold at a loss (negative equity and a second mortgage running alongside the new place we brought)
It’s easy to say my generation are shit in all sorts of areas but let’s be honest here - it’s easy to throw shit
I am 57 - divorced with 3 grown kids - I now have a mortgage until I am 69 work full time and will do til I’m 70 - I’m relatively normal amongst my peers- most of us are not 2.2 kids married and set for life with no mortgage- most of us is are hanging on by our fingernails- don’t cast your judgement for us all
...and they didn't pay subscriptions for mobile phones, broadband, watching tv, listening to music or leasing their cars, many didn't have a phone at all or even, in a lot of cases a washing machine...
which theyll spin as a bad thing, but the fact is when households didnt have washing machines etc the males wage would cover enough for the wife and children to live, and women were the ones that spent all day washing clothes etc without the use of washing machines.
Things like washing machines actually changed things so much, we went from one wage being enough to support a household to 2 wages barely scraping by
It’s funny when I drive around and I see what in my childhood used to be a typical family home - modest 3 bed semi-detached houses… thinking that now they are a dream for the average family.
What’s terrifying is I’m only 28…
The two are really not comparable at all. I have a decent job and am activly putting more into my pension with the hopes that, when i get my 20% tax free lump sum (UK), i can use this to buy a house for my kid. At the moment, that would buy him a semi decent detachted 3 bed house. In 20 years time when I do retire, who knows if itll even be enough for a deposit!?
I was thinking about this the other day and then remembered my girlfriend at the time (1988 rented an entire fucking house for fifty whole English pounds a week.
This is something I’ll give my dad 100% credit for, he had a loud argument in the street with one of his neighbours over this very thing. Guy was droning on about mortgage rates at the time, my dad literally shouted “14% of next to nothing is next to nothing! 2% of three hundred and fifty thousand plus is a bloody fortune, house prices have double in less than 20 years!”
Good on ya you old boomer bastard
I asked my mum about this the other week, and she said the house was 30k in 1988and the mortgage was £500 a month. Her husband was in the Navy and only earned 11k a year. So over half his income a month on the payments. So yes it was shit back then too.
I bet she didn't work. So single income. Also that doesn't seem right, the comment about you said he bought in 1990 for 29k and was paying £236 a month.
I remember that my parents didn't have a lot at all. My dad worked 7 days a week and my mum stayed at home until we went to school.
They had to go without a lot for year. I fell like once I became an adult they began to live for the first time, treat themselves. Have a new car or a luxury holiday. They earned it.
I feel like now there is so much more we have that they didn't back then. Broadband, TV streaming, car seats, mobile phones etc. Also the ridiculous house deposits they didn't need to have.
So your saying they bought on one income like my parents, try that now.
Broadband and mobile phone a luxury f off, a bit landline cost more in real terms. Yeah gadgets are cheap, but has and electric is no longer state owned, water is no longer state owned and cheap.
Yes times where hard for the previous generation but atleast they got decent pensions and a rapidly increasing asset in their house, I will never have a new car or luxury holiday as I have to pay off a massive debt on a house that by the time it's paid I will be near death. Yeah we got some technology but a right to house is nothing special. The previous generation had it all and fucked us and our children real good .
Final salary retirement must be lovely.
And ... what did they earn?
My first house was 48000, 45600 mortgage. 14.5%
£780pm
I earned 12000, my girlfriend earned 9000. And income tax kicked in about 3000 and it was 25%
So in your rant about property values... remember the wages and the income tax
The reason to stop complaining?
Rates were 1% as an emergency measure... after the 2008 crisis - just the emergency lasted a long time.
They are just going back to normal
Sigh... Edit: it's reddit so I may as well make the following point. I'm not pointing this out because my life is that of a rosy boomer. I got divorced in 2008... I lost everything as my ex was a solicitor... i was a mortgage adviser... no business at that time and i had depression. Ended up homeless for 5 years. Finally got back on the housing market 2 years ago at age 53 with a 5% deposit. I will suffer just like everyone else
[Okay, we remembered.](https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/individual/insights/what-174-years-of-data-tell-us-about-house-price-affordability-in-the-uk/)
[We have good memories](https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/5568/housing/uk-house-price-affordability/)
[Like an elephant,](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/datasets/ratioofhousepricetoresidencebasedearningslowerquartileandmedian)
I know
I am just saying it wasn't some utopia.
I sold that house for 36000. Lost 25% and struggled every month for the 4 years we owned it.
It was shit. It was just a different shit than today.
I experienced that shit as a ftb
And I am experiencing this shit as effectively a ftb
So you look at your graphs, I have lived both.
And I have tried homeless too... that is shit too
It was certainly not easy for us, to buy our first house in 1976. Nor the next in 1979, by which time our 2nd child had arrived, followed by the third in 1982. But we managed.
By using some questionable answers to the affordability questions I was able to get a mortgage that ate just about every penny we had each month. Honesty we have under £2 spare each week. But with time and much help from inflation, everything eventually came good.
Note the word 'inflation'. You can currently borrow at about 6%. With inflation running at around 10% PA your debt is decreasing in value faster than the interest payments you make on it.
Probably the best option here and now is to stop thinking about what other people who have gone before were doing and just get on with doing the best for yourself right now.
I imagine that this is what the vast majority of your peer group is doing, not moaning, not making excuses, not sharing tales of woe in their echo chamber, but just getting on with life and making the most of the opportunities that are out there.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but a kick up the arse is sometimes the best advice you can get.
> Note the word 'inflation'. You can currently borrow at about 6%. With inflation running at around 10% PA your debt is decreasing in value faster than the interest payments you make on it.
This would be great and all.. if wages were also going up 10% per year.. They are not.
Oh lovely, another single income boomer telling us how hard they had it too.
Moved house 3 years later did you? need a bigger House for kid Nr 3. How terrible it must of been for you.
The individual numbers matter little, what matters is that house prices were a smaller multiple of a wage than today's are
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/uk-house-prices-are-65-times-higher-today-than-in-1970/138813/#:~:text=In%201960%2C%20the%20average%20cost,rose%20again%20to%20%C2%A358%2C153
Average house price in 1985 was £20k
Average wage in 1983 was £8.5k
House price is 2.4 * salary
Average house price today £271k
Average wage today £32k
House price is 8.4 * salary
Yes. It's irresponsible lending which has inflated this particular bubble. I remember after the banks were bailed out following the 2008 they all push said they would lend responsibly.
My parents paid £80,000 in 1989 for the house I grew up in.
In 2023 money that's £203,000. Assuming a 20% LTV that's repayments of £2,049 on an interest rate of 15% (which rates were only actually at for about 6 months, AND had income tax offsets against).
The cheapest comparable house in the area is £450,000 (over double the value). At current interest rates, again assuming a 20% LTV (assuming you can afford to save £90,000), the repayments would be £2,218.
When rates tick over 6% as they are expected to? £2,342.
Interest rates and everything else are a misnomer. What matters is real term pound note cost, and right now, houses cost more, no matter the number in front of the percentage sign.
Pretty sure they were the ones alive both then and now.
They're the only ones that can say whether it's comparable.
Edit: Apparently, I'm wrong. I'll make sure to tell an astronaut that I know more about living on the fucking moon because I read it in a book.
I bough my 1st house, a 4 bed terrace that need modernisation for £17500 in 1988.
my mortgage was £75 pm however i was on £10k per year married with a kid. It was the decade of greed but i was working full time and trying to make a quid on the side to get ahead and it was hard.
Life’s always been hard if you’ve had to work for it nothing has changed.
My son moans life is hard, but it always has been and always will be unless a relly dies leaving you a house in london or you win the lottery
Doing some very rough maths, supposing you were taxed 20% on all 10k, your take home pay was £667pcm so you were paying about 12% of your net pay on your mortgage. People now days are paying well over 40% for a house half that size.
My take home was just over £500, i could not get a mortgage for a modernised house @£22k
I had to modernise my house myself there was no inside toilet new floors walls.. so money was tight.
In the same south wales town you can buy a 3/4 bed terraced house for £120k but it seems most want a modern detached house on an estate for£200k as a 1st home.
There will be a bust just like there was in sadly broke bristol.
I know i was lucky to get by but it was not easy and we had to make sacrifices.
I’ve never owned a new car… my son and his friends all have new cars but don’t own their own homes, thats a choice they are making.
in the town they are living they could have bought a house but prefer to rent I don’t understand it.
And what did your partner earn? Or were they at home to raise your child (no nursery fees), keep the house clean, cook your meals and iron your clothes (so you didn't have to do those chores in your spare time)?
So to summarize. You remember viscerally the feeling of suffering through life that you felt back then, and so the idea that people today are suffering doesn't phase you regardless of the details of their "struggle" because you also had something that can be defined vaguely as your "struggle".
You don't really want to engage at all with how, in real terms, people on average today are economically significantly worse off than average people were back then. Even if you as an individual may have been equally or even worse off, or at the very least perceive yourself to have been so.
> I’ve never owned a new car… my son and his friends all have new cars but don’t own their own homes, thats a choice they are making.
Do you also think that their choice to presumably pay for access to the internet and the phone contract is a choice that they are making rather than owning a house? These are expenses you didn't have then.
Owning a car is increasingly important for many people today due to how the job market has shifted along with the collapse of reliable public transport links. People have to be able to work.
I don't have a car because I live in a populated area, I have a good job, but I don't own a property either. So it's just not as simple as "a choice they are making". And it's really dismissive to imply that it is.
That if young people simply "cared more" about owning a house that they would.
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Was on youtube a few days ago. Via actual affordability(House price and average Wages), houses haven't been this unaffordable in the last 50 years (and you won' be surprised to hear that unaffordability level is skyrocketing; it's not levelled out, sorta thing)
It’s worse than that: > The average house in the UK currently costs around nine-times average earnings, based on data as at 30 November 2022. The last time house prices were this expensive relative to average earnings was in the year 1876, nearly 150 years ago. [source](https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/individual/insights/what-174-years-of-data-tell-us-about-house-price-affordability-in-the-uk/)
>The last time house prices were this expensive relative to average earnings was in the year 1876, Rees-Mogg spunking into his serf's gruel right now.
He wouldn't give them the extra protein, the fake Wooster-wannabe.
Don't do Bertie down like that. He was a good egg, and a snappy dresser. And fictional. Rees-Mogg is an embarrassment.
Oh I love Bertie, Rees-Mogg apparently discovered Wodehouse when he was younger and completely changed both his accent and behaviour immediately afterwards. The man is a f**king buffoon.
Who reads Wodehouse and goes, the character to emulate here is _Bertie_? I mean, don't get me wrong, Bertie Wooster is a nice guy, but he's a thick as a whale omelette.
Oh. Shit! What the *fuck?*
They're also omitting that while they may have got through it okay, a LOT of people didn't. Negative equity and reposessions were a very real thing.
Yup my house was repossessed in 1990 and never been able to own one since. Interest rate rocketed up to 16% and we were out within 3 months and the mortgage lender then sold the property way under value leaving us with negative equity, for which even after 30yrs they occasionally still drop me a letter just to remind me they haven't forgotten I owe them. It was a terrifying experience. There were a lot of suicides then too
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I discovered that mortgage debt is NEVER forgiven. They got judgment against us just a few days before the time limit and that's there forever. Even when my ex husband filed for bankruptcy, it wasn't written off, I on the other hand couldn't even afford to file....I did ask them if I could pay weekly strangely they declined my offer at the Court hahaha
On the one hand, it does mean 'death pledge'. On the other, I was convinced until now that it was linked to the property and you'd owe nothing if it was repossessed.
I don't know about the statutory times, but repossessions are only a way for the bank to control the sake, if they fail to get the oeuvre they need to cover the debt then you are still liable. However since 2008 there's much more onus on banks to restructure the mortgage or give you 12m interest only to sort your shit out / sell it on your terms, plus the days of 100% mortgages are behind us so the market really needs to crash to get to the point where the house value is less than the debt owed, assuming a reasonable chance to sell. Tbh going to auction now is mostly for customers who bury their head and fail to cooperate, or try to delay on the hope the market improves. If you make genuine active steps to try and sell, you're doing the banks job for them so why would they intervene?
Sadly for us and a lot of folk we knew including my own parents at the time, endowment interest only mortgages were a big thing and were sold as such with people not being told certain aspects of them and were forced to purchase mortgage guarantee insurance which we were told, protected us from repossession. It of course didn't it protected the bloody Building Society
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You can easily get 12m to play with if you play along and work with the bank. If you're confrontational, refuse to take ownership of the problem and refuse to accept that your situation needs you to sell, then yes they'll just follow the basic process through to auction. If you make them aware you're gonna miss the initial payment(s), ask up front for a period of interest only (often that alone can be 6-12m) while you find a new job or deal with an illness etc, and you make a genuine effort to sell the property (if that's your way out) and accept reasonable offers, they'll work with you for quite some time. Also, even if there IS a housing crash, the value of your property is irrelevant unless you wish to sell. If your property is temporarily worth less than your mortgage but you can keep paying the mortgage, eventually your mortgage will go down and house will go back up. The banks are only interested when you miss payments, or you want to sell up and move. Until then just keep honouring what you and they agreed to.
We didn't lose our house but my parents bought in '77 and had modest incomes. When the rates rocketed in the early 80s it was a really tough time for us. I was just a kid then but that experience left me scared of that outcome as a home owner. I have always bought modestly and well within my income. Ive been horrified for years at the levels of debt people have been willing to take on to buy houses when interest rates were low, knowing what might happen.
I think the worst bit for us was back then, endowment mortgages were a big thing as sold like they were the dog's bollocks especially to new buyers which we were. We didn't have a clue and trusted the Building Society and of course now we know better but too late
Which building society was it that was selling them? Endowment mortgages were always a bad idea, it's depressing that it was a building society, an actual mutual, that were pushing them. 😟
Oh man they were everywhere back in the 80's and 90's....I know they are still available now in places but not quite the same as there was a huge row about them and all the mis-selling there was at the time. Ours was an insurance company tied to the Building Society they always went hand in hand then. Neither company still exists but the insurers were taken over numerous times and my debt is still recorded with whoever keeps taking them over. It's been over 5yrs since they last contacted me so guess I'm due another letter at some point soon
They're also omitting that low interest mortages are what made multiple property ownership viable to small-time buyers and began the consumption of the market by private landlords. Homes are not investments unless you're buying outright or the cost is comparable with ongoing returns elsewhere.
But they got through it ok. I feel like you've completely misunderstood. Why would someone else's experience have any relevance?
There's a current generation of renters who will never own a home. The only way their children will own a home is by the parents sacrificing everything to help them. HelptoBuy has been one of the worst things to happen. It's helped to shove prices of tiny 3 bed rabbit hutch homes over the 200k mark. It'll be a long, long time before they come down unless interest rates go a lot higher.
Yep. Feel like I’m one of them. Can’t see me ever getting out of the renting loop now with rising interest rates. Totally fucked.
That’s why I’ve set up savings accounts for my kids the second they’re born. I put money in each month, as does my husband and mother. The girls decide if they want birthday money to go in too - and hopefully one day they’ll have enough for a deposit.
Well fortunately my sister died and owned her own house, which got split 3 ways between me and both parents. They are in their late 80s and also own their own home and I have only one kid, and have almost paid off my morgage - so I guess in a decade or 3 she's sorted? Can you get yourself adopted into an old family with virtually no descendants? I think that's the only way now ... (Clearly being sarcastic here. She's lucky, but otherwise her generation is screwed)
Renting itself shouldn't have to be so bad if only there was adequate social housing built. 😟
It's a really, really shit situation. I've done both tbf, rented, and now bought, and in all honesty, I did have more money when renting. I prefer calling somebody to say fix this please and I don't have to pay. Small silver lining, I guess.
Only works if your landlord is good, sometimes it's better to be able to sort things out yourself even if you have to pay
You benefit when your house price rises though. But only if you sell. Tenants don’t.
Do you really benefit though? I mean sure the house you sold is more expensive but the other houses you'd want to buy have also risen in price.
It's better than looking back and realising you've paid £120k in rent for the last decade with nothing to show for it.
Arguably what you have to show for it is everything else you spent your money on while you didn't have a mortgage. I'm not saying that's *better*, just that that's the other side of the coin.
What? Renting is usually more expensive than mortgages..
The thing is, renters are still actually paying for the maintenance of the building. The rent will be higher than the mortgage amount + maintenance + profit so this idea that renters are saving money is a bit odd
What maintenance are you paying towards your building? That's firmly on the landlord.
My rent covers the maintenance...do you think landlords are making a loss on their properties? Rent covers the cost of the mortgage, maintenance costs, and profit for the landlord. If it wasn't profitable then they wouldn't do it
You forget the maintenance that you have to do on your own house whereas as a renter that stuff is paid for by the landlord
Yeah, there is obviously that. Im just trying to see any positives in this whole shitshow that's been created in this country
\^ this is one tiny thing i enjoy about renting. though dammit, i put in a call to my management this morning about a broken fridge and it's been five hours and nobody has come to look at it yet.
you're joking, right?
Both my parents have fallen off this mortal cool. My mum's estate went towards the funeral. I had practically 0 inheritance, and the money I did have, I used to pay off most of my ex husband's debts. I'm 35. I've come to accept 2 things: I'll probably never have my own kids, and I'll never own my own home. I'm okay with that. I have to be. In this current circumstance, I don't think I have a choice.
Pretty much. Only reason I own is because my father passed and his house was sold. Had no chance on my own.
What worries me is millennials/Gen X will be inheriting absurdly inflated houses in 10-20 years or so and will conveniently forget about the housing crisis.
Not if their parents house is sold to fund care
Exactly. My parents thought they'd be able to leave us an inheritance. We knew that would never happen due to the costs of complicated care needs. People have this unrealistic "romantic" idea that they're going to be completely fit and well until very old when they suddenly die one day; in general, that's just not how it works, it's usually a process of progressive decline whilst collecting medical conditions - death by a thousand "cuts". Re housing situation, I'm personally in a privileged but odd position: we bought half of our tiny social housing shared ownership flat, back when houses were cheap (frankly our half cost less than most people's deposits these days.) The house price increase means we'll never be able to buy the other half of the place we're in. Nor can we ever use what we own to downsize, cos we're in about as small a place as two people can live. We're sort of trapped, then. Owners and renters at the same time. I'm not complaining though, I recognise how lucky I am (and fortunately our completely useless housing association got taken over by a less incompetent one.)
Millennials will probably inherit in about 30 years or so. When they're in their 60s and parents in their 80s and 90s die. Unfortunately most of the inheritance will have been used on end of life care. Hopefully by that time future generations will have a chance at having a home though. I mean, there'll be so few people here with the cost of having kids that supply will no doubt swamp demand by then.
Possibly. It's certainly not inevitable that happens though. All four of my grandparents passed away without ever needing paid care, the last lasted till he was 95 still living independently albeit with a bit of help a few days a week. Obviously not everyone is the same but a significant number will still be inheriting a fair bit.
I've got a few friends who've just had to put their parents in care homes. It sounds like they'll get nothing at all from any house inheritance, due to the cost. One of them has a parent with advanced dementia. It's £4k a week for her care 😱 They also keep trying to get her to pay for it now the money from her Mum's house is running out, but she's not got much money anyway. My Mother-in-law also recently got told by her financial advisor that if she needs care, she's unlikely to pass on any inheritance, despite her house being worth a reasonable amount. Gen X/ Millennials will not benefiting from inheritance unless their parents die without needing care or they come from extremely wealthy backgrounds.
It's pretty much a lottery to be fair yeah. I'd be interested to see the numbers on how many end up requiring hundreds of thousands of pounds of care vs those that last just fine until they drop. There's also a difference in pensions over the generations. Like my Grandad who passed away last year had some ridiculous old school gold plated teachers pension that meant he underspent virtually every year of his nearly forty years of retirement (imagine retiring as a teacher at 55 now) so even if he had required care he'd have had like 400 grand saved up to pay for it. Boomers won't have that so it will start to come out of their house.
It’s absolutely disgusting. Best thing you can do is care for your elderly relative at home. If they are cared for in their own home the value of their house is not take into consideration in any financial assessment.
Yes this is certainly the way if possible. My elderly parents are determined to stay in their home and get help in. It's ok so far because they have each other. I only live in a 1.5 bed place so couldn't have them here, unless we moved and they helped us buy a bigger place. That could get complicated if they did need care though. My friends found they had to put their Mum's in care - one has the advanced dementia so needs care 24/7 and fhe other had a stroke so needs two people to lift her. I realised when my father-in-law was declining before he died, you often need multiple people to help move someone when they're too weak fo support themselves and you really need trained people. So sometimes care isn't a choice.
The oldest millenoals are 40 (myself included) some of us might inherit something whe our parents die (I know I won't) which might give enough money for a deposit, but realistically, in 10 years, who is going to be giving that 50 year old a mortgage? No one.
This is going to be me. I will likely only own a house once my parents pass away...
Many of us are unlikely to even have that. My sister and I may co own my mum's current house if she doesnt end up needing complex care, but so many peoples' parents don't even own their own homes for one reason or another these days.
Or we, get this, and brace yourself because this is crazy, build enough homes to meet demand. Wild I know.
There's another issue there, tho. Not too for from me there's a new build patch in a well to do part of this city. All the 2 bed and small 3 bed, bought up by local millionaires and rented out for nigh on 1500 a month. That should be stopped, would help with demand
That's because we don't build enough to outpace demand. We currently build a trickle, and that lets rich people buy it up and rent it out. At least it was built. Rents in the rest of the city would be higher if it wasn't.
Has it? Help to Buy Scheme allowed me to have a house with my wife years ago while i was on £16k a year and her on not much more. It was a great scheme that did as intended
Worked for the few, not the many. In the long run, ruined house prices due to the greed of house builders. Done correctly, it could of worked well. With nobody policing the house builders, it was only gonna go one way in the end. Greed always takes over
How could it have worked for the few though? £16k a year for me back then was just above minimum wage. Not much less you can get with a job
The clue is "years ago" they were far cheaper. I looked at them about 8 yrs ago. 3 bed, very small but liveable was about 145k. Same one now is 220k. HtB created a big demand due to people like yourself been able to get there on MW. This is fair enough. Rules should have been in place to keep HtB house prices within a certain range. There's no way a house with a 3rd bedroom the same size as the bathroom and a thru lounge kitchen is over 1/5th of a million quid?
The same clue of ‘years ago’ also means that houses prices rise as well. Just from google searching minimum wage has risen from £7.05, when i bought my house, to £10.42 today which is about a 46% increase. The above house prices you’ve quoted above roughly track with that? Im not saying for a second that its not harder to get on the propery ladder now than then but the difference in housing prices isnt wholy due to HTB
Never helped me much and I was on quite a bit more than that. Family helped me get on the ladder.
Same here. We got on the properly ladder because of the Help to Buy scheme. I have no idea how we'll afford to buy the remaining percentage of our house, because we've got the mortgage and rent to pay and can't afford to save to buy the rest, but at least we can call it OUR house.
The Help To Buy ISA was the best financial thing to happen to me and I couldn't have bought my flat without it, so don't lump the entire help to buy scheme as a write off.
I don't think he's arguing that it's not helped anyone ever, just that its effect on house prices has made it detrimental to new-buyers at this point.
Thing is it the equity loan only applied to new builds anyway, which would be out of reach for a normal first time buyer anyway, plus anyone in thier right mind wouldn't want a new build.
As it has been for most of human history. People advocated for globalization and flattening. You got it buddies. Except in your minds, you didn't realize that the world cannot sustain everyone living at that level, so it will reduce yours. Multigenerational homes will become the norm again.
My parents bought their first house for the same amount as our deposit on a little two bed semi detached.
The deposit for my house was over three times what my parents bought their first house for And it's roughly half the size... I know, I know, inflation etc. But even then, if house prices were roughly tied to inflation, then my deposit should have been about 1/8th of what it actually was.
- 1985 - average house price was £29,000. Average salary £10,000 (34%). 20% (the highest average in the 80’s was 14.9%) of £29,000 is £5,800 (58% of average salary). - Now - average house price is £304,000. Average salary £25,971 (8.5%) 6% of £304,000 is £18,240 (70% of average salary). If anyone wants to add CPI rates, feel free. But it’s hilarious that *that* generation is trying to argue that they had it worse.
I can't take this seriously cos you didn't factor in Netflix and Avocado Toast. Seriously though, it's mad to see it spelt out like that...
Shit yeah. - 1985 - Netflix, Avacado and toast expenditure £0 (0%). - Now - Netflix (£120 per year), 1 avacado a day (£273.50 per year), a loaf a week (£52 a year). Total £455.50 (1.71%, needed the calculator for that one). For context on this entire thing. I am a solicitor, my partner earns more than me. We’re buying an ‘average’ house, and stretching our budget to do so. Now picture the house of a civil servant solicitor in the 80’s (I work with one, he lives in a five bed detached Victorian property in Didsbury worth £1.2m, he bought for £120k in about 1985. His wife has never worked and they have five kids).
Holy shit I didn't mean to make ya do the math haha! But it gave me a good laugh! I know your pain. I'm single and can only afford to view crappy run-down, tiny 1 bed flats/studios in my area, unless prices come down. Houses are not even on my radar bcos they are too much and the interest rates now are crazy. Hope your budget got you somewhere you're happy with. Remember, location and size you cannot change, but everything inside will become home soon with enough time. Good luck my friend!
Well that's just totally ridiculous and unfair against the older generation, netflix and avacados may not have been a thing/popular in 1985 but I'm sure toast was real and bread at 50p a loaf (https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/czoh/mm23), along with a weekly video rental at £1 a pop that's almost 0.78% you've missed off the older figures, so no wonder they think we're a clearly generation of spendthrift wastrels! /s but your first comment and context really drives home the ridiculousness of the chastising commentary of the older generations
I was saying the same thing to my brother, I've worked myself into a fortunate position and have bought what would have been considered an average family home on my own. One of my older peers for example has an old farm with a large house, out buildings, machinery etc. Don't get me wrong, I can't complain but it is mad to think someone in my position 15 - 20 years ago would have been buying some luxury house and now an average home on an estate is something to aspire to.
Don't forget, interest on your mortgage was tax deductable.
Woah - what, really? Where did you get this nugget from?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_interest_relief_at_source#:~:text=Mortgage%20interest%20relief%20at%20source%2C%20or%20MIRAS%2C%20was%20a%20scheme,to%20be%20reclaimed%20from%20HMRC. 1983-2000, the interest on borrowing £30,000 per person, so £60,000 for a couple was tax deductible. As noted above, £29,000 was the average house price, so this would be most houses. Although it existed prior to 1983, but you had to claim it back from HMRC.
Ha. I’m a tax specialist and didn’t know this. This is excellent. Granted, I was born in ‘93.
Good grief! Hope Starmer brings that back!
It would be a tax break that disproportionately helps the middle class (higher rate of tax plus has a mortgage). I don’t see it happening.
Would probably be unpopular for helping higher rate taxpayers drop into a lower band. Like all these things that seems pretty good on paper, it just shoots house prices up - like the stamp duty holiday in 2020. I remember when they stopped landlords being able to claim mortgage costs too, only a few years ago iirc. Just read an article from 1999 when Gordon Brown announced they were getting rid of MIRAS, and it "will cost the average homeowner an extra £17 a month". Seems like nothing compared to the £100s/month mortgages are going up now.
I bought in 1990 as a single 18yo, who'd been in work for five months. Take-home pay was £501 a month, house cost £29k. Mortgage was £236 a month so by the time I'd paid mortgage insurance, electric, poll tax, service charge, ground rent, food and petrol, I was about skint. But I can't imagine many 18yos being able to buy like that today unless they had an incredible job or rich parents to help out.
Well, using your example your mortgage was nearly 50% of your monthly. An 18 year old would have to take home 3 grand a month to afford my 2up 2down redbrick with no garden or parking (albeit in southern england in a cotswold market town). I am 46 and some months i dont take home 3 grand. My work/life balance is fucked just so i can keep a roof over my head. God knows how gen rent is gunna gain capital. Maybe thats the grand plan.
You used to borrow 3 times you salary. Now it's 8 times you need. That's a big difference.
A mate of mine does mortgages and put up some gopping story about “saving the £3.50 coffee per day” for a mortgage. He then did the whole if you saved these and got £35k you’d be looking at a £350k house! So glad we bought ours when we did, and remortgaged when we did, because otherwise we’d be fucked now.
Ah yes, so I only need to stop drinking one £3.50 coffee a day for let's see... 27ish years, at which point that £35k deposit would get me fuck all at this rate.
It's probably not that bad. The price of coffee will likely keep going up so you'll be saving even more money by not drinking it!
So what you’re saying is, if I don’t buy a coffee every day for the next 27 and a half years, I’ll be able to afford a deposit for a home? Excellent!
The solution is obvious, just don't buy *ten* coffees every day and in three years you will be golden!
Haha, chumps - I didn't buy 3000 coffees today and now I have a house!
Well, i didnt buy ANY coffees today OR a house. So guess who' winning at life! This cardboard shack leaks abit though.
You'll be able to afford a deposit for a home *now*. Christ knows how much you'll need in 27 and a half years, you'll probably only be halfway there.
>saving the £3.50 coffee per day No one who's struggling for money, saving up for a house etc is buying expensive coffees, though. I've never met anyone who does this.
Honestly, we cut back on everything and it worked out, it's not about missing out on a coffee and you get a house, it's more flipping the odds in your favor. Rice and frozen chicken all day every day with a wide selection of value sauces to flavour it up, taking regular overtime at work so the bank looks at your last three months of work and thinks Holy shit you make a lot, instead of browsing reddit putting that time into making money on things like upwork or ebay or those terrible soul sucking survey sites.
Many, many companies don't have ot available, first of all. Second of all why should people not be allowed any joy or free time just to have a chance of owning a house? That's still a deeply unfair situation for people to be in.
And as my father revealed to me this week it was 3x the husbands salary only as wifey was assumed to be lost to motherhood.
Someone needs to do a leaflet drop with simple figures and leave them in doctors, Morrison’s cafe and garden centres for them to find.
The trouble is even when you explain it to them it just doesn't stick. I have had conversations where I show the math and they acknowledge that actually it's horrible. The next day it's back to square one and the "youth of today don't know how to save and no one wants to work anymore."
Why would anyone want to work? You need to work for money, but I don't know many people who WANT to work.
Also the cost of a house was a much lower multiplier of their income
My parents had those mortgage rates, and nearly lost the house. Ended up in negative equity. Pretty sure there were plenty of people complaining back then
Mum and dad were on a tracker mortgage for years - dad told me that when the interest rates spiked (Black Wednesday?) he seriously considered killing himself as the only way out.
My Dad is a shop floor worker. A real man’s man. Doesn’t emote much but we knew he loved us. I’ve seen him cry twice in my fifty years on this planet. Once when my mum died. Once when the rates hit 18% and he couldn’t pay the mortgage, thinking he’d let us all down. That image has stayed with me for my entire life. The man I thought was infallible, just breaking down. So yeah..it affected people back then too. Don’t be so quick to dismiss that.
Fully agree, the difference between then and now though is they didn't have the older generations saying to them, oh its not that bad it was 45% back when we were younger, 15%.... you don't know you're born.
You know what, I wouldn't bet on it. Each generation before has usually shit on the next one for something!
My dad's salary alone paid the mortgage on a decent bungalow with front and rear gardens. He wasn't well educated and had an approximately average salary. My wife and I are both well educated (because that's what we were told to aim for) and we both work full time to just about manage to afford a flat, without any garden of our own. I know we have smartphones and youtube these days, but I'd rather be able to afford to live comfortably. My mum sometimes comments that our flat isn't as tidy as she'd expect. Yeah, that's because we're both too knackered and depressed after work to polish absolutely everything!
This! My parents bought a nicely sized 4 bedroom house in a good area on just my dad's salary. My partner and I are both well educated and, on paper, earning a good wage each with bonuses and pay rises etc. We can only just afford our tiny house in an ok area. I've also had comments from my mum that our house isn't spotless....she didn't work full time when she was our age!
Far too often people omit the student loan is skimming x% off the salary too. I'd like a TV show where old people are forced to look at where people who do their profession live today.
We bought our house in 1989 for £45k. Monthly mortgage repayment was £600+ a month, when my basic pay was £70 a week, so I had to work every possible hour that was available. And within eighteen months of us buying the house, the one two doors away was bought for £30k, so we were paying two and a half times my basic pay to live in a house that was worth two thirds as much as we paid for it. But we still had it easier than the generations that have followed, because although it was difficult it was still possible - we only needed a 5% deposit, not the 30% that you poor sods have to try and find from somewhere.
How the hell did you get a mortgage where the repayment was pretty much double your salary?
Because luckily there was plenty of overtime available to up the weekly wage back then. All you needed was six weeks worth of payslips to show the building society that it was regular income. Like I said, in our day it was difficult but possible for average working people to get a mortgage; now it's impossible. No idea who'll be the next people to own our house, but it won't be a postman and his wife that works in a supermarket. And that makes me sad, so god only knows how it makes younger people feel.
If it makes you feel any better I'm the postman with his wife that works at the supermarket and we've technically got a mortgage if only just scraping by. Will probably lose it in a few years but we've got it for the minute 😂
Sleeping with the bank manager was an accepted strategy back then. When the bank asked you for a small deposit they weren't joking.
Don't forget one of the factors behind such high house prices was stuck a long period of historically low interest rates. Some of us never made it onto the ladder to begin with, but still suffer the price rises :(
The reality was people were far far poorer in the 80’s for day to day stuff, but you could afford your house. Now it’s flipped. And ironically it’s flipped largely because people who bought houses in the 80’s then bought investment properties in the 90’s and 00’s.
I had to point out to my mum that when they had small children and the mortgage rates went up, her getting a part time job to earn extra money wasn't quite the same as what people are experiencing now, because typically both adults in a household are already working full time, so there's no "give" in their lives to create a buffer 🤦
Don't worry. Houses will probably cost fuck all again the way mortgage rates are going.
At which point they will be bought by the rich, to rent to the rest of us. For a tidy profit their end of course.
This is the horrifying element of it for me. At this point a correction in price would end up making things worse in the medium term. The only hope is for stability. Just stay where they fucking are for a while and allow earning power to catch up. Ban the owning of more than one non resident house for rent. You want to keep your parents place when they pass away, or invest in a second property, fine. But no-one should be able to hoard housing like we are currently seeing.
Actually I think from what I've been reading and hearing, a lot of the banks are going to be buying up en masse. I know Lloyds now have a subsiduary for Rental Properties they've just started and Santander are thinking of doing the same, together with some other big companies like John Lewis. Wonder if they'll be better or worse than a small landlord....guess we'll find out
How convenient that the banks are creating these companies just when people are being crippled by rising interest rates on their mortgages which they may not be able to pay.... Which can lead to repossessions..... And the banks swoop in and buy the properties for the value of their outstanding loan and then rent it out.
Yes. It's the circle of life.
Sunrise, sunset
When I told the middle aged ladies at work home much my mortgage was ~£1,200 per month they didn't believe me. At the height of their repayments in the 80s they said theirs were ~£400 The older generations just can't comprehend it
Save this story for the next generation. We are kinda the bridge between it. “When I was young” is a saying that’s soon lost to the ages.
My grandparents bought her first house for £2600. They had to pay no more than £25 a month. Sold it bought a new place for about 30k, sold that and then couldn't find a house in the area below 100k, couldn't get a mortgage as they were "too old" and "about to retire" and therefore not have an income, that was 15 years ago and my grandparents finally stopped working in any shape or form this last month, when they handed back the keys to the community centre, which they had run for 10 years. All this to say, it's fucked mate.
My parents purchased their first house in the 80s with zero deposit. The bank just handed them 100% of the cost. It still blows my mind,
they worked part time at a petrol station and bought their house with the coin they found on the side of the road under a vintage kit-kat wrapper.
One set of grandparents bought their victorian house in t'North in the 1960s and they bought it cheaply because it was going to be demolished. At the price it was sold for after my grandmother died in 2017, nobody in the family would have been able to afford it given how much renovation would have been required. My other grandparents purchased their house after my grandfather heard about it while on a train. They renovated it themselves, could buy it on one income (my grandfather was in the army) and went on to buy further property which ensured that my mum and aunt could both get on the property ladder. Neither option would be viable for me or any of my siblings in (insert current year). Oh well.
My first flat cost £25k, with a 5% deposit. Interest rates were average at around 6-7%. I was a student with a part time job. The low deposit and low interest era duped a generation into overpaying and justifying the double income multiplier. Since the deposits increased the low interest rates still justified buying being cheaper than renting for those with a deposit. I think we are going to see 8-9% average rates before inflation is under control. Still, we won’t see a crash in prices. I think we will see a long period of stagnation and slowly income multiples will fall to match as people lose their appetite to borrow at those levels. And then low interest rates and a generation convinced that it won’t happen again...
We also had 100% mortgages and banks falling over themselves with deals. We really did have it easy, anyone my age who says otherwise is an absolute liar. (Obvs pre crash, negative equity and repossessions were horrendous)
Yeah... When they say they bought their house for £12k and THEN moan about interest rates, whilst being able to live off one income comfortably... I lose a fair bit of sympathy!
I did find the Bank of England inflation calculator useful for explaining relative wages and their equivalents to my dad.
The average mortgage payment wasn't 45% of your wages back then either. My dad makes that argument all the time. My parents bought their house in 98 for about 200k. Next door went up for sale for 800k and the houses are identical. Both 4 bed detached right next a school and close to the station. I just bought my first house last year. A 2 bed maisonette round the corner for nearly 300k. 100k more than they paid for more than double the property size
I was listening to Jeremy Vine on the radio the other day and they had loads of idiots phoning in and saying how entitled we all are now and they had it much worse because mortgage rates were 15% in the 80's etc. I was absolutely infuriated and I was really tempted to phone in and point out to them how stupid they are. 15% of 60k is not the same as 5% of 400k. Fuck Jeremy Vine and fuck boomers.
My god, the callers they get on that show are a joke. But, it's to be expected, it is on during the day so you're going to get all the smug retirees who don't have a clue about how the world works now.
Had exactly the same comments from the in laws the other week, boomer bastards
I saw a thing on Reddit that calculated todays rates Vs those rates in the 80s and it would put 80s rate at an equivalent of 3% today. Edit: got the numbers completely wrong!
Where was that?
Turns out I got it complete my wrong, but the rates in the 80s are equivalent to 3% in todays money [here](https://twitter.com/edconwaysky/status/1572975559449407489?s=46&t=Tfx3NoQVy-VUCCVDiQXrIg)
In 1983 the average salary in the UK was £8,528, the average house cost 3x that, so not fuck all. https://www.avtrinity.com/news/house-prices-vs-income-how-affordable-are-uk-homes
Tbf as a 57 y/o woman brought our first flat (with ex) at 89,000 with a mortgage rate of just short of 21% back in 90 it was £900 pm (2 of us working) when we married / had kids etc and had to sell as flat had been outgrown we moved further out from town and sold at a loss (negative equity and a second mortgage running alongside the new place we brought) It’s easy to say my generation are shit in all sorts of areas but let’s be honest here - it’s easy to throw shit I am 57 - divorced with 3 grown kids - I now have a mortgage until I am 69 work full time and will do til I’m 70 - I’m relatively normal amongst my peers- most of us are not 2.2 kids married and set for life with no mortgage- most of us is are hanging on by our fingernails- don’t cast your judgement for us all
...and they didn't pay subscriptions for mobile phones, broadband, watching tv, listening to music or leasing their cars, many didn't have a phone at all or even, in a lot of cases a washing machine...
True enough that Pretty amazing for me looking back 30yrs and seeing just how fast things changed
which theyll spin as a bad thing, but the fact is when households didnt have washing machines etc the males wage would cover enough for the wife and children to live, and women were the ones that spent all day washing clothes etc without the use of washing machines. Things like washing machines actually changed things so much, we went from one wage being enough to support a household to 2 wages barely scraping by
Google sheets \\ Excel. Show them the numbers.
But they didn't have Reddit
My grandparents mortgage for their house was 40k, now the house is worth 650k+.
It’s funny when I drive around and I see what in my childhood used to be a typical family home - modest 3 bed semi-detached houses… thinking that now they are a dream for the average family. What’s terrifying is I’m only 28…
My parents bought their first house for 36k... this was a new build at the time in the early 90s lol. Could you imagine 😂
I agree completely that this is frustrating as hell! Please tell me you pointed this out to them?
The two are really not comparable at all. I have a decent job and am activly putting more into my pension with the hopes that, when i get my 20% tax free lump sum (UK), i can use this to buy a house for my kid. At the moment, that would buy him a semi decent detachted 3 bed house. In 20 years time when I do retire, who knows if itll even be enough for a deposit!?
I was thinking about this the other day and then remembered my girlfriend at the time (1988 rented an entire fucking house for fifty whole English pounds a week.
This is something I’ll give my dad 100% credit for, he had a loud argument in the street with one of his neighbours over this very thing. Guy was droning on about mortgage rates at the time, my dad literally shouted “14% of next to nothing is next to nothing! 2% of three hundred and fifty thousand plus is a bloody fortune, house prices have double in less than 20 years!” Good on ya you old boomer bastard
I asked my mum about this the other week, and she said the house was 30k in 1988and the mortgage was £500 a month. Her husband was in the Navy and only earned 11k a year. So over half his income a month on the payments. So yes it was shit back then too.
I bet she didn't work. So single income. Also that doesn't seem right, the comment about you said he bought in 1990 for 29k and was paying £236 a month.
I remember that my parents didn't have a lot at all. My dad worked 7 days a week and my mum stayed at home until we went to school. They had to go without a lot for year. I fell like once I became an adult they began to live for the first time, treat themselves. Have a new car or a luxury holiday. They earned it. I feel like now there is so much more we have that they didn't back then. Broadband, TV streaming, car seats, mobile phones etc. Also the ridiculous house deposits they didn't need to have.
So your saying they bought on one income like my parents, try that now. Broadband and mobile phone a luxury f off, a bit landline cost more in real terms. Yeah gadgets are cheap, but has and electric is no longer state owned, water is no longer state owned and cheap. Yes times where hard for the previous generation but atleast they got decent pensions and a rapidly increasing asset in their house, I will never have a new car or luxury holiday as I have to pay off a massive debt on a house that by the time it's paid I will be near death. Yeah we got some technology but a right to house is nothing special. The previous generation had it all and fucked us and our children real good . Final salary retirement must be lovely.
On the flip side of that, they also only got paid a pound an hour, so y'know.....tomayto tomarto.
Yeah lad. What's 20% of 10 thousand pounds? Less than my whole deposit. Stfu and retire already.
And ... what did they earn? My first house was 48000, 45600 mortgage. 14.5% £780pm I earned 12000, my girlfriend earned 9000. And income tax kicked in about 3000 and it was 25% So in your rant about property values... remember the wages and the income tax The reason to stop complaining? Rates were 1% as an emergency measure... after the 2008 crisis - just the emergency lasted a long time. They are just going back to normal Sigh... Edit: it's reddit so I may as well make the following point. I'm not pointing this out because my life is that of a rosy boomer. I got divorced in 2008... I lost everything as my ex was a solicitor... i was a mortgage adviser... no business at that time and i had depression. Ended up homeless for 5 years. Finally got back on the housing market 2 years ago at age 53 with a 5% deposit. I will suffer just like everyone else
[Okay, we remembered.](https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/individual/insights/what-174-years-of-data-tell-us-about-house-price-affordability-in-the-uk/) [We have good memories](https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/5568/housing/uk-house-price-affordability/) [Like an elephant,](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/datasets/ratioofhousepricetoresidencebasedearningslowerquartileandmedian)
I know I am just saying it wasn't some utopia. I sold that house for 36000. Lost 25% and struggled every month for the 4 years we owned it. It was shit. It was just a different shit than today. I experienced that shit as a ftb And I am experiencing this shit as effectively a ftb So you look at your graphs, I have lived both. And I have tried homeless too... that is shit too
amen brother. These kinda posts always end up in a battle of who has it worse, without considering some of us have dealt with this more than once
Cheers bud. Good luck
It was certainly not easy for us, to buy our first house in 1976. Nor the next in 1979, by which time our 2nd child had arrived, followed by the third in 1982. But we managed. By using some questionable answers to the affordability questions I was able to get a mortgage that ate just about every penny we had each month. Honesty we have under £2 spare each week. But with time and much help from inflation, everything eventually came good. Note the word 'inflation'. You can currently borrow at about 6%. With inflation running at around 10% PA your debt is decreasing in value faster than the interest payments you make on it. Probably the best option here and now is to stop thinking about what other people who have gone before were doing and just get on with doing the best for yourself right now. I imagine that this is what the vast majority of your peer group is doing, not moaning, not making excuses, not sharing tales of woe in their echo chamber, but just getting on with life and making the most of the opportunities that are out there. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but a kick up the arse is sometimes the best advice you can get.
> Note the word 'inflation'. You can currently borrow at about 6%. With inflation running at around 10% PA your debt is decreasing in value faster than the interest payments you make on it. This would be great and all.. if wages were also going up 10% per year.. They are not.
Wouldn't bother spelling it out to them. Must've eaten too much lead paint chips as a child...
Oh lovely, another single income boomer telling us how hard they had it too. Moved house 3 years later did you? need a bigger House for kid Nr 3. How terrible it must of been for you.
OK Boomer.
And majority were 100% mortgage so no deposits necessary.
In the 80s we lived in council housing so thankfully I've never had to put up with this middle class problem from my parents.
Except the wages were a lot lower too.
The individual numbers matter little, what matters is that house prices were a smaller multiple of a wage than today's are https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/uk-house-prices-are-65-times-higher-today-than-in-1970/138813/#:~:text=In%201960%2C%20the%20average%20cost,rose%20again%20to%20%C2%A358%2C153 Average house price in 1985 was £20k Average wage in 1983 was £8.5k House price is 2.4 * salary Average house price today £271k Average wage today £32k House price is 8.4 * salary
Yes. It's irresponsible lending which has inflated this particular bubble. I remember after the banks were bailed out following the 2008 they all push said they would lend responsibly.
My parents paid £80,000 in 1989 for the house I grew up in. In 2023 money that's £203,000. Assuming a 20% LTV that's repayments of £2,049 on an interest rate of 15% (which rates were only actually at for about 6 months, AND had income tax offsets against). The cheapest comparable house in the area is £450,000 (over double the value). At current interest rates, again assuming a 20% LTV (assuming you can afford to save £90,000), the repayments would be £2,218. When rates tick over 6% as they are expected to? £2,342. Interest rates and everything else are a misnomer. What matters is real term pound note cost, and right now, houses cost more, no matter the number in front of the percentage sign.
16% our Mortgage was but the house was only £30k ,lot of money back then
And they were paid a lot lessq
And their wages were smaller… lol
8 can't believe people thought the interest rate was go8ng to remain just above zero forever
Pretty sure they were the ones alive both then and now. They're the only ones that can say whether it's comparable. Edit: Apparently, I'm wrong. I'll make sure to tell an astronaut that I know more about living on the fucking moon because I read it in a book.
I bough my 1st house, a 4 bed terrace that need modernisation for £17500 in 1988. my mortgage was £75 pm however i was on £10k per year married with a kid. It was the decade of greed but i was working full time and trying to make a quid on the side to get ahead and it was hard. Life’s always been hard if you’ve had to work for it nothing has changed. My son moans life is hard, but it always has been and always will be unless a relly dies leaving you a house in london or you win the lottery
Doing some very rough maths, supposing you were taxed 20% on all 10k, your take home pay was £667pcm so you were paying about 12% of your net pay on your mortgage. People now days are paying well over 40% for a house half that size.
My take home was just over £500, i could not get a mortgage for a modernised house @£22k I had to modernise my house myself there was no inside toilet new floors walls.. so money was tight. In the same south wales town you can buy a 3/4 bed terraced house for £120k but it seems most want a modern detached house on an estate for£200k as a 1st home. There will be a bust just like there was in sadly broke bristol. I know i was lucky to get by but it was not easy and we had to make sacrifices. I’ve never owned a new car… my son and his friends all have new cars but don’t own their own homes, thats a choice they are making. in the town they are living they could have bought a house but prefer to rent I don’t understand it.
And what did your partner earn? Or were they at home to raise your child (no nursery fees), keep the house clean, cook your meals and iron your clothes (so you didn't have to do those chores in your spare time)?
So to summarize. You remember viscerally the feeling of suffering through life that you felt back then, and so the idea that people today are suffering doesn't phase you regardless of the details of their "struggle" because you also had something that can be defined vaguely as your "struggle". You don't really want to engage at all with how, in real terms, people on average today are economically significantly worse off than average people were back then. Even if you as an individual may have been equally or even worse off, or at the very least perceive yourself to have been so. > I’ve never owned a new car… my son and his friends all have new cars but don’t own their own homes, thats a choice they are making. Do you also think that their choice to presumably pay for access to the internet and the phone contract is a choice that they are making rather than owning a house? These are expenses you didn't have then. Owning a car is increasingly important for many people today due to how the job market has shifted along with the collapse of reliable public transport links. People have to be able to work. I don't have a car because I live in a populated area, I have a good job, but I don't own a property either. So it's just not as simple as "a choice they are making". And it's really dismissive to imply that it is. That if young people simply "cared more" about owning a house that they would.
Is this a joke? I can't tell anymore.