@Angelicant it's a very different story in other parts of the country. Down here in the "smoke" we paid 10.5K for a 1 bed maisonette in 1977. My father sometimes worked up North and his colleagues were appalled, they said you could get a 4 bed detached house for that money. We had to take special insurance to have a 90% mortgage, in spite of having a deposit. Even so we always say if we were starting now we couldn't possibly afford what we have now. Bizarrely it makes us a bit like the landed classes, property rich cash poor, except we we don't own a listed stately home, just a suburban detached house. A 2 bed flat round here costs £325- 400 k plus, depending exactly where it is. A 2 Bed house is £600k upwards. A 4 bed detached house in the posh area could fetch 1 million easily. None of them are worth that but that is the state of the market. I say again not our fault it's just how it is, but that doesn't help people like @WonkyWomble .
My daughter has just moved from an ex council , one bed flat in Brixton . she was paying £1250 a month in rent . Those flats are selling for £330,000. And folk say the young have got it all? Makes my blood boil. My first flat cost £9.500.( 1983 ) I was 18 and earning £6,000 a year. It had a toilet, but no wash hand basin, never mind a bath, but improvement grants were available back then ( until Thatcher scrapped them ) but it was mine and I was " on the property ladder "
It's OK @Allotment Boy like I've said I begrudge no one for doing well, it's nice that they acknowledge that it's not always possible for others. What I object to is people dodging tax using various schemes to hide their money in particular when they then have the nerve to moan about tax funded services. Like I say, I'm blessed to not measure happiness in material goods 😁 And i still have a beautiful garden, even if it is rented, my landlord likes it too 😀
Another perspective - not necessarily popular - is to take a very long view of human history* and look at the periods of aberration or exception - or examine what they might be. Instead of seeing the post-war period as the norm, you can see it as the aberration.
The post-war period is unique in British history. Before that there wasn't a history of house buying for regular people; having bank accounts or pensions was not common, mortgages and easy access to credit was not part of the landscape, ever. The NHS was set up (for the most part) in 1947, free universal education was established as policy; going to university or college was not an expected part of regular people's lives before that point. 1975 maternity leave laws come in, sick pay standardised in the 1980s. Add in sudden changes in divorce laws and access to the pill, and you have an in 1985 an entirely different society from 1945. Expectations, affluence, house ownership, the shape of the middle classes has totally reformed.
One argument goes that this is constructed on the basis of the 'post-war consensus', following the great ask and sacrifice of British and Commonwealth citizens during WWII (call it 'guilt'). The 'payback' was, for a while, heightening universality of health, education, union rights, immigration from Commonwealth countries. But really, the consensus in policy-making last only from, say, 1947-1979. It's a highly unusual time and baby boomers rode that short-lived wave, carried later by de-regulation of the housing market in the 1990s.
*The Whig view of history says that the progress of history just gets better and better - one long arc. Other models suggest it doesn't work that.
It's the rise in house prices compared to the rise in salaries that is the problem. I bought my first house in 1988, it cost £60,000 and my salary was £25000, therefore possible to get the mortgage. Looking today, a similar house in the same place would cost £450,000 and the equivalent salary in my profession at the same stage of training, would be 63,000, therefore unaffordable.
When I bought this house when i started as a consultant it was £150,000just affordable on my starting salary. Its value today is approx. 700,000 and totally unaffordable on a new consultants salary.
That is the reality facing young people today and it is unfair.
How can you lie there and think of England When you don't even know who's in the team
... and following on from Punk Doc - that situation has nothing to do with housing supply. That's all about de-regulation of the markets.
And, at the same time, maybe there was a short lived set of expectations (of Punk Doc's generation) that just don't hold any more. It's like saying it's unfair that there is more plastic than fish in the sea, by mass.
It's a question of supply and demand though isn't it? UK is a very small island so land is limited and we have had a huge wave of immigration, especially since the Blair years, which has helped to put pressure on the housing market.
I think it's sinful that the big housing developers are sitting on land banks that they have planning permission for but are not building on because they want the price to go up. Local Councils should have made it a condition many years ago that the building work must start within say 3 years and completed within a reasonable time frame. I believe is just going to be made mandatory.
I agree completely, it's bizarre that having never earned enough to pay more than basic rate tax in theory my house is supposed to be worth 750-800k. It's not "worth " that. We did work hard we were prudent, we bought fixer uppers and improved them but not to that extent. We got lucky in some ways but sometimes you make your own luck. My wife, struggled to keep her bungalow when her ex departed, she could have fallen back on the state with 2 children but worked 2 jobs instead. I took on shift work when I was on my own, in theory I lost a lot of money on a house in the price crash of the 90's, we endured 15% interest rates, but when the rate dropped I carried on paying the higher rate to pay down the mortgage more quickly, even though that meant not having spare money for other things. Even so I don't envy the young now, I accept the current position is almost impossible for many.
Isn't part of the problem the selling off of housing stock in the 80s? Obviously the houses were lived in by the same people, so wasn't an instant issue. But if you look at the data for housebuilding, there was a peak in the 60s and a steady decline since. At the same time as the decline was taking hold, new buyers were created via the right to buy schemes. The selling off of council houses created new house owners that didn't exist before. They also gained the ability to move - to buy other housing stock. So you get a double whammy. Increased buyers (2.6million is a figure I've seen), fewer houses being built = shortage = higher prices.
@steveTu, absolutely, don't get my OH started on Thatcher, right to buy the virtual giving away of shares in BT, etc. If the councils had been allowed to build a new house for every one they sold there would be a much better housing stock now. To get back to the original question you can see why people want to be able to pass on some equity to their children. To lose it all paying for care, when the really rich salt their money away in off shore tax havens etc is just wrong. Look at the fuss Cameron made whe his father's dealings were exposed, bleating on in Parliament about his father's reputation being "troduced" then we find he's done exactly the same. As always one rule for them another for the rest. As I have already said raise the money through general taxes, but make EVERYONE pay, individuals and companies.
Posts
And folk say the young have got it all? Makes my blood boil.
My first flat cost £9.500.( 1983 ) I was 18 and earning £6,000 a year.
It had a toilet, but no wash hand basin, never mind a bath, but improvement grants were available back then ( until Thatcher scrapped them ) but it was mine and I was " on the property ladder "
What I object to is people dodging tax using various schemes to hide their money in particular when they then have the nerve to moan about tax funded services.
Like I say, I'm blessed to not measure happiness in material goods 😁
And i still have a beautiful garden, even if it is rented, my landlord likes it too 😀
I bought my first house in 1988, it cost £60,000 and my salary was £25000, therefore possible to get the mortgage.
Looking today, a similar house in the same place would cost £450,000 and the equivalent salary in my profession at the same stage of training, would be 63,000, therefore unaffordable.
When I bought this house when i started as a consultant it was £150,000just affordable on my starting salary. Its value today is approx. 700,000 and totally unaffordable on a new consultants salary.
That is the reality facing young people today and it is unfair.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
I think it's sinful that the big housing developers are sitting on land banks that they have planning permission for but are not building on because they want the price to go up. Local Councils should have made it a condition many years ago that the building work must start within say 3 years and completed within a reasonable time frame. I believe is just going to be made mandatory.
To get back to the original question you can see why people want to be able to pass on some equity to their children. To lose it all paying for care, when the really rich salt their money away in off shore tax havens etc is just wrong. Look at the fuss Cameron made whe his father's dealings were exposed, bleating on in Parliament about his father's reputation being "troduced" then we find he's done exactly the same. As always one rule for them another for the rest. As I have already said raise the money through general taxes, but make EVERYONE pay, individuals and companies.