And boomers wonder why millennials are bitter towards them..

Caporegime
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Skill luck or a bit of both?

Thats pretty impressive

Some of it was skill, a lot of it was luck. I mean if we all knew that house prices in the village he moved to were going to double in 10 years, I would have bought one in the village myself, even just as a BTL investment property. And although I have personally gained in where I chose to live, i didn't gain anything like as much as him,

Plus I am not prepared to make the final sacrifice that he has (in my books anyway) and move to the town. The fact he managed to sell his village house for around £600k and buy a much bigger 5 bedroom house in town with enough money to settle his mortgage and leave him lots of spare cash is where he won. If he had stayed living in the village he would have just been living in a £600k house and still with a small mortgage. So like I said earlier, you only win when you cash out at the end and either downsize or rent or move to some other part of the country and buy a cheap house to retire in.

The key each time was moving from an area where the prices had skyrocketed to another area where they werent and hoped that they started catching up later.

Of course the further you are prepared to move, the more chance these kind of gains are likely. He went from Haxby in York where at the time houses were selling before lunchtime on the day they went on the market and the estates agents had even printed the brochure, to a village 20 miles away and then to Winston in County Durham some 70 miles away and finally to Barnard Castle.

But if your aim was to end up living in a town in a 5 bed family home with kids mortgage free then that was the way to do it.
 
Caporegime
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Some of it was skill, a lot of it was luck. I mean if we all knew that house prices in the village he moved to were going to double in 10 years, I would have bought one in the village myself, even just as a BTL investment property. And although I have personally gained in where I chose to live, i didn't gain anything like as much as him,

Plus I am not prepared to make the final sacrifice that he has (in my books anyway) and move to the town. The fact he managed to sell his village house for around £600k and buy a much bigger 5 bedroom house in town with enough money to settle his mortgage and leave him lots of spare cash is where he won. If he had stayed living in the village he would have just been living in a £600k house and still with a small mortgage. So like I said earlier, you only win when you cash out at the end and either downsize or rent or move to some other part of the country and buy a cheap house to retire in.

The key each time was moving from an area where the prices had skyrocketed to another area where they werent and hoped that they started catching up later.

Of course the further you are prepared to move, the more chance these kind of gains are likely. He went from Haxby in York where at the time houses were selling before lunchtime on the day they went on the market and the estates agents had even printed the brochure, to a village 20 miles away and then to Winston in County Durham some 70 miles away and finally to Barnard Castle.

But if your aim was to end up living in a town in a 5 bed family home with kids mortgage free then that was the way to do it.

Its impressive. Especially if he had no help from parents. Does show if you make the sacrifices you can beat the system. Even without those gains to be mortgage free so soon in a small house would be amazing.

This is the stuff that should be taught in school as an option.. Practical economics or music studies and English lit? I know what's more valuable

Definitely admit I'm in a bad position because I've made mistake after mistake in career and things like house purchases
 
Soldato
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What kind of jobs have these people in their mid 30s got where they are unable to afford rent?
It's probably less a case of physically affording the rent, more of a sensible economic decision. Why pay extortionate rent for a shared house or a tiny flat when you can live in your boomer parents big house ( ;) ) with less aggro from 'housemates', less aggro from a horrible landlords, probably more space, and more money to save (or enjoy).

Well that's because it's true. Change is inevitable.
I'll remember that second sentence when the crash comes, lol.

So after 20 years he had a house which he bought and owns mortgage free for £395k and £100k savings,
Yeah.. all totally doable for young people nowadays… That is the very point of this thread. My neighbours 'made' £700k on one house. It 'earned' £70k/year for 14 years whilst they lived there. That is the point of this thread.. pointing out that your average nobody years ago could be lucky and make a small fortune on their house without really being clever, or trying. It's like winning the lottery. Absolutely none of that will happen again for generations, especially no in the next 5-10 years.

Yeh mines put down to luck in this thread, 44k house in Yorkshire to 250k plus and room for another property in garden and mortgage free (neighbour did this)
All on low wages and in a decade.
Both open to millennial buyers as not that long ago but obviously too busy been bitter,
Is this the part where people start listing 40k houses in some no-hope town with no jobs and a population of crackheads? We haven't done that for at least 3 pages by now..
 
Caporegime
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Its impressive. Especially if he had no help from parents. Does show if you make the sacrifices you can beat the system. Even without those gains to be mortgage free so soon in a small house would be amazing.

This is the stuff that should be taught in school as an option.. Practical economics or music studies and English lit? I know what's more valuable

Definitely admit I'm in a bad position because I've made mistake after mistake in career and things like house purchases

No help from his parents. His first house he bought was £100k from memory. That turned into £200k by the time he sold it, then bought a village property for £220k and sold that for £300k and bought the Winston cottage for £330k which then became £600k+ or something along those lines. Its been a while since we talked about it.

so over all those moves the max he ever had borrowed was only ever £150k max. So even if he has stayed in his £600k+ village house, a lot of people would have considered himself lucky that he only had a £150k mortgage on a £600k house.

And his last house move wasnt even downsizing, it was a 5 bed room new build and bigger than the house he was selling in the village but it was the location and type which meant it £200k+ less in money. Houses in Barnard Castle are much much cheaper than the houses in the typical North Yorkshire villages with a village green and in the commuter belt.
 
Caporegime
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Yeah.. all totally doable for young people nowadays… That is the very point of this thread. My neighbours 'made' £700k on one house. It 'earned' £70k/year for 14 years whilst they lived there. That is the point of this thread.. pointing out that your average nobody years ago could be lucky and make a small fortune on their house without really being clever, or trying. It's like winning the lottery. Absolutely none of that will happen again for generations, especially no in the next 5-10 years.
.

Oh and don't get me wrong, I am not saying you could do that now, it was certainly a lot lot easier for my generation.

If you got lucky and chose your location move wisely enough and kept moving then its doable to a lesser degree and would take more steps and risks.

Are the house prices in Winston going to double from £600k to £1.2m over the next 10 years? I certainly doubt it. You would need to find another area where house prices are currently "cheap" but then they go on to outpace the rest of the country. You could try to make an educated guess but if you guess wrong then you are going nowhere.

My old boss 20 odd years ago had his daughter go to Uni in York. He didn't want to waste money in paying rent for her so bought one of the old railway terraced houses for £30k and spent £10k or so doing it up. 3 years on when she left Uni he sold it for £120k. He always joked he must be the only parent who actually made money out of his kid going to Uni.
 
Man of Honour
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It's probably less a case of physically affording the rent, more of a sensible economic decision. Why pay extortionate rent for a shared house or a tiny flat when you can live in your boomer parents big house ( ;) ) with less aggro from 'housemates', less aggro from a horrible landlords, probably more space, and more money to save (or enjoy).
Well that's a choice. You don't want to live with housemates (you don't have to), you want to live in your parent's big house, you don't want to deal with horrible landlords (I've had zero interaction with mine in four years, did I get lucky?), and you want more money.
You could sacrifice some of those things and rent a house.

"Can't afford rent" is not the same as "don't want to pay that amount in rent"

I'll remember that second sentence when the crash comes, lol.
As I said, I'm not a homeowner, so personally I am not impacted by that.
 
Soldato
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Well that's a choice. You don't want to live with housemates (you don't have to), you want to live in your parent's big house, you don't want to deal with horrible landlords (I've had zero interaction with mine in four years, did I get lucky?), and you want more money.
You could sacrifice some of those things and rent a house.

"Can't afford rent" is not the same as "don't want to pay that amount in rent"
That doesn't make any sense. I'm saying that in an expensive rental market (which is everywhere, btw) the person's earnings may not cover comfortable (or at all) their rent and money for food, utilities, bills etc. If you earn £1500pcm but average rent for a 1 bedroom flat is £1200 then you'd struggle to make it work. That's common sense. Obviously in that case the person would be looking at houseshares but I'm sure I've no need to go into the maths of that to finish my point..

Maybe check out some of the stats which show why this is much more common than it used to be; Twenty years ago, the average rent accounted for about 30% of the average income in England – now, it's a lot higher.
CKd0wSB.png

Even in the 'cheap' North East rent now accounts for more than 30% of earnings. In London it's three quarters, lol :o Even areas like the South West (hello people that's not anywhere near London!) it's approaching 50%. Mental.
 
Soldato
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That doesn't make any sense. I'm saying that in an expensive rental market (which is everywhere, btw) the person's earnings may not cover comfortable (or at all) their rent and money for food, utilities, bills etc. If you earn £1500pcm but average rent for a 1 bedroom flat is £1200 then you'd struggle to make it work. That's common sense. Obviously in that case the person would be looking at houseshares but I'm sure I've no need to go into the maths of that to finish my point..

Maybe check out some of the stats which show why this is much more common than it used to be; Twenty years ago, the average rent accounted for about 30% of the average income in England – now, it's a lot higher.
CKd0wSB.png

Even in the 'cheap' North East rent now accounts for more than 30% of earnings. In London it's three quarters, lol :o Even areas like the South West (hello people that's not anywhere near London!) it's approaching 50%. Mental.

That makes it sound better than it is too, the increase isn't 16.8%, it's 16.8 points or 58.54%. London is an 82% increase.
 
Man of Honour
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That doesn't make any sense. I'm saying that in an expensive rental market (which is everywhere, btw) the person's earnings may not cover comfortable (or at all) their rent and money for food, utilities, bills etc. If you earn £1500pcm but average rent for a 1 bedroom flat is £1200 then you'd struggle to make it work. That's common sense. Obviously in that case the person would be looking at houseshares but I'm sure I've no need to go into the maths of that to finish my point..

Maybe check out some of the stats which show why this is much more common than it used to be; Twenty years ago, the average rent accounted for about 30% of the average income in England – now, it's a lot higher.
CKd0wSB.png

Even in the 'cheap' North East rent now accounts for more than 30% of earnings. In London it's three quarters, lol :o Even areas like the South West (hello people that's not anywhere near London!) it's approaching 50%. Mental.

I'm not sure where your figure of £1200 for the average cost of a 1 bedroom flat comes from - the ONS states that the average monthly rental cost in the UK is £700 in 2020.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...mmarystatisticsinengland/april2019tomarch2020

This is significantly less than your figure of £1200.

£1500 pcm is (roughly) a £20,000 salary per annum, so we aren't exactly talking needing a high-flying job to be able to afford the average monthly rental cost in the UK.

So there are options:
  • Rent a cheaper house
  • Move to a cheaper rental area
  • Get a better job
  • Houseshare
But if your view is that you don't want to pay extortionate rent for a shared house or a tiny flat, you don't want aggro from 'housemates', you don't want aggro from a horrible landlords, you don't want less space, and you want money to save or enjoy... then that's your choice - but don't make out your hand is being forced.

You don't "have" to own a house, it isn't an essential. None of my European friends own a house, and likely never will.
 
Soldato
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Not entirely sure of the rant here. Stuff goes up in value. I'm pretty sure there a lot of people on here of all ages who couldn't have afforded a house of 800k that they bought it for originally. Let along the 1.7million. try being less jealous of others and concentrate on improving your own situation.

There is actually no real reason for stuff to go up in value. It's caused by inflation, the true definition of which is increase of the amount of money in this system. This means the financial elite literally creating money out of thin air by adding zeros to their balance sheet at the central bank. This in turn means the retail banks can make mortgage loans to people who want to buy a house. The root cause of "stuff goes up in value" is the financial elite being able to create money out of thin air, because the currency is no longer backed by gold, so they can decide to create as much of it as they like. This is the root cause of the ridiculous house prices we have today, and massive rises in inequality. Being able to live somewhere is a necessity, and a mortgage dictates how much the banking sector is taking from you. Whilst I think it is wrong to be "jealous", I think people have every right to feel unfairly treated and that the system is extremely unfair, and frankly, in my opinion, is now a joke.
 
Soldato
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You don't "have" to own a house, it isn't an essential. None of my European friends own a house, and likely never will.

You do have to live somewhere. Rent you are just throwing everything away, buying with a mortgage you are just paying money away to the financial elite. Ultimately, it is just control of the land. Rents have been increased a lot by buy to let mortgages, which are a joke, because ultimately these are facilitated by central banks creating money out of thin air (because the central bank can create currency, it's not backed by gold), so it's just the central banks gradually taking over the property market, which is what is happening. All of this just means massively rising inequality, it's a joke.
 
Soldato
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I'm not sure where your figure of £1200 for the average cost of a 1 bedroom flat comes from
I made it up, I'm not here to find you the official figures on everything you know…

My point still stands. Average wages are inflated by high earners, there's millions of people on minimum wage in this country yet I bet they live in areas where the average rent is £700pcm+. Minimum wage is £1400pcm so in many areas you're looking at paying 50% of your take home pay on your rent. Add to that the usual bills (I dunno £250pcm), plus food (a conservative £50pcm), travel/car (£50pcm), and you're looking down the barrel of having barely £200 as a slush fund for socialising and having some sort of life.

but don't make out your hand is being forced.
But people's hands are forced. By the very simple reality of living and working in an area where you can only get a minimum wage/low wage job, yet average rent is £700-800pcm you're quite quickly running into trouble. Why can't you see that? :confused: This is the reality for millions of people in our country and you're very naive if you don't understand that.
 
Soldato
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But people's hands are forced. By the very simple reality of living and working in an area where you can only get a minimum wage/low wage job, yet average rent is £700-800pcm you're quite quickly running into trouble. Why can't you see that? :confused: This is the reality for millions of people in our country and you're very naive if you don't understand that.

I think you are correct. It boils down to control of the money supply. The UK central bank, i.e. the Bank of England, which is a privately held institution, and is not owned by the people, is able to control the money supply, i.e. can create money out of thin air (by adding zeros to its balance sheet spread sheet), which it has been doing to the tune of trillions this year. This puts the financial elite (the 1%) at a massively unfair advantage, because it can just award itself money to make loans out, and the ultimate effect is it owns everything, i.e. most of the UK property market, UK companies (via quantitative easing) etc. It is very difficult to protect yourself from this unfair advantage, but one way is to avoid debt as much as you can, and put your savings into a hard form of money (which can't be printed out of thin air), i.e. Bitcoin or physical gold.
 
Man of Honour
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You do have to live somewhere. Rent you are just throwing everything away, buying with a mortgage you are just paying money away to the financial elite. Ultimately, it is just control of the land. Rents have been increased a lot by buy to let mortgages, which are a joke, because ultimately these are facilitated by central banks creating money out of thin air (because the central bank can create currency, it's not backed by gold), so it's just the central banks gradually taking over the property market, which is what is happening. All of this just means massively rising inequality, it's a joke.
I didn't say live, I said OWN.
 
Soldato
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I didn't say live, I said OWN.


Rent in the EU is, on average about 27% of income compared to our 45.5%. Home ownership is also higher on average (69% vs 65%). It's expected to drop to 62% by the end of the year, the lowest it's been in 2+ decades.

If they rent it's because it makes financial sense, here, for most renters it's because rent is so high that you don't have enough disposable income to get together the 10-20% needed for a deposit.
 
Man of Honour
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I made it up, I'm not here to find you the official figures on everything you know…
Ah, cool. I didn't realise we were debating real life matters with made up information. Who needs facts? You can prove anything with facts.

Making it up is much easier than basing your argument on something real!

My point still stands. Average wages are inflated by high earners,
and the same applies for average rent

there's millions of people on minimum wage in this country yet I bet they live in areas where the average rent is £700pcm+. Minimum wage is £1400pcm so in many areas you're looking at paying 50% of your take home pay on your rent. Add to that the usual bills (I dunno £250pcm), plus food (a conservative £50pcm), travel/car (£50pcm), and you're looking down the barrel of having barely £200 as a slush fund for socialising and having some sort of life.
  • Rent a cheaper house, one below the average for the area.
  • Improve yourself and get a better job
  • Houseshare
  • Don't socialise
All choices you can make if you want to.

But people's hands are forced. By the very simple reality of living and working in an area where you can only get a minimum wage/low wage job, yet average rent is £700-800pcm you're quite quickly running into trouble. Why can't you see that? :confused: This is the reality for millions of people in our country and you're very naive if you don't understand that.
If you aren't earning "average" wage then it's unrealistic to expect to be able to afford "average" rent.
If you are a low earner you have to make one or more of the sacrifices I mentioned above.
 
Soldato
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Also, you should not be bitter towards boomers, they are just the beneficiaries of fortunate circumstances.

The thing to be bitter about is the ability of a central bank, i.e. the Bank of England (which is a privately held institution), to create money out of thin air (inflation of the money supply), i.e. "print money" (although now digital). This puts the financial elite at a hugely unfair advantage. It's a "control" issue. Most people don't realise this, because all economics and finance is deliberately made to sound "too complicated" and "technical", to hide the core injustice at the heart of the "system". The amount of drivel and mumbo jumbo sprouted by "on side" economists is now unprecedented, but what's actually happening is that the central bank is just printing money for itself, and propping up its friends in the financial sector to support its chosen businesses. If we had a hard currency (i.e. one that the supply of can't be artificially increased, e.g. backed by gold), then the economy wouldn't be in the mess it is today, and house prices would not be astronomical. The more people who understand this the better.

The pound sterling will in the near term likely be destroyed by all this money printing, as hyperinflation will set in. Therefore, if you have large cash balances, think about diversifying them into "hard" assets such as Bitcoin or physical gold. Do your own research though, this is not financial advice etc etc.
 
Soldato
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Ah, cool. I didn't realise we were debating real life matters with made up information. Who needs facts? You can prove anything with facts. Making it up is much easier than basing your argument on something real!
I already gave you the facts. Shall I quote myself for you?

Maybe check out some of the stats which show why this is much more common than it used to be; Twenty years ago, the average rent accounted for about 30% of the average income in England – now, it's a lot higher.
CKd0wSB.png

You can argue individual cases all you like, but you can't validate an argument by trying to conjure up particular set of circumstances wherein people could 'rent a cheaper house'. If you want to do that for every single tenant in the UK then go ahead, but you'll be wasting your time..

If you aren't earning "average" wage then it's unrealistic to expect to be able to afford "average" rent.
If you are a low earner you have to make one or more of the sacrifices I mentioned above.
I think you'll probably find most 'average' rents for an area are not far above the lowest available. This would be because landlords are in a position to ask for as much as they can squeeze out of the market, and a higher proportion of renters are probably in smaller dwellings (flats), rather than houses. If a tenant wants cheaper rent, they'll have to weigh up additional cost on their commute, costs to move etc. Feel free to find some stats on that, if you will.
 
Soldato
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My rent is relatively cheap in comparison to similar properties in the area, even then it still accounts for just over 45% of my monthly income, factor in bills and essential items and I'm left with <£100 a month for entertainment/social things and that basically goes no where with todays prices.

Living in a coastal town heavily reliant on the tourism industry which has been devestated with covid and well I don't see things getting any easier short term.
 
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