I work in London (well normally). I would never live there, and post COVID, i'll hopefuilly only be in the office a couple of times a week.
House prices rose 7.3% this year, average now almost £250k
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Caporegime
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Actually you are right about the mobile phones.
My mobile was only £300 brand new and the wife's £150 brand new.
I'd also argue my phone can do anything any other phone can including the £1500 ones out there. It's a Poco f2 pro th specs are pretty ridiculous for £300 bar the high refresh rate screen which you don't need on a phone it has everything. Problem with many of the masses is that they are too dumb to realise what they are spending their money on. Overpriced lease deals and contracts when put into context.
Sure I buy expensive stuff too and make mistakes but I learn from them. Whereas I see other folk just getting the latest iPhone year after year and spending up to £80 a month on the contracts. My sim only deal is £8 a month in comparison. I've also had the latest and greatest when it comes to phones and then I realised when they started hitting £500+ that it was a pointless endeavour and only going to get worse so nipped it in the bud.
I'll still go out and buy top of the range stuff but it's a much more thought out purchase. For example a car seat I'll have no qualms buying a brand new one for £400+. Safety and health comes first over money. However I'd also be happy with borrowing other items from other folk who no longer need them like a £200 baby bouncer so that's £200 in my pocket and hand it back after 3-6 months.
Colleagues of mine know I tend to find really good deals and I'm good with money so they regularly ask me for advice and when I suggested that they buy a second hand pram it's as if I had told them to sell themselves. I even showed them there is a local charity which specialises in them and they safety check everything and they sell stuff that's in good nick anything that isn't gets recycled or binned or passed onto a company that repairs them if minor faults. I showed them a £850 pram in brilliant nick only 3 months old the original owners had moved abroad and donated it and they wanted only £150 for it. Bare in mind the thing was fully loaded and in brand new condition. She still refused to even go and take a look in the shop and spent circa £1000 on a brand new pram.
Car seats are different you must buy new but a pram can easily be safety checked and you can tell if it's in good nick by the wheels, condition of the fabric, etc.
A lot of folk these days unfortunately are a victim of social media. They see what other people have and they see other people buying brand new Gucci belts and then it's programmed into them that they warrant them too.
When I was 18 I'd be buying £300+ items of clothing too. In fact I still do nowadays too but it's not on a pair of trainers like back then but something that will last me at least a decade if not a lifetime.
If people were much more savvy with their spending they could likley buy a home quite easily. Not in London but on most other places they could.
I have no idea about your locale's situation but if house prices are expensive they must be for a reason. Wages must be comparable or it's a sought after location. Unfortunately that means of you don't earn enough to warrant living there then that's just life.
Otherwise quick hand me £15 million and I'll go buy a home in my dream location on the other side of the planet.
Cornish Landlords:
FoxEye, Fubsy and the boys:
Like it or not, we can't keep going on like this. Young generation was already under immense pressure, had highest levels of poverty, worst prospects in decades, etc.
Add COVID, so young people had to make sacrifices primarily so that old folk who keep mocking them and keep insulting them get to live a few more years. Young people lost their jobs, while old people got their assets pieces increased and even got a pay bump in their pensions. And now they judge those same young people for having a phone. FFS.
A day of reckoning is coming. If you keep your feet on a generation's throats, it won't be long before they kick back. This is how revolutions happen and dynasties collapse.
Soldato
Absolute tosh , Out of the BTL’S I have 3 have been long term Tenants for 4 years or more and have never had a rent review , why would I ? 2 have had new boilers in the last year and 1 a new floor and kitchen last month . Contrary to popular belief Landlords pay tax on this income and get a very paltry allowance on the interest they have to pay on any mortgages. My other 2 are somewhat more complicated as they have a management fees and ground rent to pay , rent goes up in line with these. We’re talking like maybe £80 -£100 a year in total .
You really should stop reading tripe on the internet as it’s clear you have no idea what’s going on with the majority of landlords - pull up a stool and read through some of the hoops we jump through on either the Arla or landlord zone website. You really would be surprised how much goes into it , it’s far from buy a house and rent it out .
The future of housing will not change that much , as I’ve said there will be a correction this year ( not much ) as demand is still there . The current hike is a blip caused by the stamp duty frenzy.
I feel very sorry for people trying to get on the property ladder.
A conversation with my mother some years ago I think illustrates the way property prices have become so unaffordable.
I was 35 and my mother asked me, since I had a good job, why I wasn't yet living somewhere like our family home I grew up in, a four bedroom neo-georgian detached house in an affluent part of a well known commuter town in Surrey. My father had bought it at a similar age to me in 1979.
I said to Mum, how much did Dad buy it for? £90,000 was the answer. And if you don't mind me asking, how much did Dad earn in 1979. He was on a really good wage she replied - about £30,000
I then explained to her that the the last time that house sold, two years prior, it went for £1.1 million. And that if I divide that by 3 (the same ratio of annual salary to property price my Dad had) then that gets you to £366K and while I was on a decent wage myself there was no way I was earning that now nor any time in the future in all likelihood. A good example of how wage and house price increases have been so divergent. It's not as if inflation means Dad was on the equivalent of that sort of money either. If house prices had risen with inflation only (as I assume is all wages have done) then it would be £450K now - something I could afford.
A conversation with my mother some years ago I think illustrates the way property prices have become so unaffordable.
I was 35 and my mother asked me, since I had a good job, why I wasn't yet living somewhere like our family home I grew up in, a four bedroom neo-georgian detached house in an affluent part of a well known commuter town in Surrey. My father had bought it at a similar age to me in 1979.
I said to Mum, how much did Dad buy it for? £90,000 was the answer. And if you don't mind me asking, how much did Dad earn in 1979. He was on a really good wage she replied - about £30,000
I then explained to her that the the last time that house sold, two years prior, it went for £1.1 million. And that if I divide that by 3 (the same ratio of annual salary to property price my Dad had) then that gets you to £366K and while I was on a decent wage myself there was no way I was earning that now nor any time in the future in all likelihood. A good example of how wage and house price increases have been so divergent. It's not as if inflation means Dad was on the equivalent of that sort of money either. If house prices had risen with inflation only (as I assume is all wages have done) then it would be £450K now - something I could afford.
The most dangerous part of house rises is that people mistakenly think it makes them richer. When house prices go up it's a bad thing for most people. Although their house becomes worth more, that means nothing unless you intend to sell it and move to a smaller house. Most people want to move up not down, so all that has happened is the gap to their next purchase has increased.
Indeed. Another story of my mother. She downsized right at the height of the market in 2008 before the crash. She cleared her outstanding mortgage (about £50K). Then the crash happened. Then she obsessed in the next decade that her old house was going up in value (in absolute terms) by more than she thought her current house. In relative terms they were increasing at the same rate. Do you think I could explain to her that if she'd done the same thing at any point after she did, until 2018 that she wouldn't have cleared her mortgage and to be grateful they timed it right. Could I heck!
Actually one of the easiest things to do would be to scrap the right to buy scheme for council/social housing (you shouldn't inherit a right to purchase council/social stock at a steep discount just because you've lived there a while). Councils should then be given a fund to build X amount of council housing. This would then allow them to house any person in receipt of housing benefit, so that the taxpayers money can go back to the council to further invest in council housing.
I'm not against BTL by any means, and it obviously serves a purpose. But it's target should be those that are earning above whatever the threshold is for housing benefit. There are plenty of professional people who want/need to rent a property rather than purchase it. Yes this might shrink BTL ownership, which puts more properties back onto the market for those who want to buy their own home.
I work for a big tech company, and they've just spent the last 6-9 months developing a plan to shift majority of workers into WFH, basically been told you're only allowed back in the office on the seldom occasion. The fact they've spent so long devising a plan, and are now spending money on converting offices into "hot-desk" / collaboration areas format, tells me that this is a long term plan (5-10 years). I would be very surprised if other big tech companies aren't doing the same.
Smaller tech companies too. We're only 400 people but we let our office leases go last Summer and are seriously looking instead of office space into acquiring a building that can be mixed use office and "hotel". A bit like creating a campus where all the desks are hotdesks and lots of meeting rooms. The hotel part will allow our staff to live where they want but come down to the campus say for a few days every month to collaborate together and get some face time. We save a fortune on hotel expenses and people tend to enjoy working for long sessions together once in a while. Also effectively no one needs to live within commuting distance any more so we can buy it somewhere outside of the South East for a lot less. Ask your typical Brighton to London commuter in our place if they'd like to WFH 18 days out of 21, spend 3 on campus (staying overnight for two of them) and they can move a bit further out and have a bigger house and they all universally want it.
Yeah every landlord claims to be a really nice guy and fixes all his tenants problems at no cost to the tenant
And says, "Don't listen to all those sob stories you hear from renters, they're all tosh/made up. Landlords would *never* behave like that!" Back in the real world, many landlords do exactly as I described. If you ask for something to be fixed you'll end up losing your deposit ("you must have broken that boiler by using it wrong") or being turfed out ("entitled tenant expects too much") or simply finding your rent hiked.
As for the market not changing, again the statistics show that more people are renting and less people are buying their own place.
This is exactly what you'd expect when house prices rise and wages don't.
But statistics are "tosh" as well, aren't they? Poor BTL landlords, nobody understands how great they are for society, or how hard their life is. It's so difficult to have somebody less well off pay off your mortgage for you, where's the sympathy for landlords and their struggle? /s
True. Although perhaps 2021 will be the real judge.
Safe and secure housing is a human right. Trust a landlord to call that entitlement.
But some of us have morals. And don't want to make money out of a basic human right.
Trollolol
I think most FTBs would be happy to buy a 2 bed (flat or house) in their local area if they are earning average salaries. However, in large swathes of the country that is simply not possible.Bit of both, was a bit of sarcasm that it appears most first time buyers on here want a 3-bed down Mayfair
It's amazing how many boomers don't understand this simple concept. House prices as a proportion of income has changed beyond belief.
Caporegime
Indeed, our journey was a 1-bed flat on HTB in a meh area (Morden 2010), then a 2-bed flat on HTB in a meh-er area (Tottenham 2014), and finally a 3-bed house on HTB in a nice area in 2019.
The only people I know whose first property was a house are those whose parents could help them out, looks like landlords also have a weird view on everyone wanting their starter home to be something amazing.
On flip side. I don't know anyone who owns a flat. But my friendship group were all late starters. Including me. Which was a mistake in hindsight
That and lending criteria/options. When I bought my first place in 1998. I was on £17K as a fresh graduate with no credit history and my partner £13K as an experienced-ish secretary of five years. We bought our first flat for £83K and were offered a 110% mortgage. Literally needed no cash up front for solicitors fees, searches or moving costs and even bought some furniture with the mortgage money (silly in hindsight but the monthly payment was still less than renting). We didn't have to think about a deposit. And without being able to get started like that I wouldn't have been able to trade up over the years like I have and be in the very fortunate position I am re a house. Friends who delayed 10 years while they preferred to enjoy their 20s commitment free faced in their 30s rapidly rising house prices and it becoming harder and harder to get 'easy' mortgages. Those who 'made' it with better jobs than me live in homes half the value now despite having similar size mortgage payments (and an extra 10 years to pay off). And it gets harder still to get on the ladder. It must be absolutely soul destroying seeing the amount you need to save as a deposit on your first home rising quicker than you can save and the goal just getting further and further away from you.
Soldato
Early 2000,s bought modern. 3.bed semi for 44k West Yorkshire, low wage partner only doing Afew hours a week, house ignored by others as no double glazing or Ch, did it up paid of mortgage in under a decade.
Came to Cornwall with cash, again house ignored as biggest garden overrun (room to build another house here as neighbours have done) outbuilding doors swollen Shut generally scruffy, and a deseaced sale.
BOOM, if people don't know how to do this it's Not my problem, my daughters are millenials and both property owners in Oxfordshire and London.
hint, pull your fingers out and stop whining
Came to Cornwall with cash, again house ignored as biggest garden overrun (room to build another house here as neighbours have done) outbuilding doors swollen Shut generally scruffy, and a deseaced sale.
BOOM, if people don't know how to do this it's Not my problem, my daughters are millenials and both property owners in Oxfordshire and London.
hint, pull your fingers out and stop whining
Indeed. Take into account absolutely laughable savings rates (both my ISAs are now 0.8% and 0.6%
) and ever-inflating house prices (yes, still) you can't keep up. See my thread elsewhere about the house opposite that went up in value by £900k over 14 years. That's £65k/yr which is way more than the average salary for London, let alone elsewhere. If you want to look up 'soul destroying' in the dictionary it should have a description of plain ol' bricks and mortar earning more than double the national average salary, no? - Status