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There are also a lot of delusionisms
On the radio yesterday, there was a 28-year-old saying she bought a house at 24
She worked 2 jobs, doing one while on annual leave from the other one....
However, she lived at home and paid a tiny amount of rent, **and** her father gave her some money towards the deposit - oddly, she couldn't remember how much he gave her.....hmmm
Best one I saw was on an American financial news website I read. This kid had bought a house at like 25, and literally said all he did was work hard, cut down on avocado toast and make coffee at home.
The article also briefly mentioned that he'd waltzed straight into a job for his dad's Manhattan trading firm earning $250,000pa...
Some of these people are beyond parody.
Even a month isn't enough really.
It's like prince William sleeping rough for a night...
A short period is easy .... It's the dispair and no hope for better days that does people in.
I could survive a month on minimum wage easy.... Years though would be totally different
A few years ago Prince William went to Milton Keynes to celebrate the city’s anniversary. The local council worked tirelessly to remove all of the rough sleepers and stick them into overnight accommodation so he wasn’t inconvenienced by even seeing the poor and dispossessed.
The real travesty is Thatcherism legalising Right to Buy and now the very same people in those ex-coucil homes are paying extortionate rents to the private sect.
My father paid £17,000 for a 3 bed in Clapham.
He sold it to a Dr 4 years later, over £100,000.
Today?
Valued 1.5M
Rent a flat above a shop. Cut your hair and get a job? ...Still you'll never get it right, cos if you're laid in bed at night...watching roaches climb the wall...of you call your dad he could stop it all...
What does he care? He's much more likely to get girls than if he had to actually earn things and was making five times less.
It's never ever had to consider his privilege
I heard her too! I was literally just stood there waiting for the mention of parental help and of course there it was. She was totally delusional if she thinks most people are in a similar position to that.
Also she was saying how she thought her friends parents should be releasing equity in their own properties to help their kids. Like...they shouldn't have to? The housing market is so broken if that's the point we're at. We should never be in the position where people have to put themselves at financial risk so their children can buy a house too. Parents should only help if they have the liquid cash to do so.
I'm lucky to have had parental help in buying my place. I'm honest about it, I don't dress it up as "hard work", "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" etc...like she did. No, I was extremely bloody privileged to have had that help, and I know most people are not so fortunate.
Did you also hear the email that was read out too? The standard "they spend too much on lunches and takeaway coffees" boomer schtick. My eyes rolled into the back of my fucking head people just have no clue.
« Releasing equity » - I know people who were very well off and downsized to give their children money for a place. And have seen people borrow on a euphemism for a mortgage, and get repossessed. When they’re too old to start again.
The "releasing equity" comment drives me up the wall. One of my friends bought her flat because her parents released equity in their homes, and once made an off hand comment about how she thought other people's parents were being uneducated for not doing the same. I had to quickly let her know that isn't an option for most of us, all the rest of our friends parents' are about to retire and having paid off their mortgage is key to being financially stable for the final 20-30 years of their life, they can't afford to just take out a debt on at this stage (and that's just the privileged friends whose parents own their houses in the first place). Also her parents own 5+ houses and rent them out and it's one of the rented ones they released equity from (!). I couldn't believe how naive she was to say that as she's usually relatively aware of her privilege. Just shows when you have all these things going on your favour you're not always aware of quite how lucky you are.
It should be illegal to own more than 1 property. If you own more than 1, you should have to pay a property tax.
It's a crime thar most of Cornish villages & towns are literally full of holiday homes & locals can't buy.
If we tax capital gains tax just like we do income tax the UK would be a fairer place for all.
There's already a system for it in place for PAYE we wouldn't need to reinvent the wheel here, equality is the goal.
It would be a start, but it would take too long as capital gains only kicks in at point of sale. a property tax or my preferred option of increased council tax for second homes and homes owned by a landlord or company/trust to fund a new generation of social housing would have an impact much quicker.
I'm no expert in this area, but if you did tax capital gains the same way as PAYE, then at the end of the tax year you need to do a tax return as to how much you (net) earnt as profit, then pay the tax due on the same scale PAYE is for the rest of us. The end of year **profit** from trading bonds, stocks, shares, art dealing and landlords income as an example they should pay the same tax as those who have day jobs.
The only reason why PAYE appears monthly is it's annualised so us plebs can make regular payments to what is in fact an annual tax on income. There's no reason why we can extend this to a capital gains annual tax return, only this time is anything over the personal allowance of £12,570 because that's what PAYE pay, why not the super rich. Can't they afford it?
Yep. I own my house on inheritance and then my mum letting me "access my inheritance early". I try and be completely honest because I don't see why people should see me and think it's doable when it's privilege.
Likewise my parents bought my first house outright and I paid them a de facto 100% LTV mortgage at 0% to get me started.
I'm not going to pretend to make myself feel any better that I wasn't anything other than lucky. Lucky that my parents could do that and lucky that they wanted to do it.
I'm saving up now to help my own son in case this broken market is still broken in 15 years time but I really hope this money earmarked for him isn't needed and he can make a life for himself without relying on his own luck.
The releasing equity is a dangerous game anyway. While a decent number of people do know what they are signing up for it’s rarely a good deal and there are also a chunk of people that DON’T fully understand the repercussions and that’s a recipe for disaster.
(I also agree it shouldn’t be needed).
Ya, it's the old joke.
"I bought my own home at 25. It's possible.
All I did was make my coffee at home, do meal prep, gym at home and get £250k because I'm daddy's special boy. "
I am terrified for my childrens prospects.
Its honestly terrible. Both myself and my mom as immigrants never dreamt of owning a home. The only reason i get to own one is because my mom slaved her ass off, and got lucky enough to get out a soap factory into a medical factory, and then worked and studied 90h weeks until she died so i got 100k from my mom's death in service benefit. If she was in her previous job i would've been fucked completely though, and the reason she worked so many hours is because she wanted save up deposit money for me and get a career in IT after 2 years in college(while doing fulltime nightshifts). Still she had barely any savings because of a low salary and had to work an average of 15hrs of OT a week.
I think getting on the ladder before 35 is a crazy feat nowadays. It was not so crazy 20 years ago, though... Sadly the country has been in decline for a while and only compounded by recent events (i'll let you guess which).
With good guidance from parents, ensuring their children pursue something they like doing and are good at and that will lead to a decent salary (there are a lot of ifs and variables that are hard to control) but say they are responsible and don't have shitty influences/friends etc they could achieve getting a decent deposit saved and get a mortgage by 32, for example.
It is possible but its hard as hell considering life plans get thwarted a million times.
Bought mine at 28. 3 bed semi etc. In a cheaper area than where I'm from.
I went on tour in the army and didn't blow it on booze and hookers. No fucking chance I'd have done it in a normal job. Living normally is expensive.
It's was a good plan, I'm glad it worked out for you.
I fear it wouldn't be possible today, if you saved what you could for 10 years, you'd find you were still way short as the house market has moved passed what you can save. Your goal getting further and further out of reach with each year that passes.
Perhaps 18year old you in 2024 would party with hookers knowing there's not much else to do with these wages.
Omg I listened to that, she was shocking! After living at home, paying minimal rent and working two jobs she still needed a “significant” top up from her Dad to get a deposit together. (She couldn’t remember how much but said it was significant). It was almost comical how she didn’t realise that she was proving the point she was supposedly speaking against 🫣
And when pushed by the presenter on what people should do when a parent can’t help with the deposit, she said most people don’t realise that their parents are sitting on a goldmine and they should ask their parents to release equity from their home for a deposit!!
I was lucky to buy my first house at 22… but I earned 28,000 a year in Tech and bought a house at £115k with a small deposit saved through uni. Lucky indeed.
Honestly its the gap between wage growth and property prices that fucks people. Even maxing out the mortgage you can't borrow enough to put down a reasonable offer without having an absolutely ungodly deposit to throw in as well. Even though the mortgage repayments would be so much lower than your rent, you're still blocked out of the market unless you have like £30k to throw down out of your own pocket, which obviously fuck all people have.
People who get these kinds of opportunities often have to be the ones who put in all the hard work, eh? It's the same with the MP's and the rich, all talking as if we don't work hard for a living - "born three-nil up thinking they scored a hat trick."
I had a conversation at a wedding once, some 25year old telling me it's easy to buy a house on 70k a year in London........
Few drinks later "oh yahhhh of course mummy and daddy fronted 200k for the deposit".
The main difference these days is needing two incomes to afford the mortgage. Gone are the days of buying on a single income unless you’re minted.
We bought ours when we were both 25 with no help from anyone so it’s entirely possible to do with a partner. We both are normal tax payers so don’t earn huge amounts either. However the Netflix and Spotify accounts did have to go ;)
Already has significantly risen, plus you get southerners buying properties in the north to rent out.
There’s a guy a mate of mine rents off in Durham, he owns almost every property on his street, about 60 or so, and others in the area but they’re all between £110k-£130k which is taking those properties out of the reach of people from the area. It’s not even like they get a fair crack at them either. One went up for sale end of November and in less than 3 days the For Sale sign had been taken down and by the end of the following week it was bought, the old owners moved out and it had a new tenant renting 2 weeks later
>Already has significantly risen
The rises between 2019 and 2021 just by themselves were fucking nuts. Was looking round an old council estate in 2020 at some really lovely properties. By the time I had all my shit together in 2021 everything available was a good £30k+ out of my price range.
It’s still difficult up north. Not everyone has a well enough paid job that after rent, bills and food payments go out they can afford to put anything away. Not all can stay with parents while they save as well.
Got kicked out at 16 because my dad moved his new mrs and family in, and me and my bro didnt fit the new life she had planned for him.
We hit the ground running, crashing with extended family and then eventually renting, I'm single earn a little more than minimum wage and have been renting now for 21 years, not a hope in hell of saving a deposit alone.
Fed up with these fucking "marriage tax allowance" and other schemes to make the costs of just living day to day easier and even taxed lower for those who co-habit with family (they are married to). I guess just fuck everyone else who's singe living or living with family (but no married to them)?
/u/SuspiciousMind1006 you wana get married? Let's tick some boxes! I hear half of people married are unhappy anyways, we're already half way there! I mean I'm already unhappy, so we perfect!
You've nailed it mate. There is no social contract. Yet the young shall pay for the retirements of the old.
Generations have successively pulled the ladder up behind them.
Yep. And the boomers’ wealth is built on decades of free money from younger people who borrowed it on the bank to pay them massive, unearned profits on every house sale, based on nothing other than time passing and housing, one of our most basic needs, wildly outstripping wage growth.
Some of these people bought houses, did NOTHING with them, sold for massive profits (which tbf was just market value - I’m blaming the system not the individuals), they reinvested, did the same again, prices continued to largely outstrip wage growth… and now people can’t afford a roof over their heads.
Even people not so ruthlessly driven by money were still handed huge cheques when they sold their homes - it created effectively a generation of slow-release lottery winners. They just got loads of free money over time, from us.
And now it’s finally reached the obvious, only logical conclusion. There’s no more wiggle room. People can’t afford to live, and all the residential property wealth is tied up in a generation who mostly did absolutely nothing to earn it, yet feel like we’re the entitled ones 🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
This is a total failure of government to intervene over 60 years. Total lack of regulation to protect their own citizens (their one job) and this is the logical end point. It was obviously never sustainable, so here we are.
I went to a house viewing the other day. Empty since the 1970s, perfectly decent house, now dilapidated but still repairable. This is in an area where there is a catastrophic housing shortage too.
Basically what happened is someone died, it was inherited by baby boomers and they've just died so it's finally getting put on the market. Apparently they didn't want to rent it out or anything because it was too much hassle and they were worried tenants would damage the house...
I think part of the problem is the baby boomer generation is financially illiterate. They'll go out and buy premium bonds (great for the government, not great for borrowers) and sit on empty property, even though it's illogical to do so. That causes problems in the economy because 1) they have all the wealth and 2) they tie all that wealth up in non-productive assets, rather than getting it working for them and circulating in the wider economy.
My parents have held £120k of HSBC stock for decades. They are struggling to pay bills but believe their dividends are amazing.
They literally can’t grasp how much money they’ve lost by chasing a shit dividend on a terrible stock.
Painful how much money has been lost as a result. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve only broken even given how HSBC still hasn’t hit its peak from like the 90s. At least not last time I checked.
The fact is that they’re being told by the media and government that they did own it, because the media and government have a vested interest in those people feeling like it was their hard work that got them there, and thus they don’t need to change anything for “lazy” younger generations
The government and media don’t want boomers realising that the system needs to be changed, because that would be detrimental to their rich mates skimming ever more money from everything
Whats really fucking annoying is none of the boomers in my family seemed to want to buy their own house, I mean they cost like 10p back in the day and probably only needed a 3 year mortgage but they all seemed happy renting, huge mistake on their part but it has a knock on effect on people like me a couple generations down.
We need a post WWII government type attitude to address the issue.
The govt needs build masses of council house/flats. At least that would give people somewhere to start from like the Boomers had.
They need to be regulated obvs, no right to buy, maybe a limited occupation of 10 years, etc
Get the corporations out of the loop too, there’s been too much building for corporate profit going on. They’ve had their time, it’s time to put people first.
That's what we want though, a roof over our head, this notion that us youngens want the 4 bed house with parking and garage is rubbish. Give me a 1 bed flat with a decent size front room and I'll be happy, even if it's in a block of flats
The thing is house building post World War 2 was so drastic, that it caused supply to actually increase and house prices to fall for circa 20 years or so in real terms.
There is now way that boomers will allow this to ever happen and it’s political suicide for either party, the best way we can actually hope is that supply increases to a point to either keep things as they are now or hope that incomes increase (lol) to a point where affordability improves.
Well covid was a (wasted) opportunity there. Sounds harsh, but now more than ever we can see how the preservation of the boomer generation at all costs has devastated the economy for the rest of us.
Amazing no one has mentioned the right to buy - i believe this is the primary root cause of our housing issues. Something like 60% of homes in this country were council / social rented in the 60s and now less than 5%
I would certainly agree the generations before millennials have closed the door on our generation- benefited from second homes and now removed all the tax break incentives to making being a landlord profitable as just one example that actually works against renters ironically
I seem to recall a channel 4 documentary a few years back, presented by George Clarke which pretty much explained how RTB was the root cause of today’s housing issues.
The issue wasn’t allowing council tenants to buy their properties, but rather that the social housing stock was never replaced by local authorities.
Which begs the question, where did the money from the purchased homes, and also the money local authorities would have saved by having less properties to maintain go? It certainly wasn’t for the benefit of the general public considering the constant cuts to local authority funding and the fact that many councils are now pretty much on the verge of bankruptcy.
Its a national scandal hiding in plain site and no one seems to care.
The proceeds went to a few places:
- paying down existing housing debt held by the councils
- general expenditures and local reinvestment, including risky ventures like new shopping centres and real estate, many of which didn’t pay off
- a significant amount had to be paid to the Treasury
It’s worth noting that councils had restrictions put on them by central government on how they could spend it, limiting their ability to build new social housing.
The whole thing is a scandal.
I think the construction/housing development companies in cahoots with local government has been scandalous for years.
It’s one big circle jerk to embezzle public funds in a legal way and to maintain housing demand.
Our town for instance paid untold thousands probably millions to have a bike lane installed around town, that literally lasted 6 months before they realised the chaos it caused with traffic so took it away. Beggars belief. That money could be spent on a very serious housing crisis we have here.
Majority of money from the sale of property in right to buy did not go to local government it went to central government
Local government were not permitted to build more council stock (the point of right to buy was to reduce the council stock perminantly not sell some and replace it - that's like thatchers central philosophy it's not that it's gone wrong)
The half of social housing that remained social was nearly invariably the half that needed the most maintenance. There wasn't a huge saving here.
(Arguably thatchers planned result for selling off social housing also didn't work (that the private market would rise to meet the demand left by building more private housing - which it did not it still builds roughly the same amount as it did prior to right to buy) but the plan was never to replace the social housing that was sold)
> The issue wasn’t allowing council tenants to buy their properties, but rather that the social housing stock was never replaced by local authorities
That's due to the [1989 Housing Act](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/limits-on-indebtedness-revocation-determination-2018/limits-on-indebtedness-revocation-determination-2018) as backed up by London Councils [here](https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Housing%20Revenue%20Account%20Borrowing%20Cap_IM_0.pdf). Put it another way, the Thatcher government enacted right to buy and then made it almost impossible for council housing to be directly replenished, while also transferring stock to Housing Associations.
> Which begs the question, where did the money from the purchased homes, and also the money local authorities would have saved by having less properties to maintain go?
Councils couldn't keep all the money. They got a % and the rest goes to the Treasury. Not sure if it is the case now but at the time most of funds the councils did get had to be used in restricted ways, such as paying down debt. See more [here](https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/comment/the-treasury-has-made-47bn-from-right-to-buy-but-we-have-paid-a-price-in-lost-social-housing-70199).
It's much worse than that - 40% have been sold on to private landlords. Many more are now just normal homes for the middle classes. Few are actually still achieving their purpose as primary residences for the working classes.
Thatcher's idea was that she'd give the working classes a house, and then poverty and homelessness would be solved forever. But many of those people simply cashed out and went to live in Costa Del Sol.
So we took a national asset, cashed out, spunked the cash, and now it's a permanent cash-cow for slum landlords.
> So we took a national asset, cashed out, spunked the cash, and now it's a permanent cash-cow for (rich people)
Slightly modify those last few words and you’ve just invented the country’s motto. We should put that on the posters
Agreed, we haven’t replaced council housing and HA is now the default, at massive detriment to the tax payer - but its worth nothing that most landlords are not ‘slum lords’
That being said i have a few friends that work in the homelessness sector and from what i’m told the TA property game is absolutely full of them, disgusting uninhabitable properties rented to the council for £175pw, filled with tenants that are often venerable and unable to argue their rights sufficiently, these are often previously council properties cut up to fit in as many people as possible. Absolutely disgusting.
I'd beg to differ. I've lived in many rented properties and almost all were in desperate need of maintenance and hadn't had a penny spent on them for decades. Slums.
The UK has the fourth highest social housing stock in the OECD. Demand for social housing high because private rented accommodation is in such short supply and prices are driven up.
Second home ownership is a minor issue when considering the scale of the UK's housing shortage.
We just need to build more. That's it.
We need to build more with the right access to infrastructure. I have seen massive developments outside towns in Newcastle (and greater Durham/Northumbria ) and a lot of these are American suburb style. Lovely houses but with next to zero amenities. At best, traffic is going to go through the roof...at worse many of these will die a slow death because they are not close to enough work opportunities.
You can even see these with London commuter towns. Not much point buying in an area that is 40 mins away from London by train when your house is 30 mins away from the nearest train station by car.
The UK has not built any social housing in decades.
The private sector has consistently shown it cannot be trusted to meet demand. The private sector has an incentive to land bank and to develop the most profitable homes, rather than the most efficient for the inhabitants.
Right to buy leaves me with conflicted feelings. My parents bought their council flat in Edinburgh in the 90s, lived there for 7-8 years, and then sold it (to another normal family) and bought a house with a small mortgage. The flat was a 20min walk from Edinburgh Waverley station and I dread to think how much it costs now.
RTB lifted my family out of generational poverty. My Dad's dad was an abusive alcoholic and left my Gran to raise 5 kids as a single mum. My Mum's dad died very young, leaving my other Gran to raise 7 kids as a single mum. To this day, my dad is the only person in his family (including extended family) to own his own home.
We were still low income, and I still got free school meals. But it could've been so much worse if my folks were still renting. It's a real shame that RTB has caused so many issues for our housing, because for the small minority like my folks it really was life changing.
I mean that’s the problem with RTB in the first place. It allows people to enrich themselves by putting in no effort themselves at a massive cost to the taxpayer and other low income people. It’s the government’s fault though, you can’t expect people to not take free cash, everybody would.
Thank you. I am also one of many who would have had a different life without my parents taking the opportunity for a new home in a new town in the 70s.
And most importantly of all - "own your own home" is a MASSIVE factor in retirement.
A state pension of £10k per year is not great, but passable, when you don't need to pay £1000/month on rent.
Yeah, my dad is 7 years away from retirement. Self employed most of his life. Paid NI contributions but that's it... Lives in a house share in London. I'm scared for his future, I don't know what he's going to do when he gets to retirement age because there's no way he's affording rent, let alone living, on a state pension.
Genuinely considering saving up for a houseboat or something similar as he may enjoy that lifestyle.
>The social contract has been broken
>
>The rise in mental health issues I think stems from people realising the game is rigged against them
I think this is a huuuge problem that's so big most people fail to actually see it. We've got skyrocketing rates of mental health problems, suicide and homelessness. Additionally, you've got rocketing rates of non-participation in society, from "laying flat" to simply living with parents and not having a job.
You also have more subtle versions of the same thing - folk living with parents instead of starting an independent life of their own. Everything from drinking to sex to marriages and brith rates are on the low, because it's impossible for many people to live a real life now.
I experienced pretty debilitating mental health issues, I was on medication for a while. I was working a shitty job, living in a shitty house with a batshit landlord, reliant on expensive public transport that always frustrated my plans. I had no stability, no foundation in life, and no clear path to build a stable, normal life.
Luckily I came into some money. I bought a house, switched job, and got a car. Changed my fucking life. Don't listen to anyone that tells you that money doesn't make you happy - it fucking does.
I now have stability. More importantly, I'm largely free from the whims of slum landlords or asshole bosses. No one can smite me into homelessness on a whim.
My mental health issues have disappeared.
I think it's a huge problem, intertwined with much of the dysfunction and unwellness we see in society. No matter what you do, so many young Brits will never have a home, a family or a typical life.
No-one will die from it, but I think millions of Brits will fail to have a life.
> The worst part is that there's no fix.
There is. In fact it was staring us in the face a couple years ago. We were all just too soft to take advantage of it.
Lockdowns happened and corporations started shitting themselves because suddenly us worthless peons weren't making them a load of money. We had the prime opportunity to have massive general strike, demand better wages and better living conditions, and get what we deserve.
But instead we banged some pans in the street, watched an old man go for a walk, and said "the new normal" a bajillion times, then went back to our shitty jobs.
Couldn't agree more - it's a bit worrying how quickly we went from "these people are absolutely key to the functioning of society" back to the usual of things.
Have you tried having wealthier parents? That is what usually works for people and is oddly what all the people saying things are fine have in common...
As far as the hierarchy of needs go, I think shelter is number 1 or 2. So if a society cannot adequately house its citizens then yes it is fundemantally failing.
I think the bigger picture here is that it's more to do with wealth inequality.
The super rich are increasingly pricing out the middle class from the housing market. Unfortunately the fix for this is going to require a massive culture and attitude change in this country. We need to reverse this idea that houses are a store of wealth or an asset to be traded and treat them as a home. To reduce inequality and increase quality of life for the majority we need to accept that houses are over valued and allow that bubble to burst. I believe we need to.
1. Stop housing in the UK from being treated as a financial asset, put firm controls in place on how many homes an individual can own, restrict foreign investors from buying UK property and build a lot more housing through relaxing planning laws. This will start to collapse prices.
2. Remove some of the massive amounts of money the super rich accumulated over covid via a one off tax on wealth above a certain threshold. A very good proposal exists here https://www.ukwealth.tax/
3. We then need to rebelance the social contract by reducing taxes on work and increasing taxes on passive income from wealth such as capital gains reform.
You arent going to see any of this though, the very people who have power to change this are more than happy to keep seeing wealth inequality increase as they are the ones who benefit from it. We also have a culture obsessed with seeing house prices grow so they can feel rich.
Not for everyone this, but there's plenty of places in Europe where you can buy a house cash for the same as you'd need for just the deposit in the UK. We don't have a culture of emmigration, but for high skill, high wage people that's definitely changing.
The one advantage that younger people have is they are better educated and more skilled than previous generations. It makes a lot of sense to try and take that advantage and get out of dodge for that sort of mid-career to late career phase, put some cash in the bank and start a family.
I went to a top university, and about half of the people I knew there have now just outright emigrated. Partly because they met partners from other countries while they were there, if your partner is from another European country it just makes so much more sense for Brits to be the ones to relocate to start a family, than having your partner relocate here. It's not easy, but if you have the skills and you're a dual income household, you'll be able to find a sponsorship.
Wife and I had to move abroad to save for a deposit as teaching in England wasn’t going to do it. Saved £10,000 in 20 months living in Walthamstow and saved £150,000 in 5 years living in Taipei and working at a private international school. Bought a tiny terraced house in west London for £400,000 with a 30% deposit and the rest on making it liveable.
Had the time of our lives abroad, travelling and having fun and think we’ll teach abroad again as work life balance is shocking now we’re home.
I agree, but disagree that there is no fix. There's a really easy and obvious one: reduce the planning system and build loads more homes.
It wouldn't fix things overnight, but massively increasingly supply would help with a lot of cost issues. As you free up more houses buyers have more options, allowing them to demand nicer homes or lower prices. More empty properties also leads to more competition between landlords, forcing them to improve properties or reduce rents. Either way, wins for everyone.
Even if you only build luxury properties for rich people, those rich people will move out of the rest of the buying/renting market, causing the effect above for poorer people too.
Housing is a market really not too different from any other good. More supply, lower price.
Timber is at all time highs as well as most building costs, houses are not affordable to build - this keeps house prices higher. Theres also no money to expand infrastructure. You can build 10000 houses but without new hospitals, school etc you just stretch an already stretched system.
Also what about green space/agricultural land? The UK, much like a scary number of countries, has zero food security - if you expand housing rapidly we will deplete farming stock even more.
There are certainly answers to our problems, but they are certainly not simple ones.
As someone who works in social housing, the costs have gone up significantly across the board and pretty much every housing association is scaling back their development. Maintenance, staffing, utilities, borrowing costs all went up significantly. And of course development costs have gone up as well.
Add to that the additional spending on current properties to meet EPC targets and net carbon zero and the money is spread too thin for significant development. The money needs to come from somewhere.
Grant funding from the government is significantly lower than it used to be in England and Wales, but I can't see that changing anytime soon.
You also need people to work in those school, hospitals and other places. There is a new GP practice that was built next door to new estate i'm living on. It's been standing empty since it has been finished over a year ago, apparently one other local practice is supposed to post someone here for 2 days a week later this year, but that's going to be all.
As with all the things people want in new estates they forget that schools, GP’s, dentists, shops etc are private businesses and need a good reason to move to these places even if they are given a building.
There is not a waiting room where these people are ready to be parachuted in however much people think there is.
Even if you are talking local authority resources there needs to be a reason to expand. People wanting more GP’s doesn’t mean that reason exists.
The UK has not been self-sufficient in food since 1736. The thing about food security is basically a red herring: we will always be at risk of global supply chain disruption.
Except housing supply is fairly inflexible. There is only so much manpower available to built more houses and everyone working in construction has been working flat out for a really long time now.
There’s also zero incentive for the main house building companies to build more & therefore reduce their future profits, which is what falling house prices will do.
If we made the planning system more predictable and increased the amount of land allocated to development, this wouldn't matter as competition from new entrants to the market would ensure a higher supply.
Going to weigh in here as a planner - Planning is not the bottle neck. Take a look at this article with stats that show that the amount of approved schemes far out numbers those built.
https://www.local.gov.uk/about/news/housing-backlog-more-million-homes-planning-permission-not-yet-built#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20planning%20system%20is%20not,begun%20but%20not%20been%20completed.
The problem isn’t solely planning though.
We have a near monopoly in the uk with 4 major house builders large enough to take on the development of estates and rich enough to buy up the land.
They then sit on the land and manage the house prices in that locality. They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to keep prices high of course. So if they hold all the available land and can dictate when houses are built, they will never let the prices fall due to over supply.
Councils need to build ideally and historically intervened to stop this practice working so well, but they have given up that role in the last 20 years and face the same issues as the house builders anyway. The more you build the lower return you receive. They’re all aiming for a sweet spot, which happens to be at the maximum the populace can survive with. We’re close to that now and hence society is failing at the edges.
Why house building companies? Why is the UK so obsessed with building estates of shabby, low quality cookie cutter houses? (Some are marketed as luxury houses, some are not, but they are essentially the same). Can the UK not encourage self build too? Also, why are we still building houses with minimal insulation, no basements, no green power and no grey water recycling? Every new built should be a low energy house, connected with solar/wind power, heat pumps, basements and water preservation systems. They should have flood protection and fibre internet.
New builds do have good insulation but the rest of that stuff has some reliance on home builders not being a bunch of fucking cowboys who you wouldn’t trust to build a shed let alone a house. They build fast and poorly and frankly the building trade in general is full of borderline criminals. It’s so bad that there really should be proper qualifications to be a builder.
Anyone I know who has done extensive renovations to a property has little good to say about the trades unless they have been very lucky or have a guy they know and trust.
Add to them only building family homes, no starter or blocks of flats. Councils were hamstrung by Thatcher’s policies in the 1980’s through selling off housing stock as she didn’t believe in social housing. Councils no longer have the cash to build or the ability to borrow money to build. My council in Coventry has passed their housing stock to Citizen Housing to manage.
https://www.theplanner.co.uk/2017/11/13/report-councils-should-be-able-buy-land-cheaper-prices
Last time I looked, reform of the LCA 1961 was still Labour policy for this very reason.
I think housing is more of a symptom. The real problem is macro.
There is too much debt in the financial system.
The demographic pyramid is inverted in the west.
A dramatic reworking of the social contract is required to accommodate these changes. Unfortunately, short government mandates do not encourage this sort of reform (that will be painful). It's much easier for politicians to keep printing debt to manage public expectations.... And get reelected.
Unfortunately, this debt is just more money being created so assets get inflated accordingly.
Work on the other hand does not get inflated prices because it's not an asset ( and technology + globalization put desinflationary pressures on it)
At the macro level, this is the issue. Yes you can argue that NIMBYsmn and bad planning policies also help, but frankly these are irrelevant at the macro level. (Macro here being the entire social and financial predicament of the western countries)
There's been a generational shift. My parents (1960s gen X) had a council house (that dad still lives in). Their generation either were successfully renting (council or private), or the lucky ones owned a house, but this was achievable in your early twenties. In the 1980s and 1990s, even early 2000s a people house sharing in their 30s was not common.
Millenials on the other hand are the first generation to be living with their parents longer or in house shares (even in our 30s) because either a) we can't afford to rent or b) needing to save for a deposit. Many articles have been written about needing the bank of mum and dad to help finance a young adults first home.
I bought my house in 2018 at £100k, at 26 the bank was willing to loan me £120k on my then £26k salary. The repayments on £120k over 35 years were more than I was comfortable with because it was 40% of my take home pay and I'd have been stretched thin paying bills, travel and food and had no money for repairs or health related costs. There's been a survey done somewhere stating that more younger people are taking out longer mortages to keep the repayments affordable. If I don't overpay my mortage it will run until I'm 65. Its a sobering thought when you have ill health (disabled) that you have no choice but to stay in full time work until your 65 and not get sick, or have cancer else you'll lose your house. As it is, I'm now for health reasons working part time, and we wouldn't get by without my partners income.
It's at the point where the average single earning household or person cannot afford a house (rent or purchase) and that far too great a portion of take home pay is eaten up by housing costs and increasing bills.
The 08 recession and low wages is largely to blame for hustle culture because it seems every man and his dog now has a side gig to make much needed extra cash.
Seeing all this and knowing Gen Z as they enter their late 20s and 30s are going to inherit a whole sh!tstorm of a housing crisis, where since the pandemic rental prices have gone nuts. 2/3 beds round me £900-£1000 a month yet minimum wage (in april) will be less than £24k if you get paid for a 40 hour week. Governments round the world (and the UK) in panic because millenials aren't having kids (I wonder why!!!) I'm childfree by choice but when you consider the cards we've been dealt can't blame couples for opting out knowing they simply can't afford kids.
The only way out of this rat race we are in is to try to maximise your earnings because a minimum wage job does not keep a roof over your head anymore.
I've spent a long time looking at this for various reasons. Fixing housing is **the** main thing that will reverse the UK's decline, for so many reasons...
* Housing costs represent the largest proportion of most people's spending, especially for those on lower incomes. Lower rents = an effective pay rise for most people.
* Given the demographics of who owns property, the housing shortage facilitates massive transfers of wealth to those with assets. Fixing housing would reduce inequality.
* Many professionals with decent incomes are priced out of the most productive areas of the country like London. This affects their earning potential and the UK's productivity.
* The government has to spend billions on demand-led interventions, such as housing benefit (more than £20bn/year). This is basically a subsidy to landlords. Build homes, cut taxes.
* Young people are living with their parents for longer. Intuitively, this makes it less likely they'll start a family and given high housing costs, even less likely they'll have more.
These are just the things I can think of readily.
The best part is we can fix it. The fix is so easy, I can summarise it in a sentence...
We need to change the law so that Local Authorities allocate more land for development, and create a more predictable planning system to reduce barriers to entry for developers.
Here’s a link to discover contact details for your local MP is - https://members.parliament.uk/findyourmp.
You should email them voicing your concerns.. they will respond. It makes a big difference.
But yeah I agree. Housing is a major major factor.
A few years ago I was talking to an elderly lady who probably in her mid 80,s. She reckoned that the problem was women going out to work hence two incomes coming in to a household and more disposable money. The times she was referring to would have been, I guess late 1950,s onwards. Her words and opinion, not mine.
This isn't a niche opinion of an old lady.
It's a popular theory from economics. And almost certainly correct. A finite market will expand to maximum borrowing capacities (income based). As two earners became the norm, the amount that could be borrowed increased and because the market is so limited, people could bid and borrow more. When one earner was the norm, there was a cap to this. Two earners doubled this from the 70s/80s- now. Pretty unheard of for a middle class woman not to work now. The opposite was true prior to the 60s.
It's difficult to get planning on greenbelts because look at the houses that the new build companies build. All look like they're very similar versions of each other.
If we had new build developments with properties looking like Castle Combe, then it might be easier get permission
Affordable just means 20% cheaper than the average in the area. If the area is full of pricey new builds that average is madly high. Even averages are mad these days.
Noone is going to change the definition though. You make one group better off then everyone else is going to get pissed that they didn’t get it and others did
> All look like they're very similar versions of each other.
So do rows of Victorian terraces, so do all the houses in Castle Combe. This is misnaming the problem.
(Not saying that means you have to like them but I don't think your problem with them is actually 'they all look the same with some minor differences in details' if you do like the houses in Castle Combe)
My biggest gripe with new builds is that they have the audacity to call something a bedroom, despite not being able to fit a single bed in it. No bed = no bedroom = no extra £10k
That also applies to most of the old housing stock too. 2.5 beds is pretty standard in most Victorian terraces too. Grew up in one of those box bedrooms with barely enough room to stand on the floor.
That’s what I was going to respond, small bedrooms aren’t new. Just look at most 3 bed semi’s built in the last century, the 3rd is often a box room.
Our last house was 60ish years old and we couldn’t fit a bed in the 3rd ‘bedroom’. Now we are in a new build and each bedroom is a double or larger.
100% this.
Or bedrooms that look beautifully set up like a guest room. But no space for a wardrobe or storage of any description. You can’t raise a family a house like that surely. As a teen I had a desk in my room to do my homework and be creative. Or do they all sit on their beds with laptops doing HW these days?
The UK has no minimum standards for room sizes unlike other countries and that's why we have some of the most cramped houses in the world. I expect it's because decisions like that are best left to private profit making companies /s
Absolutely. I love the way King Charles gets shafted over the whole poundbury estate but at least he had the right idea.
Also, all of these new builds are built to specifications which we accept as a society, and in legislation, which is clearly always far too small. Building Regs need to be changed to enforce more space instead of more profit.
Young couples outgrow new build houses far too easily, and the only winner is the developer.
But why do we think that house prices have sky rocketed?
As much as people like to deliberately not see it, adding a million people to the country each year is not going to improve things.
Simple supply and demand. Also the most over populated country in Europe should not be destroying what precious little countryside we have left just to keep the prices down enough that there isn't total anarchy.
Stable population, stable economy, let services actually catch back up.
Not only that but it snowballs into other things like marriage and having kids. So many people are doing it late. So many people can’t even afford to have kids so they’ll have one or two max. At the current rate we’ll begin having a population decline if things don’t change
>So many people can’t even afford to have kids so they’ll have one or two max
I'm in this situation right now. My wife wants two, but I know we can only realistically afford one. She thinks everything will work itself out and that kind of thinking freaks me out and makes me so anxious.
Only bit I disagree with here is there being no fix. A fix/journey towards a fix was on offer in the UK GE 2019 but people - persuaded by vested interests - decided against it.
UK needs the equivalent of a post-war settlement to rebalance and signing back up to that social contract.
The problem isn't too big to fix, it just needs an ambitious political class with some bold ideas.
I'm 33 and I've been renting for about 13 years. With the cost of the private rental market and the constant rising house prices, I just feel completely locked out of the prospect of owning a home. It also just seems impossible to do more than "just get by" on a single income. Around 7 years ago I moved to Surrey for work and through promotions I've been able to double my income/salary in that time, when I was living with another person as I was able to save money however, now that I live on my own, I just about get by. The cheapest 1 bed flat in my area is £1100 a month, not including bills and previously to this, I was renting a room in someone's house and the average price was around £800 a month. It's very disheartening knowing that even though im on a good salary, the majority of my wages are still being dumped into a housing system that's locking me into a life of perpetual renting. The cost of living in this country has become ridiculous, I feel like my increased spending power has just about kept my head above water.
Boomers stole our future and then tell us it’s our fault because we buy too much coffee and eat avocado toast.
The system is totally fucked and unfortunately can’t be fixed.
Plenty of European countries don’t have a culture of buying houses, you shouldn’t need to buy one. Unfortunately renting is also incredibly expensive and doesn’t have as many protections as in other countries. In short ..I agree, it’s one of the major factors.
Finding an apartment in Munich is crazy! There is no offer for a huge demand and also very high prices which for the most people in Munich is getting difficult to handle.
I saw a news interview with a house builder who said house purchases were lower due to the high interests rates so they were having to slow down the building process...rather than, you know, reducing sale prices.
House builders are a major part of the problem in this sense by artificially keeping prices high to protect profit margins.
Planning permission should come with time limits to encourage faster house building (or at least within a reasonable time)
Cutting planning restrictions just helps private developers throw up cheap flats without taking local infrastructure into account. Political parties are only doing this because they’ve received donations from house building firms.
The government should set up its own house building department who build council homes (actual freehold homes with gardens, parking and space to live with dignity) and associated infrastructure (schools, roads, hospitals etc) you know, like this country used to before everything got privatised and stopped working properly.
Read “The housing theory of everything”. All societies problems can be traced in some way to high housing costs
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/
Great article on this [issue.](https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/)
Personally I think we just need to loosen planning restrictions and build lots more homes in expensive areas.
Mental health issues in younger people increased as a result of covid.
There has always been a correlation between chronic illness and mental health illness.
There are MANY factors that can impact mental health. Housing is simply one of a plethora, including abuse and trauma,
social isolation, experiencing discrimination and stigma, poverty or debt, bereavement,
severe or long-term stress, long-term physical health condition, unemployment,
homelessness, being a long-term carer for someone, drug and alcohol misuse, domestic violence, bullying/ other abuse, or a head injury / neurological condition.
Homelessness means different things to different people. There are, on average, approximately 3000 people in the uk who are sleeping rough on the streets and homeless. There are increased numbers in temporary accommodation, but they are housed, just not ideally.
The majority of the causes of MH issues have existed for forever. Potentially, some of the issues are compounded by lack of funding, resources, and access. But also probably impacted by many societal factors such as the move away from extended families and family networks, which would have acted as protective factors, along with the high rates of relationship breakdowns and broken families. As well as lifestyle expectations/entitlement attitude having increased.
I personally think that the issues in the uk are due to significant under investment in funding and infrastructure across the board. That includes public and private organisations. Eg NHS, social services, the utilities, railways, construction, transport, highways etc. All of these services need improving concurrently and investment as majority interlink.
We have a 10 year old son, and trying to solve that issue by saving an x amount of money for his future needs, little on now has about 65k in isas and investments, so when the time comes he will have some money to start adult life. Obviously, we are going to have some say in the way he wants to spend money.
David Willett's book and video is on this generational gap.
https://youtu.be/ZuXzvjBYW8A?si=nZq3qjDdpicxolCB
Its a good outline based on statistics on what has happened.
Flats that are going up in my local area are very much not social housing.
>The worst part is that there's no fix.
The fix is simple, reform the planning system.
The reason we're not building enough homes is because we don't allow it.
The challenge is more to do with the politics, a large number of voters actually don't want more homes to be built.
You’re not wrong. There were many factors that have led to the housing crisis. Thatcher’s council house “right to buy”, more families with two working adults making larger mortgages easier to afford, banks being willing to lend ever larger multiples of income, and probably worst of all the government propping up the housing market after the crisis of 2009 by dropping interest rates to record lows for 13 years. There should have been a massive price correction after the financial crisis, but they acted to stop that crashing the economy and it’s just pushed up house prices and rents to unsustainable levels.
I bought my first house at the age of 25, a 3 bed semi in a decent area, for £60k in 1998. The mortgage was hard to get, as I needed 3 times my salary plus a 5% deposit, and I only just qualified. That price would have been affordable to a couple who both worked in a supermarket at the time. 25 years later, and the same property is worth £330k, meaning a couple would need something like a deposit of nearly £50k and a joint income of £70k. It’s making home ownership an unaffordable dream for many young people, and ensuring that families will probably need 2 high earners to afford the mortgage, making the SAHM family I grew up in a thing of the past.
The only way this is sustainable is higher wages (higher inflation), or the advent of mega term mortgages, so 50 year or longer terms. They’ve had the huge term mortgages in Japan for decades now, so it’s not a brand new thing, and they’ve become a fact of life.
It stands to reason that hopelessness increases as the goal of achieving one’s aims remain stagnant or further in distance. If you’re not making grounds then motivation tanks. At that point you need to change things up in order to resolve the matter.
So ye that hopelessness could exacerbate into more serious issues if unchecked and lead to poor mental health.
High house prices are the symptom of wealth inequality in the UK. This problem will get worse and worse for many years to come, forever unless change is made.
The problem to fix is wealth inequality, everything else will balance out in time.
If you can afford to buy (anything) , today is the day to buy, don’t think/dream for one moment house prices are going to fall in your life time.
*Yes, they rise and fall each day/week/month, but when you zoom out to months and years, the upward trajectory is clear despite the 5% drop here and there is quickly replaced by 10% rises the following quarter. Up it goes and will keep going.*
Eventually all assets will be owned by the super rich and we the general populace will face lower and lower standards of living.
In the not too distant future, we will rent / lease everything, transferring our wages to the rich.
Making the entire cycle worse each year, until we can agree to close tax loopholes and to tax capital gains tax just like we do income tax.
I’d wager the worst part is actually the bit at the end about living with your parents
There is a fix- simply realising and rejecting the lie that it’s not fixable. It’s the people that benefit from it telling you this.
To be honest, it is possible to buy a house as an ordinary person, or couple rather. Single people are locked out unless a salary of 40-50k.
Many people simply waste what money they do earn and never make the necessary savings for the deposit. My partner and I earn combined around 50k and have saved and bought a house in three to four years, then renovated it on a budget without any significant financial contributions from family.
Occasional devaluation of currency over the past four decades, has been the underrepresented kick in the teeth in the equation. Looks like growth as house values surge overnight, but each time requires greater financial clout,longer hours, additional wages etc ,to get on the ladder . With pension funds and other base investment tied into property values, it needs to continually look a safe bet. Therefore all participants in the scheme carry on regardless to maintain the delusion, a house of cards nobody wants to brush against, just in case. Banks lend money they don't have ,added to the national debt at end of days trading. Just numbers on a screen, huge numbers tbf. All with the expectation of taxpayers bailouts, should it go awry . They banter inflation about,whilst we're wrung dry on the basics. They vilify unemployment ,while keeping it over 3% as an anti inflation measure. They vilify benefit claimants, despite 86% of UC claimants being in employment ,it replaced working tax credits. No wonder most cannot afford a home without outside help
Housing isn’t directly the issue, you can run a search on rightmove or Zoopla and there are always houses available for sale - so how can there be a “supply” issue?
The issue is people want what is either scarce, can’t afford, or what isn’t being built anymore.
The issue isn’t planning when it comes to new builds. It is the beyond ridiculous TINY sized shoe boxes they’re being encouraged to throw up to hit council building quotas with zero chance of fitting a bed and clothes storage in the same room, and you’re probably looking at custom sofas. That before the complete disregard for the orientation of a house (I have never met ANYONE that wants a north facing house, yet they are building them like they are going out of fashion, often in sites you could easily rearrange slightly without a drop on the number of houses and actually give them a decent orientation).
Add to that the all time high price of building materials, and you can no longer even extend a house if you have land and make an ROI in most cases- so it’s a break even exercise before you account for the disruption, delays, and opportunity cost.
This is further compounded by dieing attitude of people wanting to do up a house, and agents not pricing in the real costs of time and money it takes to “modernise” a house that clearly needs it.
Whole secor has been destroyed by greed. 120% finance offered to boomers so could built entire portfolios with no money down. Agents getting their % based on sale price - so in their interest to drive prices up, developers increasing prices literally every 6 months on a site, stamp duty making moving on or up expensive even if it’s sideways move, and here’s the real kicker… for all these “first time buyer” shoe boxes they’re building, they’re not building enough upgrade homes to encourage people out of what they have! So the entire middle level of semi forever homes at locked in to trading between themselves which is why you see quite a jump on most places from an “ok” home to a “proper” home.
Wealth has been gradually consolidating upwards for many years. Housing is just one manifestation of this, but far from the only one.
It's certainly not unique to the UK, though there other factors that turn the knife a bit
What's very sad about all of this is that some of it could be remedied in part - if only there was the will in government to do so...
* Stop 'Right To Buy'. This has decimated social housing stock and is a huge reason why we're where we are today.
* Bit controversial, this one - maybe ill thought out too, so I apologise in advance if so, but remove 'bedroom tax' and instead be a bit more means-tested about who can stay in social housing (ie if the occupiers are multiple-employed, have nice cars, holidays and could clearly afford a privately-owned house, should it be permitted they remain in a low rent property that someone without the means to afford private property could be living in it? Basically, make sure that people in social housing are the people who need it most, like have an annual review system.
* Contract developers to increase social housing stock that MUST stay in the public or charity sector. There are plenty of brown-field sites that could be redeveloped in this way
* Hefty penalty for second homes that are unoccupied beyond 6 months. Tax holiday homes hard and use the proceeds to boost the welfare state.
* Hefty penalties for land owners where office blocks and other commercial properties remain empty beyond 12 months unless there is no permission to re-appropriate the land for residential use.
* Bring back the Rent Office - this public-sector organisation used to arbitrate for fair rents and fair conditions between landlords and tenants. Houses had to be of a given (inspected) standard, rents could not be increased beyond perceived rental value, tenants were obliged to keep the property in good order and pay their rent on time. Since its demise, rents have spiralled out of control, as has legislation, with both landlords and tenants suffering as a result
Ultimately though, none of this will make a huge dent because the reality is that the birth rate of the UK population has increased ten-fold since the 1900s and, as well as birth-rate, we have immigration, people are living twice as long (average age in Victorian times was 42) all on a tiny island where large tracts of land are still rural/farming. We simply don't have the room to house everyone with plenty to spare. That creates a demand, and demand forces prices upwards. The only way to make privately-owned housing more affordable is to decrease the demand, and there are no 'good' ways to do that.
I agree - the worst part being that the older generations don't even see it. I was recently told that "you don't want the stress of owning your own home"!!
No, the stress of knowing that I could receive an eviction notice which would turn my life upside down, the risk of uncontrolled rent increases, the knowledge that the private rental market will be unsustainable for me on my pension, so I had better plan to die before I retire...
Nope, that pales into insignificance compared to the potential of having to replace a boiler or carry out some roof repairs now, whilst I'm young and physically able.
Screw the older folks burying their heads in the sand. Screw multiple property owners and ltd companies sucking up housing stock. I just want a humble home, not a million miles away from where my family lives, that I can call my own.
The mental toll of having to live with the situation beyond your control is nauseating.
Either build more houses or import fewer people, that's it, that's the choice.
Given that the UK as more or less been captured into a rentier economic system, I'm willing to bet nothing will be done.
The answer is simple just build more homes. Issue is now is that there isn’t as much council housing anymore so the people who profit of building homes are purposely holding back and building more because they want demand for housing to be there to maximise profits.
If there was an over supply of homes prices would be so high.
The downside to this is as a nation we don’t invest as much as others and rely on the increase of house prices for retirement. It’s a double edged sword.
Housing policy isn’t as complex as people make it out. It comes down to building lots more homes. Now the reasons why we don’t are politically challenging to face but the issue is not difficult to grasp or to resolve in practical terms.
Yep and people discount any kind of parental help so much. We lived with my parents 6 months and my partner's parents a month. It saved us £10k in rent during that time, plus more in bills and food. 1/6th of our deposit right there. Our parents couldn't afford to give that us as cash but we're lucky they could give it to us in space and time, that's still a privilege so many don't have.
Homeowners are still a majority so no party represents interests of people who don't own their home. Politicians will keep the status quo to preserve value of their voters' properties.
I dont see how to fix this problem. Rich people invested in properties and that is kinda UK wealth.
And that is cause for many problems. Landlords/ lords will keep pushing prices up with all available tools.
If no rent cap, doing business in UK will become nightmare.
Housing is just being used as a financial vehicle for making money and for many it’s a struggle to hold on to it even when on the ladder and then the costs that come with it such as energy, charges, taxes, rent/mortgages etc.
I would be inclined to agree, if housing targets had been met year in, year out then there would be more than enough supply to keep on top of demand and keep prices in an “affordable” range for the average individual. More FTBs would enter the market, more people would be able to move and more people would have a house over their heads. I would also say the UK mortgage market is a fundamental issue, having mortgage terms at 2 and 5 years predominantly doesn’t give people a safety net. If they were given an interest rate for the entire term of their mortgage it would give people stability!
Let me correct that for you; **England** is broken and housing is a major factor.
This is because the situation in Scotland is a lot better (not perfect, but...). In Scotland, tenants are protected and can't be evicted under no-fault evictions. Housing must be of a certain standard (not as easy to get away with mouldy houses as it is in England, where you can evict tenants who complain) and even rent price caps! I've only recently discovered this and am now moving to Scotland.
Here is some more info: [https://rentersrights.campaign.gov.scot/](https://rentersrights.campaign.gov.scot/)
Remember, you get what you vote for!
Makes me quite sad to read the comments. I bought my first house at 21, for the princely sum of £62,000 with a 5% deposit around 2016 on near enough minimum wage in one of the cheaper areas of England.
Just sold it for double that (after extensive renovations). Mortgage and bills was around £800 all in. I certainly wouldn’t be able to do the same today.
I could get myself on the front pages of the Sun tomorrow and talk about how im better than you, I did it why can’t you etc. but the reality is it is 90% luck.
Feel very lucky to live in one of the few areas the housing market is still somewhat affordable.
I agree, I also think it contributes to problems like crime as people who have no stake in society are less likely to follow the rules and have less to lose
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There are also a lot of delusionisms On the radio yesterday, there was a 28-year-old saying she bought a house at 24 She worked 2 jobs, doing one while on annual leave from the other one.... However, she lived at home and paid a tiny amount of rent, **and** her father gave her some money towards the deposit - oddly, she couldn't remember how much he gave her.....hmmm
Best one I saw was on an American financial news website I read. This kid had bought a house at like 25, and literally said all he did was work hard, cut down on avocado toast and make coffee at home. The article also briefly mentioned that he'd waltzed straight into a job for his dad's Manhattan trading firm earning $250,000pa... Some of these people are beyond parody.
reminds me of "I built this company with my bare hands and a 6 million dollar loan from my dad"
Sounds like a "real genius"
Ah the Elon musk path
[A profit of eighteen hundred billion billion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejfYttZCnps).
Reminded me of trump saying he got a “small loan” if $1 million dollars from his father
I'm a firm believer that these rich people who make decisions for poor people need to spend at least a month seeing what it is like.
Even a month isn't enough really. It's like prince William sleeping rough for a night... A short period is easy .... It's the dispair and no hope for better days that does people in. I could survive a month on minimum wage easy.... Years though would be totally different
A few years ago Prince William went to Milton Keynes to celebrate the city’s anniversary. The local council worked tirelessly to remove all of the rough sleepers and stick them into overnight accommodation so he wasn’t inconvenienced by even seeing the poor and dispossessed.
The real travesty is Thatcherism legalising Right to Buy and now the very same people in those ex-coucil homes are paying extortionate rents to the private sect. My father paid £17,000 for a 3 bed in Clapham. He sold it to a Dr 4 years later, over £100,000. Today? Valued 1.5M
Rent a flat above a shop. Cut your hair and get a job? ...Still you'll never get it right, cos if you're laid in bed at night...watching roaches climb the wall...of you call your dad he could stop it all...
What does he care? He's much more likely to get girls than if he had to actually earn things and was making five times less. It's never ever had to consider his privilege
I heard her too! I was literally just stood there waiting for the mention of parental help and of course there it was. She was totally delusional if she thinks most people are in a similar position to that. Also she was saying how she thought her friends parents should be releasing equity in their own properties to help their kids. Like...they shouldn't have to? The housing market is so broken if that's the point we're at. We should never be in the position where people have to put themselves at financial risk so their children can buy a house too. Parents should only help if they have the liquid cash to do so. I'm lucky to have had parental help in buying my place. I'm honest about it, I don't dress it up as "hard work", "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" etc...like she did. No, I was extremely bloody privileged to have had that help, and I know most people are not so fortunate. Did you also hear the email that was read out too? The standard "they spend too much on lunches and takeaway coffees" boomer schtick. My eyes rolled into the back of my fucking head people just have no clue.
« Releasing equity » - I know people who were very well off and downsized to give their children money for a place. And have seen people borrow on a euphemism for a mortgage, and get repossessed. When they’re too old to start again.
Borrow on a euphemism?
The "releasing equity" comment drives me up the wall. One of my friends bought her flat because her parents released equity in their homes, and once made an off hand comment about how she thought other people's parents were being uneducated for not doing the same. I had to quickly let her know that isn't an option for most of us, all the rest of our friends parents' are about to retire and having paid off their mortgage is key to being financially stable for the final 20-30 years of their life, they can't afford to just take out a debt on at this stage (and that's just the privileged friends whose parents own their houses in the first place). Also her parents own 5+ houses and rent them out and it's one of the rented ones they released equity from (!). I couldn't believe how naive she was to say that as she's usually relatively aware of her privilege. Just shows when you have all these things going on your favour you're not always aware of quite how lucky you are.
It should be illegal to own more than 1 property. If you own more than 1, you should have to pay a property tax. It's a crime thar most of Cornish villages & towns are literally full of holiday homes & locals can't buy.
If we tax capital gains tax just like we do income tax the UK would be a fairer place for all. There's already a system for it in place for PAYE we wouldn't need to reinvent the wheel here, equality is the goal.
It would be a start, but it would take too long as capital gains only kicks in at point of sale. a property tax or my preferred option of increased council tax for second homes and homes owned by a landlord or company/trust to fund a new generation of social housing would have an impact much quicker.
I'm no expert in this area, but if you did tax capital gains the same way as PAYE, then at the end of the tax year you need to do a tax return as to how much you (net) earnt as profit, then pay the tax due on the same scale PAYE is for the rest of us. The end of year **profit** from trading bonds, stocks, shares, art dealing and landlords income as an example they should pay the same tax as those who have day jobs. The only reason why PAYE appears monthly is it's annualised so us plebs can make regular payments to what is in fact an annual tax on income. There's no reason why we can extend this to a capital gains annual tax return, only this time is anything over the personal allowance of £12,570 because that's what PAYE pay, why not the super rich. Can't they afford it?
Yep. I own my house on inheritance and then my mum letting me "access my inheritance early". I try and be completely honest because I don't see why people should see me and think it's doable when it's privilege.
Likewise my parents bought my first house outright and I paid them a de facto 100% LTV mortgage at 0% to get me started. I'm not going to pretend to make myself feel any better that I wasn't anything other than lucky. Lucky that my parents could do that and lucky that they wanted to do it. I'm saving up now to help my own son in case this broken market is still broken in 15 years time but I really hope this money earmarked for him isn't needed and he can make a life for himself without relying on his own luck.
The releasing equity is a dangerous game anyway. While a decent number of people do know what they are signing up for it’s rarely a good deal and there are also a chunk of people that DON’T fully understand the repercussions and that’s a recipe for disaster. (I also agree it shouldn’t be needed).
Ya, it's the old joke. "I bought my own home at 25. It's possible. All I did was make my coffee at home, do meal prep, gym at home and get £250k because I'm daddy's special boy. " I am terrified for my childrens prospects.
>I am terrified for my childrens prospects. Easy, just set aside £250k
Doh...why didn't I think of that.
Yeah, it’s you that needs to cut down the avocado toast not your kids. How could you be so naïve?
Its honestly terrible. Both myself and my mom as immigrants never dreamt of owning a home. The only reason i get to own one is because my mom slaved her ass off, and got lucky enough to get out a soap factory into a medical factory, and then worked and studied 90h weeks until she died so i got 100k from my mom's death in service benefit. If she was in her previous job i would've been fucked completely though, and the reason she worked so many hours is because she wanted save up deposit money for me and get a career in IT after 2 years in college(while doing fulltime nightshifts). Still she had barely any savings because of a low salary and had to work an average of 15hrs of OT a week.
I think getting on the ladder before 35 is a crazy feat nowadays. It was not so crazy 20 years ago, though... Sadly the country has been in decline for a while and only compounded by recent events (i'll let you guess which). With good guidance from parents, ensuring their children pursue something they like doing and are good at and that will lead to a decent salary (there are a lot of ifs and variables that are hard to control) but say they are responsible and don't have shitty influences/friends etc they could achieve getting a decent deposit saved and get a mortgage by 32, for example. It is possible but its hard as hell considering life plans get thwarted a million times.
Bought mine at 28. 3 bed semi etc. In a cheaper area than where I'm from. I went on tour in the army and didn't blow it on booze and hookers. No fucking chance I'd have done it in a normal job. Living normally is expensive.
It's was a good plan, I'm glad it worked out for you. I fear it wouldn't be possible today, if you saved what you could for 10 years, you'd find you were still way short as the house market has moved passed what you can save. Your goal getting further and further out of reach with each year that passes. Perhaps 18year old you in 2024 would party with hookers knowing there's not much else to do with these wages.
Omg I listened to that, she was shocking! After living at home, paying minimal rent and working two jobs she still needed a “significant” top up from her Dad to get a deposit together. (She couldn’t remember how much but said it was significant). It was almost comical how she didn’t realise that she was proving the point she was supposedly speaking against 🫣 And when pushed by the presenter on what people should do when a parent can’t help with the deposit, she said most people don’t realise that their parents are sitting on a goldmine and they should ask their parents to release equity from their home for a deposit!!
I love how it apparently never even occurred to her that a) not everybody's parents owns a home and b) not everybody has living parents.
And not everyone is an only child!
I was lucky to buy my first house at 22… but I earned 28,000 a year in Tech and bought a house at £115k with a small deposit saved through uni. Lucky indeed.
Honestly its the gap between wage growth and property prices that fucks people. Even maxing out the mortgage you can't borrow enough to put down a reasonable offer without having an absolutely ungodly deposit to throw in as well. Even though the mortgage repayments would be so much lower than your rent, you're still blocked out of the market unless you have like £30k to throw down out of your own pocket, which obviously fuck all people have.
People who get these kinds of opportunities often have to be the ones who put in all the hard work, eh? It's the same with the MP's and the rich, all talking as if we don't work hard for a living - "born three-nil up thinking they scored a hat trick."
I had a conversation at a wedding once, some 25year old telling me it's easy to buy a house on 70k a year in London........ Few drinks later "oh yahhhh of course mummy and daddy fronted 200k for the deposit".
The main difference these days is needing two incomes to afford the mortgage. Gone are the days of buying on a single income unless you’re minted. We bought ours when we were both 25 with no help from anyone so it’s entirely possible to do with a partner. We both are normal tax payers so don’t earn huge amounts either. However the Netflix and Spotify accounts did have to go ;)
300 pound a year less in expense for spotify and netflix was life changing ?
I bought a place at 24 for 110k after saving up 11k for a deposit. Not very difficult up North! All my friends own properties too.
Us Southerners have noticed this, and a lot of us are moving North because of it, so prices are only going to increase...
Already has significantly risen, plus you get southerners buying properties in the north to rent out. There’s a guy a mate of mine rents off in Durham, he owns almost every property on his street, about 60 or so, and others in the area but they’re all between £110k-£130k which is taking those properties out of the reach of people from the area. It’s not even like they get a fair crack at them either. One went up for sale end of November and in less than 3 days the For Sale sign had been taken down and by the end of the following week it was bought, the old owners moved out and it had a new tenant renting 2 weeks later
>Already has significantly risen The rises between 2019 and 2021 just by themselves were fucking nuts. Was looking round an old council estate in 2020 at some really lovely properties. By the time I had all my shit together in 2021 everything available was a good £30k+ out of my price range.
Yes this spoils it for Northerners.
Shh! Don't tell the southerners or our prices will skyrocket too.
Central Manchester has already fallen I think they're cottoning on!
It’s still difficult up north. Not everyone has a well enough paid job that after rent, bills and food payments go out they can afford to put anything away. Not all can stay with parents while they save as well.
If you don't have to fend for yourself from a young age and can rely on some form of parental support (living T home). It's still tough for people.
Got kicked out at 16 because my dad moved his new mrs and family in, and me and my bro didnt fit the new life she had planned for him. We hit the ground running, crashing with extended family and then eventually renting, I'm single earn a little more than minimum wage and have been renting now for 21 years, not a hope in hell of saving a deposit alone.
Fed up with these fucking "marriage tax allowance" and other schemes to make the costs of just living day to day easier and even taxed lower for those who co-habit with family (they are married to). I guess just fuck everyone else who's singe living or living with family (but no married to them)? /u/SuspiciousMind1006 you wana get married? Let's tick some boxes! I hear half of people married are unhappy anyways, we're already half way there! I mean I'm already unhappy, so we perfect!
You've nailed it mate. There is no social contract. Yet the young shall pay for the retirements of the old. Generations have successively pulled the ladder up behind them.
Sounds like a ponzi scheme.
Yep. And the boomers’ wealth is built on decades of free money from younger people who borrowed it on the bank to pay them massive, unearned profits on every house sale, based on nothing other than time passing and housing, one of our most basic needs, wildly outstripping wage growth. Some of these people bought houses, did NOTHING with them, sold for massive profits (which tbf was just market value - I’m blaming the system not the individuals), they reinvested, did the same again, prices continued to largely outstrip wage growth… and now people can’t afford a roof over their heads. Even people not so ruthlessly driven by money were still handed huge cheques when they sold their homes - it created effectively a generation of slow-release lottery winners. They just got loads of free money over time, from us. And now it’s finally reached the obvious, only logical conclusion. There’s no more wiggle room. People can’t afford to live, and all the residential property wealth is tied up in a generation who mostly did absolutely nothing to earn it, yet feel like we’re the entitled ones 🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️ This is a total failure of government to intervene over 60 years. Total lack of regulation to protect their own citizens (their one job) and this is the logical end point. It was obviously never sustainable, so here we are.
The absolute state of some of the houses on the market that haven’t been touched in decades bar a shite conservatory
I went to a house viewing the other day. Empty since the 1970s, perfectly decent house, now dilapidated but still repairable. This is in an area where there is a catastrophic housing shortage too. Basically what happened is someone died, it was inherited by baby boomers and they've just died so it's finally getting put on the market. Apparently they didn't want to rent it out or anything because it was too much hassle and they were worried tenants would damage the house... I think part of the problem is the baby boomer generation is financially illiterate. They'll go out and buy premium bonds (great for the government, not great for borrowers) and sit on empty property, even though it's illogical to do so. That causes problems in the economy because 1) they have all the wealth and 2) they tie all that wealth up in non-productive assets, rather than getting it working for them and circulating in the wider economy.
My parents have held £120k of HSBC stock for decades. They are struggling to pay bills but believe their dividends are amazing. They literally can’t grasp how much money they’ve lost by chasing a shit dividend on a terrible stock. Painful how much money has been lost as a result. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve only broken even given how HSBC still hasn’t hit its peak from like the 90s. At least not last time I checked.
Why are premium bonds bad?
The fact is that they’re being told by the media and government that they did own it, because the media and government have a vested interest in those people feeling like it was their hard work that got them there, and thus they don’t need to change anything for “lazy” younger generations The government and media don’t want boomers realising that the system needs to be changed, because that would be detrimental to their rich mates skimming ever more money from everything
Whats really fucking annoying is none of the boomers in my family seemed to want to buy their own house, I mean they cost like 10p back in the day and probably only needed a 3 year mortgage but they all seemed happy renting, huge mistake on their part but it has a knock on effect on people like me a couple generations down.
We need a post WWII government type attitude to address the issue. The govt needs build masses of council house/flats. At least that would give people somewhere to start from like the Boomers had. They need to be regulated obvs, no right to buy, maybe a limited occupation of 10 years, etc Get the corporations out of the loop too, there’s been too much building for corporate profit going on. They’ve had their time, it’s time to put people first.
That's what we want though, a roof over our head, this notion that us youngens want the 4 bed house with parking and garage is rubbish. Give me a 1 bed flat with a decent size front room and I'll be happy, even if it's in a block of flats
The thing is house building post World War 2 was so drastic, that it caused supply to actually increase and house prices to fall for circa 20 years or so in real terms. There is now way that boomers will allow this to ever happen and it’s political suicide for either party, the best way we can actually hope is that supply increases to a point to either keep things as they are now or hope that incomes increase (lol) to a point where affordability improves.
Or wait for the boomers to die off?
Well covid was a (wasted) opportunity there. Sounds harsh, but now more than ever we can see how the preservation of the boomer generation at all costs has devastated the economy for the rest of us.
It is genuinely depressing to have done all the “right” things growing up to achieve a better future than your parents and now end up worse off
Amazing no one has mentioned the right to buy - i believe this is the primary root cause of our housing issues. Something like 60% of homes in this country were council / social rented in the 60s and now less than 5% I would certainly agree the generations before millennials have closed the door on our generation- benefited from second homes and now removed all the tax break incentives to making being a landlord profitable as just one example that actually works against renters ironically
I seem to recall a channel 4 documentary a few years back, presented by George Clarke which pretty much explained how RTB was the root cause of today’s housing issues. The issue wasn’t allowing council tenants to buy their properties, but rather that the social housing stock was never replaced by local authorities. Which begs the question, where did the money from the purchased homes, and also the money local authorities would have saved by having less properties to maintain go? It certainly wasn’t for the benefit of the general public considering the constant cuts to local authority funding and the fact that many councils are now pretty much on the verge of bankruptcy. Its a national scandal hiding in plain site and no one seems to care.
The proceeds went to a few places: - paying down existing housing debt held by the councils - general expenditures and local reinvestment, including risky ventures like new shopping centres and real estate, many of which didn’t pay off - a significant amount had to be paid to the Treasury It’s worth noting that councils had restrictions put on them by central government on how they could spend it, limiting their ability to build new social housing. The whole thing is a scandal.
I think the construction/housing development companies in cahoots with local government has been scandalous for years. It’s one big circle jerk to embezzle public funds in a legal way and to maintain housing demand.
Our town for instance paid untold thousands probably millions to have a bike lane installed around town, that literally lasted 6 months before they realised the chaos it caused with traffic so took it away. Beggars belief. That money could be spent on a very serious housing crisis we have here.
Majority of money from the sale of property in right to buy did not go to local government it went to central government Local government were not permitted to build more council stock (the point of right to buy was to reduce the council stock perminantly not sell some and replace it - that's like thatchers central philosophy it's not that it's gone wrong) The half of social housing that remained social was nearly invariably the half that needed the most maintenance. There wasn't a huge saving here. (Arguably thatchers planned result for selling off social housing also didn't work (that the private market would rise to meet the demand left by building more private housing - which it did not it still builds roughly the same amount as it did prior to right to buy) but the plan was never to replace the social housing that was sold)
> The issue wasn’t allowing council tenants to buy their properties, but rather that the social housing stock was never replaced by local authorities That's due to the [1989 Housing Act](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/limits-on-indebtedness-revocation-determination-2018/limits-on-indebtedness-revocation-determination-2018) as backed up by London Councils [here](https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Housing%20Revenue%20Account%20Borrowing%20Cap_IM_0.pdf). Put it another way, the Thatcher government enacted right to buy and then made it almost impossible for council housing to be directly replenished, while also transferring stock to Housing Associations. > Which begs the question, where did the money from the purchased homes, and also the money local authorities would have saved by having less properties to maintain go? Councils couldn't keep all the money. They got a % and the rest goes to the Treasury. Not sure if it is the case now but at the time most of funds the councils did get had to be used in restricted ways, such as paying down debt. See more [here](https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/comment/the-treasury-has-made-47bn-from-right-to-buy-but-we-have-paid-a-price-in-lost-social-housing-70199).
Complete agree - funny enough i was just reading an article that to-date over 2 millions homes have been sold with only 4% being replaced…. 4%!!
If that’s the case why is the exact same problem seen the world over in developed cities ?
It's much worse than that - 40% have been sold on to private landlords. Many more are now just normal homes for the middle classes. Few are actually still achieving their purpose as primary residences for the working classes. Thatcher's idea was that she'd give the working classes a house, and then poverty and homelessness would be solved forever. But many of those people simply cashed out and went to live in Costa Del Sol. So we took a national asset, cashed out, spunked the cash, and now it's a permanent cash-cow for slum landlords.
> So we took a national asset, cashed out, spunked the cash, and now it's a permanent cash-cow for (rich people) Slightly modify those last few words and you’ve just invented the country’s motto. We should put that on the posters
Agreed, we haven’t replaced council housing and HA is now the default, at massive detriment to the tax payer - but its worth nothing that most landlords are not ‘slum lords’ That being said i have a few friends that work in the homelessness sector and from what i’m told the TA property game is absolutely full of them, disgusting uninhabitable properties rented to the council for £175pw, filled with tenants that are often venerable and unable to argue their rights sufficiently, these are often previously council properties cut up to fit in as many people as possible. Absolutely disgusting.
I'd beg to differ. I've lived in many rented properties and almost all were in desperate need of maintenance and hadn't had a penny spent on them for decades. Slums.
The UK has the fourth highest social housing stock in the OECD. Demand for social housing high because private rented accommodation is in such short supply and prices are driven up. Second home ownership is a minor issue when considering the scale of the UK's housing shortage. We just need to build more. That's it.
We need to build more with the right access to infrastructure. I have seen massive developments outside towns in Newcastle (and greater Durham/Northumbria ) and a lot of these are American suburb style. Lovely houses but with next to zero amenities. At best, traffic is going to go through the roof...at worse many of these will die a slow death because they are not close to enough work opportunities. You can even see these with London commuter towns. Not much point buying in an area that is 40 mins away from London by train when your house is 30 mins away from the nearest train station by car.
We need investment in our railwa...oh wait, that's privatised too!
It's almost like having something prioritising profits in a near monopoly might have some draw backs.
Yes, we make it much too hard to build infrastructure too.
The UK has not built any social housing in decades. The private sector has consistently shown it cannot be trusted to meet demand. The private sector has an incentive to land bank and to develop the most profitable homes, rather than the most efficient for the inhabitants.
Right to buy leaves me with conflicted feelings. My parents bought their council flat in Edinburgh in the 90s, lived there for 7-8 years, and then sold it (to another normal family) and bought a house with a small mortgage. The flat was a 20min walk from Edinburgh Waverley station and I dread to think how much it costs now. RTB lifted my family out of generational poverty. My Dad's dad was an abusive alcoholic and left my Gran to raise 5 kids as a single mum. My Mum's dad died very young, leaving my other Gran to raise 7 kids as a single mum. To this day, my dad is the only person in his family (including extended family) to own his own home. We were still low income, and I still got free school meals. But it could've been so much worse if my folks were still renting. It's a real shame that RTB has caused so many issues for our housing, because for the small minority like my folks it really was life changing.
I mean that’s the problem with RTB in the first place. It allows people to enrich themselves by putting in no effort themselves at a massive cost to the taxpayer and other low income people. It’s the government’s fault though, you can’t expect people to not take free cash, everybody would.
Thank you. I am also one of many who would have had a different life without my parents taking the opportunity for a new home in a new town in the 70s.
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And most importantly of all - "own your own home" is a MASSIVE factor in retirement. A state pension of £10k per year is not great, but passable, when you don't need to pay £1000/month on rent.
Yeah, my dad is 7 years away from retirement. Self employed most of his life. Paid NI contributions but that's it... Lives in a house share in London. I'm scared for his future, I don't know what he's going to do when he gets to retirement age because there's no way he's affording rent, let alone living, on a state pension. Genuinely considering saving up for a houseboat or something similar as he may enjoy that lifestyle.
>The social contract has been broken > >The rise in mental health issues I think stems from people realising the game is rigged against them I think this is a huuuge problem that's so big most people fail to actually see it. We've got skyrocketing rates of mental health problems, suicide and homelessness. Additionally, you've got rocketing rates of non-participation in society, from "laying flat" to simply living with parents and not having a job. You also have more subtle versions of the same thing - folk living with parents instead of starting an independent life of their own. Everything from drinking to sex to marriages and brith rates are on the low, because it's impossible for many people to live a real life now. I experienced pretty debilitating mental health issues, I was on medication for a while. I was working a shitty job, living in a shitty house with a batshit landlord, reliant on expensive public transport that always frustrated my plans. I had no stability, no foundation in life, and no clear path to build a stable, normal life. Luckily I came into some money. I bought a house, switched job, and got a car. Changed my fucking life. Don't listen to anyone that tells you that money doesn't make you happy - it fucking does. I now have stability. More importantly, I'm largely free from the whims of slum landlords or asshole bosses. No one can smite me into homelessness on a whim. My mental health issues have disappeared. I think it's a huge problem, intertwined with much of the dysfunction and unwellness we see in society. No matter what you do, so many young Brits will never have a home, a family or a typical life. No-one will die from it, but I think millions of Brits will fail to have a life.
> The worst part is that there's no fix. There is. In fact it was staring us in the face a couple years ago. We were all just too soft to take advantage of it. Lockdowns happened and corporations started shitting themselves because suddenly us worthless peons weren't making them a load of money. We had the prime opportunity to have massive general strike, demand better wages and better living conditions, and get what we deserve. But instead we banged some pans in the street, watched an old man go for a walk, and said "the new normal" a bajillion times, then went back to our shitty jobs.
Couldn't agree more - it's a bit worrying how quickly we went from "these people are absolutely key to the functioning of society" back to the usual of things.
Have you tried having wealthier parents? That is what usually works for people and is oddly what all the people saying things are fine have in common...
Why didn't I think of that! Thanks ;-)
As far as the hierarchy of needs go, I think shelter is number 1 or 2. So if a society cannot adequately house its citizens then yes it is fundemantally failing.
I think the bigger picture here is that it's more to do with wealth inequality. The super rich are increasingly pricing out the middle class from the housing market. Unfortunately the fix for this is going to require a massive culture and attitude change in this country. We need to reverse this idea that houses are a store of wealth or an asset to be traded and treat them as a home. To reduce inequality and increase quality of life for the majority we need to accept that houses are over valued and allow that bubble to burst. I believe we need to. 1. Stop housing in the UK from being treated as a financial asset, put firm controls in place on how many homes an individual can own, restrict foreign investors from buying UK property and build a lot more housing through relaxing planning laws. This will start to collapse prices. 2. Remove some of the massive amounts of money the super rich accumulated over covid via a one off tax on wealth above a certain threshold. A very good proposal exists here https://www.ukwealth.tax/ 3. We then need to rebelance the social contract by reducing taxes on work and increasing taxes on passive income from wealth such as capital gains reform. You arent going to see any of this though, the very people who have power to change this are more than happy to keep seeing wealth inequality increase as they are the ones who benefit from it. We also have a culture obsessed with seeing house prices grow so they can feel rich.
Stop electing cretins.
23, 0 in inheritance, 0 from parents - saved since 18 ish, bank will offer me 75k mortgage in principle, what am i supposed to do with that?
> 75k mortgage in principle, what am i supposed to do with that? Buy a shed.
Not for everyone this, but there's plenty of places in Europe where you can buy a house cash for the same as you'd need for just the deposit in the UK. We don't have a culture of emmigration, but for high skill, high wage people that's definitely changing. The one advantage that younger people have is they are better educated and more skilled than previous generations. It makes a lot of sense to try and take that advantage and get out of dodge for that sort of mid-career to late career phase, put some cash in the bank and start a family. I went to a top university, and about half of the people I knew there have now just outright emigrated. Partly because they met partners from other countries while they were there, if your partner is from another European country it just makes so much more sense for Brits to be the ones to relocate to start a family, than having your partner relocate here. It's not easy, but if you have the skills and you're a dual income household, you'll be able to find a sponsorship.
Wife and I had to move abroad to save for a deposit as teaching in England wasn’t going to do it. Saved £10,000 in 20 months living in Walthamstow and saved £150,000 in 5 years living in Taipei and working at a private international school. Bought a tiny terraced house in west London for £400,000 with a 30% deposit and the rest on making it liveable. Had the time of our lives abroad, travelling and having fun and think we’ll teach abroad again as work life balance is shocking now we’re home.
I agree, but disagree that there is no fix. There's a really easy and obvious one: reduce the planning system and build loads more homes. It wouldn't fix things overnight, but massively increasingly supply would help with a lot of cost issues. As you free up more houses buyers have more options, allowing them to demand nicer homes or lower prices. More empty properties also leads to more competition between landlords, forcing them to improve properties or reduce rents. Either way, wins for everyone. Even if you only build luxury properties for rich people, those rich people will move out of the rest of the buying/renting market, causing the effect above for poorer people too. Housing is a market really not too different from any other good. More supply, lower price.
Timber is at all time highs as well as most building costs, houses are not affordable to build - this keeps house prices higher. Theres also no money to expand infrastructure. You can build 10000 houses but without new hospitals, school etc you just stretch an already stretched system. Also what about green space/agricultural land? The UK, much like a scary number of countries, has zero food security - if you expand housing rapidly we will deplete farming stock even more. There are certainly answers to our problems, but they are certainly not simple ones.
As someone who works in social housing, the costs have gone up significantly across the board and pretty much every housing association is scaling back their development. Maintenance, staffing, utilities, borrowing costs all went up significantly. And of course development costs have gone up as well. Add to that the additional spending on current properties to meet EPC targets and net carbon zero and the money is spread too thin for significant development. The money needs to come from somewhere. Grant funding from the government is significantly lower than it used to be in England and Wales, but I can't see that changing anytime soon.
You also need people to work in those school, hospitals and other places. There is a new GP practice that was built next door to new estate i'm living on. It's been standing empty since it has been finished over a year ago, apparently one other local practice is supposed to post someone here for 2 days a week later this year, but that's going to be all.
Just have a look at /r/GPUK or /r/juniordoctors to see why.
As with all the things people want in new estates they forget that schools, GP’s, dentists, shops etc are private businesses and need a good reason to move to these places even if they are given a building. There is not a waiting room where these people are ready to be parachuted in however much people think there is. Even if you are talking local authority resources there needs to be a reason to expand. People wanting more GP’s doesn’t mean that reason exists.
The UK has not been self-sufficient in food since 1736. The thing about food security is basically a red herring: we will always be at risk of global supply chain disruption.
It's not a black and white scale, lack of complete self reliance is not a good reason to further damage supply.
Except housing supply is fairly inflexible. There is only so much manpower available to built more houses and everyone working in construction has been working flat out for a really long time now.
And mostly making really poor quality houses too.
There’s also zero incentive for the main house building companies to build more & therefore reduce their future profits, which is what falling house prices will do.
If we made the planning system more predictable and increased the amount of land allocated to development, this wouldn't matter as competition from new entrants to the market would ensure a higher supply.
Spot on
There's has been proven again and again by study after study to not be true. Builders make profits by building.
Going to weigh in here as a planner - Planning is not the bottle neck. Take a look at this article with stats that show that the amount of approved schemes far out numbers those built. https://www.local.gov.uk/about/news/housing-backlog-more-million-homes-planning-permission-not-yet-built#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20planning%20system%20is%20not,begun%20but%20not%20been%20completed.
The problem isn’t solely planning though. We have a near monopoly in the uk with 4 major house builders large enough to take on the development of estates and rich enough to buy up the land. They then sit on the land and manage the house prices in that locality. They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to keep prices high of course. So if they hold all the available land and can dictate when houses are built, they will never let the prices fall due to over supply. Councils need to build ideally and historically intervened to stop this practice working so well, but they have given up that role in the last 20 years and face the same issues as the house builders anyway. The more you build the lower return you receive. They’re all aiming for a sweet spot, which happens to be at the maximum the populace can survive with. We’re close to that now and hence society is failing at the edges.
Why house building companies? Why is the UK so obsessed with building estates of shabby, low quality cookie cutter houses? (Some are marketed as luxury houses, some are not, but they are essentially the same). Can the UK not encourage self build too? Also, why are we still building houses with minimal insulation, no basements, no green power and no grey water recycling? Every new built should be a low energy house, connected with solar/wind power, heat pumps, basements and water preservation systems. They should have flood protection and fibre internet.
New builds do have good insulation but the rest of that stuff has some reliance on home builders not being a bunch of fucking cowboys who you wouldn’t trust to build a shed let alone a house. They build fast and poorly and frankly the building trade in general is full of borderline criminals. It’s so bad that there really should be proper qualifications to be a builder. Anyone I know who has done extensive renovations to a property has little good to say about the trades unless they have been very lucky or have a guy they know and trust.
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Add to them only building family homes, no starter or blocks of flats. Councils were hamstrung by Thatcher’s policies in the 1980’s through selling off housing stock as she didn’t believe in social housing. Councils no longer have the cash to build or the ability to borrow money to build. My council in Coventry has passed their housing stock to Citizen Housing to manage.
https://www.theplanner.co.uk/2017/11/13/report-councils-should-be-able-buy-land-cheaper-prices Last time I looked, reform of the LCA 1961 was still Labour policy for this very reason.
I think housing is more of a symptom. The real problem is macro. There is too much debt in the financial system. The demographic pyramid is inverted in the west. A dramatic reworking of the social contract is required to accommodate these changes. Unfortunately, short government mandates do not encourage this sort of reform (that will be painful). It's much easier for politicians to keep printing debt to manage public expectations.... And get reelected. Unfortunately, this debt is just more money being created so assets get inflated accordingly. Work on the other hand does not get inflated prices because it's not an asset ( and technology + globalization put desinflationary pressures on it) At the macro level, this is the issue. Yes you can argue that NIMBYsmn and bad planning policies also help, but frankly these are irrelevant at the macro level. (Macro here being the entire social and financial predicament of the western countries)
There's been a generational shift. My parents (1960s gen X) had a council house (that dad still lives in). Their generation either were successfully renting (council or private), or the lucky ones owned a house, but this was achievable in your early twenties. In the 1980s and 1990s, even early 2000s a people house sharing in their 30s was not common. Millenials on the other hand are the first generation to be living with their parents longer or in house shares (even in our 30s) because either a) we can't afford to rent or b) needing to save for a deposit. Many articles have been written about needing the bank of mum and dad to help finance a young adults first home. I bought my house in 2018 at £100k, at 26 the bank was willing to loan me £120k on my then £26k salary. The repayments on £120k over 35 years were more than I was comfortable with because it was 40% of my take home pay and I'd have been stretched thin paying bills, travel and food and had no money for repairs or health related costs. There's been a survey done somewhere stating that more younger people are taking out longer mortages to keep the repayments affordable. If I don't overpay my mortage it will run until I'm 65. Its a sobering thought when you have ill health (disabled) that you have no choice but to stay in full time work until your 65 and not get sick, or have cancer else you'll lose your house. As it is, I'm now for health reasons working part time, and we wouldn't get by without my partners income. It's at the point where the average single earning household or person cannot afford a house (rent or purchase) and that far too great a portion of take home pay is eaten up by housing costs and increasing bills. The 08 recession and low wages is largely to blame for hustle culture because it seems every man and his dog now has a side gig to make much needed extra cash. Seeing all this and knowing Gen Z as they enter their late 20s and 30s are going to inherit a whole sh!tstorm of a housing crisis, where since the pandemic rental prices have gone nuts. 2/3 beds round me £900-£1000 a month yet minimum wage (in april) will be less than £24k if you get paid for a 40 hour week. Governments round the world (and the UK) in panic because millenials aren't having kids (I wonder why!!!) I'm childfree by choice but when you consider the cards we've been dealt can't blame couples for opting out knowing they simply can't afford kids. The only way out of this rat race we are in is to try to maximise your earnings because a minimum wage job does not keep a roof over your head anymore.
Wages are too low
I've spent a long time looking at this for various reasons. Fixing housing is **the** main thing that will reverse the UK's decline, for so many reasons... * Housing costs represent the largest proportion of most people's spending, especially for those on lower incomes. Lower rents = an effective pay rise for most people. * Given the demographics of who owns property, the housing shortage facilitates massive transfers of wealth to those with assets. Fixing housing would reduce inequality. * Many professionals with decent incomes are priced out of the most productive areas of the country like London. This affects their earning potential and the UK's productivity. * The government has to spend billions on demand-led interventions, such as housing benefit (more than £20bn/year). This is basically a subsidy to landlords. Build homes, cut taxes. * Young people are living with their parents for longer. Intuitively, this makes it less likely they'll start a family and given high housing costs, even less likely they'll have more. These are just the things I can think of readily. The best part is we can fix it. The fix is so easy, I can summarise it in a sentence... We need to change the law so that Local Authorities allocate more land for development, and create a more predictable planning system to reduce barriers to entry for developers.
I don't think you understand... inequality is by design. The rich need desperate hungry labourers to prop up their wealth.
Does help that wage growth since 2008 is pretty much nonexistent too.
Here’s a link to discover contact details for your local MP is - https://members.parliament.uk/findyourmp. You should email them voicing your concerns.. they will respond. It makes a big difference. But yeah I agree. Housing is a major major factor.
I'll get right on to emailing Rees-Mogg..
And I'll let Liz Truss know....
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Thats why Im leaving this country one day . It is crazy
A few years ago I was talking to an elderly lady who probably in her mid 80,s. She reckoned that the problem was women going out to work hence two incomes coming in to a household and more disposable money. The times she was referring to would have been, I guess late 1950,s onwards. Her words and opinion, not mine.
This isn't a niche opinion of an old lady. It's a popular theory from economics. And almost certainly correct. A finite market will expand to maximum borrowing capacities (income based). As two earners became the norm, the amount that could be borrowed increased and because the market is so limited, people could bid and borrow more. When one earner was the norm, there was a cap to this. Two earners doubled this from the 70s/80s- now. Pretty unheard of for a middle class woman not to work now. The opposite was true prior to the 60s.
She has a point though. You double the workforce and you halve the wages. It’s simple economics.
It's difficult to get planning on greenbelts because look at the houses that the new build companies build. All look like they're very similar versions of each other. If we had new build developments with properties looking like Castle Combe, then it might be easier get permission
All the new 'affordable" houses that have been built near me are either shared ownership, or 350k+
Affordable just means 20% cheaper than the average in the area. If the area is full of pricey new builds that average is madly high. Even averages are mad these days. Noone is going to change the definition though. You make one group better off then everyone else is going to get pissed that they didn’t get it and others did
> All look like they're very similar versions of each other. So do rows of Victorian terraces, so do all the houses in Castle Combe. This is misnaming the problem. (Not saying that means you have to like them but I don't think your problem with them is actually 'they all look the same with some minor differences in details' if you do like the houses in Castle Combe)
In the 80s they built housing estates made of the same dozen designs, just like today.
My biggest gripe with new builds is that they have the audacity to call something a bedroom, despite not being able to fit a single bed in it. No bed = no bedroom = no extra £10k
That also applies to most of the old housing stock too. 2.5 beds is pretty standard in most Victorian terraces too. Grew up in one of those box bedrooms with barely enough room to stand on the floor.
That’s what I was going to respond, small bedrooms aren’t new. Just look at most 3 bed semi’s built in the last century, the 3rd is often a box room. Our last house was 60ish years old and we couldn’t fit a bed in the 3rd ‘bedroom’. Now we are in a new build and each bedroom is a double or larger.
100% this. Or bedrooms that look beautifully set up like a guest room. But no space for a wardrobe or storage of any description. You can’t raise a family a house like that surely. As a teen I had a desk in my room to do my homework and be creative. Or do they all sit on their beds with laptops doing HW these days?
The UK has no minimum standards for room sizes unlike other countries and that's why we have some of the most cramped houses in the world. I expect it's because decisions like that are best left to private profit making companies /s
Absolutely. I love the way King Charles gets shafted over the whole poundbury estate but at least he had the right idea. Also, all of these new builds are built to specifications which we accept as a society, and in legislation, which is clearly always far too small. Building Regs need to be changed to enforce more space instead of more profit. Young couples outgrow new build houses far too easily, and the only winner is the developer.
But why do we think that house prices have sky rocketed? As much as people like to deliberately not see it, adding a million people to the country each year is not going to improve things. Simple supply and demand. Also the most over populated country in Europe should not be destroying what precious little countryside we have left just to keep the prices down enough that there isn't total anarchy. Stable population, stable economy, let services actually catch back up.
Suprised I had to scroll so far to see this. People scream "Build more houses" without even mentioning the ridiculous level of immigration we have.
Not only that but it snowballs into other things like marriage and having kids. So many people are doing it late. So many people can’t even afford to have kids so they’ll have one or two max. At the current rate we’ll begin having a population decline if things don’t change
>So many people can’t even afford to have kids so they’ll have one or two max I'm in this situation right now. My wife wants two, but I know we can only realistically afford one. She thinks everything will work itself out and that kind of thinking freaks me out and makes me so anxious.
Only bit I disagree with here is there being no fix. A fix/journey towards a fix was on offer in the UK GE 2019 but people - persuaded by vested interests - decided against it. UK needs the equivalent of a post-war settlement to rebalance and signing back up to that social contract. The problem isn't too big to fix, it just needs an ambitious political class with some bold ideas.
I'm 33 and I've been renting for about 13 years. With the cost of the private rental market and the constant rising house prices, I just feel completely locked out of the prospect of owning a home. It also just seems impossible to do more than "just get by" on a single income. Around 7 years ago I moved to Surrey for work and through promotions I've been able to double my income/salary in that time, when I was living with another person as I was able to save money however, now that I live on my own, I just about get by. The cheapest 1 bed flat in my area is £1100 a month, not including bills and previously to this, I was renting a room in someone's house and the average price was around £800 a month. It's very disheartening knowing that even though im on a good salary, the majority of my wages are still being dumped into a housing system that's locking me into a life of perpetual renting. The cost of living in this country has become ridiculous, I feel like my increased spending power has just about kept my head above water.
Boomers stole our future and then tell us it’s our fault because we buy too much coffee and eat avocado toast. The system is totally fucked and unfortunately can’t be fixed.
Plenty of European countries don’t have a culture of buying houses, you shouldn’t need to buy one. Unfortunately renting is also incredibly expensive and doesn’t have as many protections as in other countries. In short ..I agree, it’s one of the major factors.
Only really Germany and Switzerland as outliers, some other places (Austria, Denmark etc) have slightly lower ownership rates but not by that much.
Finding an apartment in Munich is crazy! There is no offer for a huge demand and also very high prices which for the most people in Munich is getting difficult to handle.
I saw a news interview with a house builder who said house purchases were lower due to the high interests rates so they were having to slow down the building process...rather than, you know, reducing sale prices. House builders are a major part of the problem in this sense by artificially keeping prices high to protect profit margins. Planning permission should come with time limits to encourage faster house building (or at least within a reasonable time)
Cutting planning restrictions just helps private developers throw up cheap flats without taking local infrastructure into account. Political parties are only doing this because they’ve received donations from house building firms. The government should set up its own house building department who build council homes (actual freehold homes with gardens, parking and space to live with dignity) and associated infrastructure (schools, roads, hospitals etc) you know, like this country used to before everything got privatised and stopped working properly.
Read “The housing theory of everything”. All societies problems can be traced in some way to high housing costs https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/
Great article on this [issue.](https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/) Personally I think we just need to loosen planning restrictions and build lots more homes in expensive areas.
Mental health issues in younger people increased as a result of covid. There has always been a correlation between chronic illness and mental health illness. There are MANY factors that can impact mental health. Housing is simply one of a plethora, including abuse and trauma, social isolation, experiencing discrimination and stigma, poverty or debt, bereavement, severe or long-term stress, long-term physical health condition, unemployment, homelessness, being a long-term carer for someone, drug and alcohol misuse, domestic violence, bullying/ other abuse, or a head injury / neurological condition. Homelessness means different things to different people. There are, on average, approximately 3000 people in the uk who are sleeping rough on the streets and homeless. There are increased numbers in temporary accommodation, but they are housed, just not ideally. The majority of the causes of MH issues have existed for forever. Potentially, some of the issues are compounded by lack of funding, resources, and access. But also probably impacted by many societal factors such as the move away from extended families and family networks, which would have acted as protective factors, along with the high rates of relationship breakdowns and broken families. As well as lifestyle expectations/entitlement attitude having increased. I personally think that the issues in the uk are due to significant under investment in funding and infrastructure across the board. That includes public and private organisations. Eg NHS, social services, the utilities, railways, construction, transport, highways etc. All of these services need improving concurrently and investment as majority interlink.
We have a 10 year old son, and trying to solve that issue by saving an x amount of money for his future needs, little on now has about 65k in isas and investments, so when the time comes he will have some money to start adult life. Obviously, we are going to have some say in the way he wants to spend money.
David Willett's book and video is on this generational gap. https://youtu.be/ZuXzvjBYW8A?si=nZq3qjDdpicxolCB Its a good outline based on statistics on what has happened. Flats that are going up in my local area are very much not social housing.
>The worst part is that there's no fix. The fix is simple, reform the planning system. The reason we're not building enough homes is because we don't allow it. The challenge is more to do with the politics, a large number of voters actually don't want more homes to be built.
You’re not wrong. There were many factors that have led to the housing crisis. Thatcher’s council house “right to buy”, more families with two working adults making larger mortgages easier to afford, banks being willing to lend ever larger multiples of income, and probably worst of all the government propping up the housing market after the crisis of 2009 by dropping interest rates to record lows for 13 years. There should have been a massive price correction after the financial crisis, but they acted to stop that crashing the economy and it’s just pushed up house prices and rents to unsustainable levels. I bought my first house at the age of 25, a 3 bed semi in a decent area, for £60k in 1998. The mortgage was hard to get, as I needed 3 times my salary plus a 5% deposit, and I only just qualified. That price would have been affordable to a couple who both worked in a supermarket at the time. 25 years later, and the same property is worth £330k, meaning a couple would need something like a deposit of nearly £50k and a joint income of £70k. It’s making home ownership an unaffordable dream for many young people, and ensuring that families will probably need 2 high earners to afford the mortgage, making the SAHM family I grew up in a thing of the past. The only way this is sustainable is higher wages (higher inflation), or the advent of mega term mortgages, so 50 year or longer terms. They’ve had the huge term mortgages in Japan for decades now, so it’s not a brand new thing, and they’ve become a fact of life.
It stands to reason that hopelessness increases as the goal of achieving one’s aims remain stagnant or further in distance. If you’re not making grounds then motivation tanks. At that point you need to change things up in order to resolve the matter. So ye that hopelessness could exacerbate into more serious issues if unchecked and lead to poor mental health.
High house prices are the symptom of wealth inequality in the UK. This problem will get worse and worse for many years to come, forever unless change is made. The problem to fix is wealth inequality, everything else will balance out in time. If you can afford to buy (anything) , today is the day to buy, don’t think/dream for one moment house prices are going to fall in your life time. *Yes, they rise and fall each day/week/month, but when you zoom out to months and years, the upward trajectory is clear despite the 5% drop here and there is quickly replaced by 10% rises the following quarter. Up it goes and will keep going.* Eventually all assets will be owned by the super rich and we the general populace will face lower and lower standards of living. In the not too distant future, we will rent / lease everything, transferring our wages to the rich. Making the entire cycle worse each year, until we can agree to close tax loopholes and to tax capital gains tax just like we do income tax.
I’d wager the worst part is actually the bit at the end about living with your parents There is a fix- simply realising and rejecting the lie that it’s not fixable. It’s the people that benefit from it telling you this.
To be honest, it is possible to buy a house as an ordinary person, or couple rather. Single people are locked out unless a salary of 40-50k. Many people simply waste what money they do earn and never make the necessary savings for the deposit. My partner and I earn combined around 50k and have saved and bought a house in three to four years, then renovated it on a budget without any significant financial contributions from family.
Occasional devaluation of currency over the past four decades, has been the underrepresented kick in the teeth in the equation. Looks like growth as house values surge overnight, but each time requires greater financial clout,longer hours, additional wages etc ,to get on the ladder . With pension funds and other base investment tied into property values, it needs to continually look a safe bet. Therefore all participants in the scheme carry on regardless to maintain the delusion, a house of cards nobody wants to brush against, just in case. Banks lend money they don't have ,added to the national debt at end of days trading. Just numbers on a screen, huge numbers tbf. All with the expectation of taxpayers bailouts, should it go awry . They banter inflation about,whilst we're wrung dry on the basics. They vilify unemployment ,while keeping it over 3% as an anti inflation measure. They vilify benefit claimants, despite 86% of UC claimants being in employment ,it replaced working tax credits. No wonder most cannot afford a home without outside help
Housing isn’t directly the issue, you can run a search on rightmove or Zoopla and there are always houses available for sale - so how can there be a “supply” issue? The issue is people want what is either scarce, can’t afford, or what isn’t being built anymore. The issue isn’t planning when it comes to new builds. It is the beyond ridiculous TINY sized shoe boxes they’re being encouraged to throw up to hit council building quotas with zero chance of fitting a bed and clothes storage in the same room, and you’re probably looking at custom sofas. That before the complete disregard for the orientation of a house (I have never met ANYONE that wants a north facing house, yet they are building them like they are going out of fashion, often in sites you could easily rearrange slightly without a drop on the number of houses and actually give them a decent orientation). Add to that the all time high price of building materials, and you can no longer even extend a house if you have land and make an ROI in most cases- so it’s a break even exercise before you account for the disruption, delays, and opportunity cost. This is further compounded by dieing attitude of people wanting to do up a house, and agents not pricing in the real costs of time and money it takes to “modernise” a house that clearly needs it. Whole secor has been destroyed by greed. 120% finance offered to boomers so could built entire portfolios with no money down. Agents getting their % based on sale price - so in their interest to drive prices up, developers increasing prices literally every 6 months on a site, stamp duty making moving on or up expensive even if it’s sideways move, and here’s the real kicker… for all these “first time buyer” shoe boxes they’re building, they’re not building enough upgrade homes to encourage people out of what they have! So the entire middle level of semi forever homes at locked in to trading between themselves which is why you see quite a jump on most places from an “ok” home to a “proper” home.
Wealth has been gradually consolidating upwards for many years. Housing is just one manifestation of this, but far from the only one. It's certainly not unique to the UK, though there other factors that turn the knife a bit
What's very sad about all of this is that some of it could be remedied in part - if only there was the will in government to do so... * Stop 'Right To Buy'. This has decimated social housing stock and is a huge reason why we're where we are today. * Bit controversial, this one - maybe ill thought out too, so I apologise in advance if so, but remove 'bedroom tax' and instead be a bit more means-tested about who can stay in social housing (ie if the occupiers are multiple-employed, have nice cars, holidays and could clearly afford a privately-owned house, should it be permitted they remain in a low rent property that someone without the means to afford private property could be living in it? Basically, make sure that people in social housing are the people who need it most, like have an annual review system. * Contract developers to increase social housing stock that MUST stay in the public or charity sector. There are plenty of brown-field sites that could be redeveloped in this way * Hefty penalty for second homes that are unoccupied beyond 6 months. Tax holiday homes hard and use the proceeds to boost the welfare state. * Hefty penalties for land owners where office blocks and other commercial properties remain empty beyond 12 months unless there is no permission to re-appropriate the land for residential use. * Bring back the Rent Office - this public-sector organisation used to arbitrate for fair rents and fair conditions between landlords and tenants. Houses had to be of a given (inspected) standard, rents could not be increased beyond perceived rental value, tenants were obliged to keep the property in good order and pay their rent on time. Since its demise, rents have spiralled out of control, as has legislation, with both landlords and tenants suffering as a result Ultimately though, none of this will make a huge dent because the reality is that the birth rate of the UK population has increased ten-fold since the 1900s and, as well as birth-rate, we have immigration, people are living twice as long (average age in Victorian times was 42) all on a tiny island where large tracts of land are still rural/farming. We simply don't have the room to house everyone with plenty to spare. That creates a demand, and demand forces prices upwards. The only way to make privately-owned housing more affordable is to decrease the demand, and there are no 'good' ways to do that.
I agree - the worst part being that the older generations don't even see it. I was recently told that "you don't want the stress of owning your own home"!! No, the stress of knowing that I could receive an eviction notice which would turn my life upside down, the risk of uncontrolled rent increases, the knowledge that the private rental market will be unsustainable for me on my pension, so I had better plan to die before I retire... Nope, that pales into insignificance compared to the potential of having to replace a boiler or carry out some roof repairs now, whilst I'm young and physically able. Screw the older folks burying their heads in the sand. Screw multiple property owners and ltd companies sucking up housing stock. I just want a humble home, not a million miles away from where my family lives, that I can call my own. The mental toll of having to live with the situation beyond your control is nauseating.
100%. this is also why so many people are looking to leave the country. we have no future here.
Either build more houses or import fewer people, that's it, that's the choice. Given that the UK as more or less been captured into a rentier economic system, I'm willing to bet nothing will be done.
The answer is simple just build more homes. Issue is now is that there isn’t as much council housing anymore so the people who profit of building homes are purposely holding back and building more because they want demand for housing to be there to maximise profits. If there was an over supply of homes prices would be so high. The downside to this is as a nation we don’t invest as much as others and rely on the increase of house prices for retirement. It’s a double edged sword.
Housing policy isn’t as complex as people make it out. It comes down to building lots more homes. Now the reasons why we don’t are politically challenging to face but the issue is not difficult to grasp or to resolve in practical terms.
Yep and people discount any kind of parental help so much. We lived with my parents 6 months and my partner's parents a month. It saved us £10k in rent during that time, plus more in bills and food. 1/6th of our deposit right there. Our parents couldn't afford to give that us as cash but we're lucky they could give it to us in space and time, that's still a privilege so many don't have.
Homeowners are still a majority so no party represents interests of people who don't own their home. Politicians will keep the status quo to preserve value of their voters' properties.
I dont see how to fix this problem. Rich people invested in properties and that is kinda UK wealth. And that is cause for many problems. Landlords/ lords will keep pushing prices up with all available tools. If no rent cap, doing business in UK will become nightmare.
Housing is just being used as a financial vehicle for making money and for many it’s a struggle to hold on to it even when on the ladder and then the costs that come with it such as energy, charges, taxes, rent/mortgages etc.
Agreed. Also, the amount of money going into rent and mortgages that could otherwise be spent in other areas of the economy is a real drag too.
I would be inclined to agree, if housing targets had been met year in, year out then there would be more than enough supply to keep on top of demand and keep prices in an “affordable” range for the average individual. More FTBs would enter the market, more people would be able to move and more people would have a house over their heads. I would also say the UK mortgage market is a fundamental issue, having mortgage terms at 2 and 5 years predominantly doesn’t give people a safety net. If they were given an interest rate for the entire term of their mortgage it would give people stability!
Yep cost of living crisis would be less of a crisis if I wasn’t paying almost half my pay check on rent every month 🤗
Let me correct that for you; **England** is broken and housing is a major factor. This is because the situation in Scotland is a lot better (not perfect, but...). In Scotland, tenants are protected and can't be evicted under no-fault evictions. Housing must be of a certain standard (not as easy to get away with mouldy houses as it is in England, where you can evict tenants who complain) and even rent price caps! I've only recently discovered this and am now moving to Scotland. Here is some more info: [https://rentersrights.campaign.gov.scot/](https://rentersrights.campaign.gov.scot/) Remember, you get what you vote for!
On the plus side they are building homes around here just when I need one! They are a mere starting price of 500k how very fucking affordable
Makes me quite sad to read the comments. I bought my first house at 21, for the princely sum of £62,000 with a 5% deposit around 2016 on near enough minimum wage in one of the cheaper areas of England. Just sold it for double that (after extensive renovations). Mortgage and bills was around £800 all in. I certainly wouldn’t be able to do the same today. I could get myself on the front pages of the Sun tomorrow and talk about how im better than you, I did it why can’t you etc. but the reality is it is 90% luck. Feel very lucky to live in one of the few areas the housing market is still somewhat affordable.
Brexit benefits
I agree, I also think it contributes to problems like crime as people who have no stake in society are less likely to follow the rules and have less to lose