£15/hour

[Khriss]

Will be lending sister 2 grand next week just so she gets better rate on her mortgage - this country has absurd housing crisis. K

[eggsarascal]

Just now, Retired Climber said:

Maybe home ownership is out of reach for those working for minimum wage. Is that a problem? 

You're a smart kid, now tell us how to fix it.

[htb]

1 minute ago, Retired Climber said:

Maybe home ownership is out of reach for those working for minimum wage. Is that a problem? 

Your perspective depends if your on the minimum wage.

[Mark Bolam]

House ownership is a privilege, not a right.

Retired Climber has made a very valid point.

[Mark Bolam]

I do feel sorry for the first timers though.

 

Young couple - ‘Can we have a mortgage?’.

 

Bank - ‘No, you can’t afford £500/ month’.

 

Young couple - ‘We are paying £1000/month rent now, we can afford £500/month mortgage’.

 

Bank - ‘Well how come you can’t raise a 15% deposit then?’.

 

Young couple - ‘Because we are paying £1000/month rent).

 

Not an easy problem to fix.

 

[Big J]

1 minute ago, Mark Bolam said:

House ownership is a privilege, not a right.

Retired Climber has made a very valid point.

 

I don't think that I agree, but it's not as simple as whether you own it or not. 

 

I believe that everyone has the right to stable, secure, high quality accommodation. Owning your own house in the UK gives you the best chance of achieving that. The rental market is fraught with insecurity for the tenant, as well as being very unaffordable in many areas.

 

The difference is that other countries manage to have a wonderful system of social housing and private rental properties. It is in places so good that private house ownership seems like a pointless goal. Like, why would you send your children to a fee-paying school is the local comp was outstanding? 

 

 

I've hypothesised in the past about why UK housing is so terrible, and my best guess is that we became a largely urbanised nation in the 19th Century, with the vast bulk of housing by provided by the industrialists who also provided the employment. As such, we absolved ourselves of the responsibility of building our own housing.

 

The UK housing market is entirely in the hands of a few large developers, who are rather effective at lobbying the government to maintain very low building standards, both in terms of building materials used, but also house design and space. 

 

Couple that with the demise of UK manufacturing in the 70s and an exponential increase in investment in housing as a form of income production (fuelled by the right to buy scheme) and you're left with a situation where Joe Bloggs on the street is:

 

• Not interested in building their own house
• Not interested in the actual quality of the house, as it's only a step on the ladder/investment

Then pack in historically low interest rates and money from quantitative easing and you've got crap housing, bought by people disinterested it it's crappiness, funded with money that doesn't actually exist and with interest charged on the amount that is so low that it's below inflation in some cases. Whilst all the time the property magically becomes more and more valuable.....

 

I don't think the bubble will burst imminently, but it can't be far off.

[Squaredy]

4 minutes ago, Big J said:

 

I don't think that I agree, but it's not as simple as whether you own it or not. 

 

I believe that everyone has the right to stable, secure, high quality accommodation. Owning your own house in the UK gives you the best chance of achieving that. The rental market is fraught with insecurity for the tenant, as well as being very unaffordable in many areas.

 

The difference is that other countries manage to have a wonderful system of social housing and private rental properties. It is in places so good that private house ownership seems like a pointless goal. Like, why would you send your children to a fee-paying school is the local comp was outstanding? 

 

 

I've hypothesised in the past about why UK housing is so terrible, and my best guess is that we became a largely urbanised nation in the 19th Century, with the vast bulk of housing by provided by the industrialists who also provided the employment. As such, we absolved ourselves of the responsibility of building our own housing.

 

The UK housing market is entirely in the hands of a few large developers, who are rather effective at lobbying the government to maintain very low building standards, both in terms of building materials used, but also house design and space. 

 

Couple that with the demise of UK manufacturing in the 70s and an exponential increase in investment in housing as a form of income production (fuelled by the right to buy scheme) and you're left with a situation where Joe Bloggs on the street is:

 

• Not interested in building their own house
• Not interested in the actual quality of the house, as it's only a step on the ladder/investment

Then pack in historically low interest rates and money from quantitative easing and you've got crap housing, bought by people disinterested it it's crappiness, funded with money that doesn't actually exist and with interest charged on the amount that is so low that it's below inflation in some cases. Whilst all the time the property magically becomes more and more valuable.....

 

I don't think the bubble will burst imminently, but it can't be far off.

I remember thinking back in the nineties that there must be a limit to how high house prices could go, as eventually if they got too expensive buyers would not be able to afford them.

 

Sadly what has happened is that a mixture of foreign and domestic investors have kept pushing up prices well beyond what is healthy.  And of course more and more people ending up going to the bank of Mum and Dad or Grandmum and Granddad.

 

I can't believe that many people think it is healthy to have house prices in many areas totally out of reach of even people with good jobs.

 

If I still lived in the area I grew up in (Kenley, Surrey) I would be absolutely certain that my children would never be able to buy a nice house in the area.  Actually, that is almost the case here in Newport South Wales.  A tidy house in a reasonable road near me now is at least a third of a million.  Building plots can be over £200,000!

[eggsarascal]

5 minutes ago, Squaredy said:

I remember thinking back in the nineties that there must be a limit to how high house prices could go, as eventually if they got too expensive buyers would not be able to afford them.

 

Sadly what has happened is that a mixture of foreign and domestic investors have kept pushing up prices well beyond what is healthy.  And of course more and more people ending up going to the bank of Mum and Dad or Grandmum and Granddad.

 

I can't believe that many people think it is healthy to have house prices in many areas totally out of reach of even people with good jobs.

 

If I still lived in the area I grew up in (Kenley, Surrey) I would be absolutely certain that my children would never be able to buy a nice house in the area.  Actually, that is almost the case here in Newport South Wales.  A tidy house in a reasonable road near me now is at least a third of a million.  Building plots can be over £200,000!

It's madness, £15/ hour is out of the way, my mate is in the process of buying a 3rd of an acre that he can't build on, it's basically a big garden... £80k. I kid you not.

[Squaredy]

4 minutes ago, eggsarascal said:

It's madness, £15/ hour is out of the way, my mate is in the process of buying a 3rd of an acre that he can't build on, it's basically a big garden... £80k. I kid you not.

And there are landed estates up and down the country that won't sell off any land, simply because they don't need to.  My landlord (of my work site) has such vast estates he has certainly never visited half of them.

[trigger_andy]

Mortgages are back down to about 3 1/2 times annual income.
If you’re on £30k you can probably buy a bathroom these days.
 
It’s a big problem, and I don’t know what the fix is.

Buy where you can afford?

My brother just gave up a £50-£60k managerial job in London to move back to Scotland to take a gamble at being self employed. He was on over £1500 a month in rent and that was discounted as his boss owned the place. He now has a 2 bed ex-council house and has a £400 a month mortgage.

If you want it to happen it will.