Is Housing unaffordable for the young?

[Hom3r]

Renting is wasted money, you can pay over £500 a month in my town for one room in a joint house.

Not long a got that was a mortgage monthly payment.

Plus owning a home can be an investment.

My Brother In-laws dads house in huge, if he wanted he could sell it easily for £600,000+, but he doesn't want too.

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by mrmistoffelees

You seem to be following the US model, where more often that not people are happy to rent something which has historically never been a part of the UK mindset.

You can complain however if you can't afford to buy a property because of an influx of second home buyers driving prices up to simply exorbitant levels. Or, you can complain if you're buying a ridiculously overpriced 1 bed flat due to its commutable distance to a major city.

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SWMBO's best mate lives in a council house (in one of the rougher areas of Boro) her and her husband probs pulling in between them £45k a year , they have two kids living at home, probs pay about $300 a month in rent for a three bed semi detached, with all the work covered, in the past year it's had new roof, new windows & doors.

Really really annoying when they could be easily paying a mortgage and freeing up that home for someone who actually needs it....

But in the areas where people are complaining about second home owners, has there really been a time in the past when those complainers could've afforded the local houses?
You have people on low incomes complaining that they can't buy houses in those areas.

Originally Posted by nomadking

But in the areas where people are complaining about second home owners, has there really been a time in the past when those complainers could've afforded the local houses?
You have people on low incomes complaining that they can't buy houses in those areas.

Yes, there has been a time in the past when this could happen - just like when people could afford houses in London.

[Carth]

Originally Posted by Hugh

Yes, there has been a time in the past when this could happen - just like when people could afford houses in London.

Around 327 AD wasn't it?

[Mad Max]

Originally Posted by Carth

Around 327 AD wasn't it?

You should know..

[Carth]

Originally Posted by Mad Max

You should know..

Couldn't even afford one back then . . . so moved North

[Mad Max]

Originally Posted by Carth

Couldn't even afford one back then . . . so moved North

To watch Montrose?

[Pierre]

A quick search on Right Move for properties within 40 miles of me, in West Yorkshire, yielded 237 semi-detached / terraced houses available for £50,000.

They may not be the most desirable properties in the most desirable locations but they are out there.

What people are complaining about is that there are few houses they would want in areas they would want to live.


That’s very different to saying there isn’t any affordable houses out there, just not affordable where people want to live.

It will obviously vary around the country.

I bought my first property for £55K in 1999, and paid top dollar for a 2up, 1 down end terrace but that end terrace had small area to the side, enough to extend. So we extended. I sold it in 2008, just weeks before the crash for £210K

I had to borrow the £5K deposit as a personal loan, naughty naughty!!

[Carth]

Originally Posted by Mad Max

To watch Montrose?

On the bucket list

Originally Posted by Pierre

A quick search on Right Move for properties within 40 miles of me, in West Yorkshire, yielded 237 semi-detached / terraced houses available for £50,000.

They may not be the most desirable properties in the most desirable locations but they are out there.

What people are complaining about is that there are few houses they would want in areas they would want to live.

Depends where the jobs are as well. Young single people wanting to buy near an urban center where their job is more likely to be will obviously find it harder.

[jonbxx]

Originally Posted by Damien

Depends where the jobs are as well. Young single people wanting to buy near an urban center where their job is more likely to be will obviously find it harder.

On potential side effect of this whole COVID thing will be the rise in home working. If it really sticks, then we could easily a flattening of the housing market where cheaper areas will become a possibility if you only work from home. The opposite will be true for classic commuter towns.

We are certainly asking that question here - why are we paying so much to live in a location convenient for commuting into London when we don't actually commute into London? We could easily cash out on our ex-council 3 bed semi worth over half a million and get something verynice elsewhere..

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by jonbxx

On potential side effect of this whole COVID thing will be the rise in home working. If it really sticks, then we could easily a flattening of the housing market where cheaper areas will become a possibility if you only work from home. The opposite will be true for classic commuter towns.

We are certainly asking that question here - why are we paying so much to live in a location convenient for commuting into London when we don't actually commute into London? We could easily cash out on our ex-council 3 bed semi worth over half a million and get something verynice elsewhere..

Yes, have been thinking along the same lines too. Providing you've got a good internet location then you can live anywhere in the country, though living abroad does present some issues.

Originally Posted by jonbxx

On potential side effect of this whole COVID thing will be the rise in home working. If it really sticks, then we could easily a flattening of the housing market where cheaper areas will become a possibility if you only work from home. The opposite will be true for classic commuter towns.

We are certainly asking that question here - why are we paying so much to live in a location convenient for commuting into London when we don't actually commute into London? We could easily cash out on our ex-council 3 bed semi worth over half a million and get something verynice elsewhere..

We cashed in very nicely by doing this, 20 odd years ago. We moved from just outside the M25 to central Scotland by negotiating a move from head office to a customer service centre on the basis that a significant number of the teams I actually worked with were based there, even though my own department and reporting line remained down south. We had only owned our ex council terrace for 5 years but its value had increased by more than 50% in that time. Needless to say we could afford rather more in Scotland than we could in the orbit of London.

The British economy has become absurdly imbalanced towards London and the southeast, which is bizarre when you consider how recently this wasn’t the case at all. When manufacturing of various sorts was our thing, there was immense wealth in the north of England. With that gone, the powerhouse is financial services in the City of London, and it is so powerful that it forces everything in towards the centre. I had a conversation with someone high up at Boots years ago who used to complain that despite being headquartered in Nottingham, they had to invest first and most in flagship stores in central London because the city investors they needed to keep onside were too basically lazy to jump on a train or drive their Porches beyond Watford Gap services.

There have been attempts at regional regeneration in the past but its all been small beer in the grand scheme of things. Even the Northern Powerhouse initiative is obviously fragile and its various levelling up projects are near the top of the list of things to cut when times are hard. The step-change is indeed likely to come from both the rollout of super-high-speed networks and also the realisation that many more of us can actually stay home and use them. Last night I had a Zoom meeting with some folks and halfway through it occurred to me that 2 years ago, despite the technology being widely available via multiple messaging services, culturally we simply wouldn’t have considered it and the meeting would have been arranged at someone’s house, with all the inconvenience of having to plan to go out on a wet midweek winter night.

Later this year I’m moving to a house with FTTP. I can’t wait.

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Originally Posted by 1andrew1

Yes, have been thinking along the same lines too. Providing you've got a good internet location then you can live anywhere in the country, though living abroad does present some issues.

There are difficulties with remote working if you’re part of a team that functions best when it is able to swap ideas across desks, and not just in formal meetings. Furthermore if you’re customer facing it becomes increasingly difficult to forge relationships with people if you’re too distant from their everyday points of reference. It’s one of the reasons why overseas call centres are always a bad idea. I suspect in time we will achieve a balance of remote and in-person working, and it’s that requirement to be semi-available that presents the biggest challenge to those who fancy working for a British company from the comfort of a sun lounger in Marbella.

[Carth]

Cleaners, bus drivers, refuse workers, retail staff, hospitality workers, nurses, garage mechanics, gardeners, double glazing installers, boiler installers, emergency workers, postal workers, meter readers, traffic wardens, car park attendants, doormen . . . and many more.

Most of the above have no realistic option of working from home, never mind actually owning a home they could sell to move away.

Still, I guess if there's a mass exodus from the major UK cities, homes may become cheaper . . . unless holiday homes in London/Manchester/Birmingham become the next big thing

Originally Posted by Carth

Cleaners, bus drivers, refuse workers, retail staff, hospitality workers, nurses, garage mechanics, gardeners, double glazing installers, boiler installers, emergency workers, postal workers, meter readers, traffic wardens, car park attendants, doormen . . . and many more.

Most of the above have no realistic option of working from home, never mind actually owning a home they could sell to move away.

Still, I guess if there's a mass exodus from the major UK cities, homes may become cheaper . . . unless holiday homes in London/Manchester/Birmingham become the next big thing

On the other hand, those are the very occupations that have to exist everywhere there’s a town. So if you’re fed up not being able to afford a house as a mechanic in Watford, moving to Northampton might be an option. I get that not everybody will be able to do that because of family connections and so on, but the reality is that the southeast is overpopulated and excessively expensive. Something has to give sooner or later.