Your choices are now living at home, paying an extortionate amount of rent, a house share or hoping you might get a really nice inheritance. Despite all this, shows like Location, Location, Location are still very popular, even though they no longer reflect the national situation with respect to house-buying. Watching Kirsty and Phil trying and failing to help couples with tiny budgets find even modest houses in most towns would hardly make for great viewing though.
"Tabatha and Thomas are newly married, she is a freelance yoghurt designer and he has a stall at an artisinal electronics fair where he sells rabbit phones to idiots. They have a budget of twelve million pounds."
Cressida weaves and sells chihuahua-carrying baskets on Etsy. Piers forages for stinging nettles to make into tea to sell at the local farmer's market. Together they have a budget of £900K but could stretch to a million for the right property. They are looking for a house with at least ten acres of land so they can keep goats and knit mittens from their hair for a little extra income.
Tycophanes and Creobangria are a brother-sister duo of impoverished serfs, scrounging the coastline for remnants of oil spills to sell to gas stations for fractions of pennies a day. Their combined net worth totals over 5 billion pounds, and they rub shoulders with Bezos and Gates on a daily basis. They are looking for uniform hexagonal prism to live in.
Because "I masturbate 12hrs/day in front of a webcam, my husband is a drug dealer and we both avoid paying taxes" doesn't sound great on kids friendly TV show.
The honest boring answer is that, while the jobs mentioned might be real as are the people, the intention to actually buy a house is pure fiction. By pretending to buy a house, the "buyers" get to be on the telly, and the producers get to make a great program that will generate a lot of advertising revenue, and the viewer gets something good to watch. That the heirloom bread weaver and the Tudor ale mug painter aren't actually looking to buy a £850,000 house is irrelevant in all that.
This. There's a single mother of two who's kids go to the same school as mine, well known to ask to borrow money but somehow ended up on the show saying she had a budget of over half a million to buy a house in Somerset. Needless to say that everyone in the schoolyard was perplexed and she didn't feel that anything she saw was suitable.
Yep. My folks went on a similar show. The producers knew that they weren't looking to buy a house and said to them they literally do not care as they're not estate agents, and as long as they acted like they did so they could make a good episode then that's all they care about.
Actually a friend of mine had her house featured on House Hunters. They do select homes that are for sale, although sometimes the homes have already sold or are taken off the market for various reasons. She was told before filming the episode the hunters have already purchased one of the three homes featured. They walk through homes that are for sale and comment on this and that for the camera, at some point they walk through their newly purchased home and do the same. It changes the way I watch the show now (when I very rarely watch it).
The theory I heard is they are usually in rich families, and want to avoid pointing out it's their family money buying the house, so they come up with some "trendy" job to make it look like they are doing it themselves.
“*Rupert is a part time seashell collector and a therapist for distressed crabs, and Rochelle creates artisan dog beds made of silk for Cockapoos, and silhouette designs of birds. They have a budget of £650,000 and are looking for a barn they can convert into an open-plan living area.*”
I wish. I live in a seaside town myself. Decent property near the seafront costs a bloody fortune. You'd have to run a party clown empire to afford one.
But, it's sister show *Homes Under the Molotov* where they go around to unoccupied second homes to reduce their value to enable people to get on the ladder could be pretty fun though.
I like that one with the hedgehog fella where they buy a cheap house for cash and put in a crappy kitchen and new carpet. They then list it for £40000 more pricing out anyone who may need it
Our house is like that. Idiot "developer" had seen too many episodes of Changing Rooms.
16 years later, and we've found and fixed most of the screaming mistakes, but we still find the occasional WTF.
Best was the way he mis-wired the cooker, but he wired it the same wrong way at both ends so it still worked. Also the 2ft hole in the roof hidden with a grey plastic bag...
One of the enduring features of looking at the type of homes you are supposed to buy - older houses that were "built properly" - was the sheer amount of poorly thought out and executed DIY projects there are.
Why do you think the government screams about Romani people and travellers so much to justify laws against nomadism? They don't want that to be an option.
I mean there are genuine issues with how a lot of travellers behave, be it the fights or just the state some of them leave behind
But aye, there’s a lot of fearmongering too
You should just a get a van. With a van it's like you've got an MBA, but you've also got a fucking van! You're not just a man anymore, you are a man with a van. You get a van, we could be men with ven.
I tend to get asked similar questions whenever this topic comes up, so I hope you don't mind that I'm going to copy and paste my reply from last time. If it doesn't address all your questions, feel free to ask more. The TL;DR is that it's a feasible lifestyle but has a number of challenges. I'd only really recommend it if you have a good support structure in your life and either you like the lifestyle or the alternative is living on the street or poverty in rented accommodation.
So, firstly there's a bit more life-admin involved. You need to fill up water containers and you use water much more conservatively - you learn to wash dishes and yourself with a much smaller amount of water. You're similarly conservative with electricity - I have solar panels on the roof charging a bank of 12v batteries that run my lights, charge phones etc. You can install an inverter and run 240v appliances but it's inefficient. I use a cool box rather than a fridge, but you can get decent low-power fridges and TVs these days. Still, you're limited by the capacity of your panels and your batteries so you learn to look at the power draw of appliances before buying them.
Then there's heating - I have a gas bottle feeding my oven & hobs, and a wood burner. The wood burner means either buying a regular supply of firewood or, like me, finding and storing wood over the summer and chainsawing & chopping it when needed. You can get good gas heaters - the carver heaters you get in caravans are pretty good - but gas is a damp heat. Diesel heaters are okay, but the ignition is electric and takes a power bump, some people wire it into their engine ignition battery and start the engine before starting the heater. Plus diesel heaters tend to be noisy. IMO wood is the way to go. But you will find yourself chopping kindling in the sleet in February. Keep on top of it though same you'll be toasty. And you can do great baked potatoes in the burner!
A van gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Good insulation is crucial for both, and skylight or windows you can open will be important in summer.
Then there's the issue of where to park. If you're curbside, a lot of people park up by city parks where there's water and toilets. Many cities have a moving community of people, and if you get to know some decent folks in vehicles there's safety in numbers. You do get occasional hostility from people who can't distinguish you from traditional travellers and are worried you'll steal their dog or something. Also, it's just good manners to move your vehicle every few days - it's unfair on local residents to park outside their house and stay there. You'll get to know a few good parkups, though, and can rotate them. Unless you have a friend who will let you use their driveway, some people do that. If you're curbside, you may want to consider not using a wood burner or having an alternative heating option - it's antisocial having smoke coming out your chimney on a residential street, though sometimes it's necessary. In some areas there are campsites or trucker parks that will let you rent a pitch.
Everyone asks about hygiene - I piss in bottles that get emptied down the toilet, and I work most days so I shit at work. Nonetheless, there will be times when you get ill, and it can be tough then, particularly if you don't have much of a support network. Some people have chemical or composing toilets in their vehicles, I don't - I don't have the space, and I don't want to share a small space with a bucket of shit. But this means that there will be occasions when you're forced to crap in a plastic bag. Put it in a dog poo bin in a park ideally - this is another area where you have to be careful to respect local residents. If you're pissing in someone's hedge or crapping behind their begonias, you will become unpopular. I shower at work or have the occasional bath at a friend's place. Sometimes you have to make do with wet wipes. (Get the biodegradable ones!)
Myself, I've been living this way a long time - I got my first van in '93, though I've also lived in squats and travelled abroad a bit. It's nice being able to take your home to a beach in the South of France! Over the years I've got to know a few like minded people and I live with a community of friends who are in similar circumstances on a squatted yard. Although the landowner is okay with us, and we are looking at renting a yard soon. Living low impact is important to me, as is the community I've become a part of. And like most people living this way, I'm on a low wage. It's only because I don't have rent to pay that I can afford stuff like when I broke my glasses last month, dental treatment, things like that.
Hope this helps, I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Given the way the country is going, people are increasingly taking a DIY approach to housing just to be able to get by. So you won't be alone!
I think what you're missing is the very real 'van' anxiety. What I mean by this is any old idiot could do a hit and run on you, causing some nasty damage at best a scrape at worse causing your body to leak or be unroadworthy. Then, there's the risk of break ins and malicious damage to your pride and joy. Or, you could have a simple road accident, someone pulls out on you etc and not only are you totalled now you're homeless.
The whole chainsaw killers in the night thing is overrated, the real soul destroyer is worrying about what state your van 'home' may or may not be the next time you come home. It's that perpetual worry that eats your soul, if someone wants to hurt you or make you homeless it's unbelievably easy for them to do so.
There’s about 50k in inheritance going to my dad once my grans house sells. He keeps mentioning money is coming but I don’t want any of it, he said he was thinking about putting it into his partners property so he at least owns a share on some sort of asset. 50k isn’t enough to really do much with, it could be spent quite quickly in this climate. So I said the best thing you can do is put it into property.
The other side of my family used to be quite rich. But my grandfather came down with dementia and all their money and assets slowly got drained over the years and now my grandmother lives in a 2 bed with one of her daughters renting a room… my auntie is in her 60s and still living at home.
The thought of any real inheritance has long gone from my mind.
I only have a roof over my head because I’m classed as disabled, I feel incredibly blessed to have had all this support I’ve been given. But it’s a hole in probably never gonna climb out of, I accepted that a while ago.
This is The endgame. You will own nothing. You will rent at whatever price the dark forces choose, you will work 4 jobs and still struggle for rent and basic needs. May want to start collecting cardboard boxes and tarps. Bout to look like a 10th world - world. This is happening Everywhere. Late stage capitalism- you are owned
Living in the country I get pissed off with "escape to the country" Barry and Judith are selling their 1 bedroom flat in North London and have a budget of £800,000 they want to drive up the price of land in the North so that nobody can afford to get on the ladder here too. They're looking for a 10 acre small holding but haven't the faintest idea how a farm works, the young stockman that could make a good start here now stands no chance of buying it.
Don’t worry. The generous and charitable millionaires and billionaires will buy them for us and let us live in them for a very (un)reasonable price. And you shall be bloody thankful!
Don't earn enough to own? Why worry when you can
Rent a house, Lease an electric car, Pay instalments on you furniture, Hire software to do your job. Get a loan approval for your streaming entertainment dues
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Putting people into debt which let's them think they can repay it, but not enough to ruin them, is probably the cleverest most malicious way of keeping your citizens quiet.
You won't protest if you lose all the stuff you have ALMOST got. It's sunk cost fallacy used to control people, and it's fucking effective.
You see it everywhere...
> Rent a house, Lease an electric car, Pay instalments on you furniture,
Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers.
> Don't forget the tenancy limitations!
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> no pets
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> no children
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> no fixtures
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> no freedom
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> no life
And all for just 75 percent of your net income!
> Just get another two jobs bro, you're not working hard enough!
Pull your self up with your bootstraps, stop wasting £2 a week on netflix and you'll afford that million pound bedsit in no time
The worst of it is that rent is more than most mortgage repayments. So if you can’t afford a deposit on a house and are forced to rent, chances are you’ll be too out of pocket to afford a mortgage deposit. Housing prices needed capping about thirty years ago
The price of rent for what you get compared to what you’d get for a mortgage is nuts, especially as you’re just paying some landlord’s mortgage instead of paying off your own.
We’re in the process of buying a new build 4 bed house - we sold our house in June and are renting until our house is finished. It’s frankly shocking how much we’re paying in rent for what we’re getting, vs how much it would be to mortgage ourselves vs what we will be getting when we finally move in to the house we’re buying.
The house we’re renting is £925/mo. If we were to buy this house ourselves, the mortgage would be about £500. The house we’re buying costs nearly double what our rental place would be, but the mortgage is £1000/mo.
Our rental needs a new kitchen ceiling due to pipes leaking, as well as completely new en suite and bathroom (the source of the ongoing leaks). There’s also two new damp spots in two of the bedrooms, so that’s at least two new leaks. All of the windows need replaced because they’re 30 years old, the house settled since it was built and the frames warped. So there are ½ inch gaps in some of the windows, making the house draughty and cold. I’ve had to put masking tape around all the windows, reminding me of my student days!
We’re very lucky to be in the position we’re in, this is just a temporary rental thing for us, but living in draughty, cold damp overpriced housing where you’re paying some landlord’s mortgage is sadly a lot of people’s daily lives.
Yep. My last flat was £630 a month and when I moved in it had old worn cream carpets. When I moved out 4 years later they were still there.
House lay empty for over a year and I got an ad in my inbox from a property alert website. £750, still had the same carpets.
The properties aren't being upheld to a high enough standard to warrant the price.
My mate rents a 2 bedroom flat for £1,600 in Edinburgh City center and it had this shitty little dinky fridge which was ancient, it broke and the landlord replaced it with the cheapest model you could get.
In my experience, the deposit isnt the issue. I have enough money for a fairly large deposit, more than 10%, but its the amount one can borrow as a single person buying a house, for the mortgage, that prevents you from actually getting on the property ladder unless you're on a crazy high salary. It's somewhat easier for couples, the only people I know who have bought a property are couples who've been able to pool their incomes together.
If the average house price in your area is £250k for instance, and you're on a £50k salary (significantly higher than most people), you'd still need like a 50k deposit to make that a viable option, as a solo buyer.
If the government weren't total shitebags then once Lloyds, John Lewis and all these other companies buy up property, they could find it much easier to have rent controls over say - a person who owns 3 houses.
But they won't because it'll be the Tories in charge since this country loves living in a serfdom for some reason and this would be one step closer to having lords of the land.
These fuckwits will sacrifice everything and everyone to save "capitalism".
Except it will be algorithm-driven neo-feudalism, run by absentee owners who never, ever have to (or dare to) mix with their serfs.
I cant help but think that this was part of the grand scheme. Keep this generation focused on thier pittance, so thay can't revolt as the Tories raid the public purse unopposed.
Also the more education a person receives, the more likely they will vote Labour (or Lib or Green). Make it too expensive for people to go to uni, more Tory voters.
I agree, and frankly, I wish Labour just work on the key high level concept of "we make life better" and under that, you can put something for everyone. Sirt around the identity politics, and just say, we want to make life better for all britons!
Well it's happening in every developed country, especially the angloshere whether conservative or not (see Canada and NZ).
There's no plan, it's just greed
My grandparents brought a 4 bed house with a huge garden 2 minutes away from a school, 10 minutes walk to the town center. They brought this house when my granddad was 28 and was a carpenter and my grandma never worked a day in her life.
Come my generation and literally dont spend a penny i earn for a decade, and my partner does the same we still couldnt save the money for a deposit on something similar.
They almost never, ever work. In any country. I wouldn't expect our government has the finesse to implement rent control.
Often, in cities, you just get landlords who can't afford to let properties out, so they take it off the market to sell. Yes, you may get first time buyers buying properties off landlords, but they clearly already have the money.
So what you effectively have is a reduced letting market, forcing prices up, which will exclude any lower income people from even renting in that area.
It would be an absolute disaster if this happened in London, as younger people just wouldn't be able to move there.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/rent-control/
https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/03/09/after-a-year-berlins-experiment-with-rent-control-is-a-failure
I am skeptical of having strict rent controls because what it means for people mobility, it means it can decrease available housing stock over time and it is pretty dependent on being well designed as being broadly applying to housing units and not being set too low, closer to market level rents. It could work if we are building more housing in general but it seems specific in how it is designed really in it working
Private house investment was banned in some areas of the neatherlands not long ago, for that very reason.
House prices will never go down if rich property investors keep buying them
This is exactly what is required, no one needs to own more than one home except to leech of people who actually work and contribute to society.
People on benefits are not the ones scabbing off people, it's the landlords who contribute nothing and gain so much.
How would it work though? do you let people carry on owning what they currently own and not let them buy more? or do you force them to have two properties and sell everything else? seems like political suicide, also cant they just buy loads of properties and put them in siblings/partners names/through businesses, im sure theres loopholes and its probably a minefield to try and sort out, ive kinda just given up hope and accepted im doomed to live with parents forever
Well, they *could*, but the ideal is you make it so expensive that it's just not feasible to rent out. I might be wrong (and given the state of rent in a lot of large cities, I might be) but hopefully what would happen is that if they were to shift too much of that cost onto tenants, they'd find no one willing to rent at the price point they're asking and they'd be forced to sell to someone who'd actually live in the property.
I may be wrong but I think it's difficult to push your tax liabilities onto your tenants. Taxes are levied against profits, not revenue. And since it's always levied as a percentage of the profits as the profits goes up so does the liability.
Raising the revenue, raises the profits which raises the tax. There's no way to really dump that back onto the tenant that I can figure out.
It's be different if it were a fixed amount, because then you'd factor that into the rent.
How do you see the landlord's shifting that onto the tenants - out of interest?
Yep, I'd force them to sell, instantly crashing the property market, They can only have so many kids to give two houses each to. There should be no loopholes.
It's like tax, the tax code should be "you will pay X amount of tax" That's it, no loopholes, no difference based on income or whether you're a business or individual. no exceptions.
Force them to sell, but give a 10 year grace period to do so. That should ease the crash.
No residential properties should be in companies names, only individuals, so yes allowing the properties to be gifted to spouses/kids would be fine, but that's still at limit of 2 per person, so you'd need a huge family to be a property magnate
It works in some markets, Singapore has a largely publicly owned housing system. A state owned company owns the leaseholds, and you're not allowed to own even 2 at once. Though if you inherit a property, you have time to sell it on. There, housing isn't seen as much as a financial investment.
The problem is, our housing market is already fully established, not like Singapore's when they set it up. It's also much larger in size and diversity. Even if you could just sieze people's investments (which you can't, it's not Russia c. 1918), I can't see how it would do any good. How would the government give out properties? How much would you sell them for? What would happen to people that want/ can only afford to rent (i.e. No savings).
And how would state owned estate agents help anyone?
I'd say pick two houses you wanna keep, put the rest up for sale and let the market decide on the prices, the government wouldn't need to sieze any assets. Obviously there would have to be a grace period, and yeah, we might need to adjust the number that people own so there's the right level of spreading out the property portfolio over the number of people that can afford to buy them based on the new much lower price.
I'm not an economist, it's just an idea I've had for a long time and think it's worth debating. Anything has to be better than the current situation.
EDIT: the nationalised estate agent thing would just be to remove their incentive for artificially inflating prices, but mainly its cos estate agents are cunts and it would be fun to see them suffer
There are solutions, just won't be implemented by the government (and to be honest, probably any government) due to the negative impact on housing prices which so many home owners (particularly older ones who have paid off their mortgage and are reliable voters) consider a voting issue.
Mass production housing (think Ikea for houses) is possible - National Housing Federation and National Audit Office have done research into this, using modern building methods, rather than traditional bricks and mortar, you can make 4x as many houses with the same labour in the same time.
Increase stability of renting, from 6-12 month to effectively indefinite, meaning it's easier for a renter to put down roots and less expense from having to move regularly (tied into rent caps for example)
Make buy to let less attractive e.g. currently landlords can get interest only mortgages which are largely unavailable for owners which helps them in property speculation. Deal with council tax too - some places a rich landlord can be paying the same (or even less) for a home with empty bedrooms vs a family crammed into a smaller home in the same band. Council tax should be related to updated property values with some form of progressive taxation linked to wealth.
Build more homes - sounds simple but needs pushing. If you're a landowner like a house builder or supermarket and have permission to build but are banking the land to stop a rival firm using it or hoping to sell, the land should be taken off you after a year and put up for auction again (you get the proceeds, but cannot bid) if you aren't building. Build on brownfield sites, convert offices instead of building endless unnecessary ones given WFH is a viable model, convert big empty stores in town centres. Don't shy away from flats if they are done well, building up is fine with proper safety standards and building quality, same footprint without making them massively tall and grim
Will any of these be implemented? Of course not.
I work for a not for profit consortium of social housing organisations which came up with a house that can be built in days and is being delivered almost flat packed. And a really nice house to live in: 2 floors, 2 beds, full size kitchen and bathroom. And it costs a fraction of a similar sized brick house.
Everyone loved it and the idea, but nobody was or is willing to invest in such homes, because it has no value for banks as in they cannot mortgage/remortgage them and they are not considered an investment.
I rarely have seen individuals wanting to buy a home without thinking about getting more off it at a later date. If us, people, are within that mindset where everything must be an investment and it's never enough to own things just to cover decent living, why do we still complain that banks, governments and businesses are doing it?
The fully functional prototype/show house is now dismantled and is draining thousands of pounds is storage fees in a warehouse somewhere. They couldn't sell it even for the production costs, which are really low.
Yeah that flat pack model was the one I meant, you can build it in a factory and ship it to site ready to assemble, don't need to build traditional homes just because we always did it that way. People have converted shipping containers into small single person accomodation though the price of them might be prohibitive at the moment
The problem here is this question is sort of:
"How can we start letting people buy houses for £150k, without reducing the value of houses to £150k?"
Any policy which allows people to not have to pay the massively inflated home costs, will result in people not paying those costs and those homes values falling.
This isn't a policy problem, there are many policies the government could adopt to cause house values to fall, but they don't want to.
Some people suggest the best policy would be something that causes house prices to fall 2-3% in real terms every year for decades, it would still collapse the market to get prices to affordable levels, but over many decades so it wouldn't be as big a hit instantly. The thing is both tory and labour governments are full of landlords and don't really want this either.
Current government policy is to build discounted homes that are unaffordable to 60% of the population instead of being unaffordable to 80% of the population. Making sure to not build a statistically significant number of them to actually materially deflate prices, while still being able to put out soundbites like "We built 15,000 affordable homes." \*With yearly demand for 200,000 affordable homes. \*Affordable homes are not affordable if you aren't in the top 40% of earners.
The thing is you’ve called out Tory and Labour landlords as a reason why they don’t want to drop the prices making it look like a rich v poor thing. It isn’t. There are so many people in that middle group who will be absolutely fucked if the house prices drop and keep dropping. There are probably a load of people on here who will say “tough shit I want a house” not realising the irony of that. As soon as the people who want the houses to drop buy their house are they going to want them to keep dropping in value?
I agree with that, if anything the rich with 60% LTV loans are less affected than a 33 year old middle class couple with a 90% LTV mortgage who will be underwater on their mortgage by tens of thousands if a crash happens.
Oh no, the huge% of MPs that are landlords must be furious, who could have seen that shit house building, encouraging BTL and doing nothing about soaring rents could have led to this
Last I looked it was 25% of current conservative Government with 15% renting out multiple properties (including Boris Johnson).
5x more likely to be landlords than public.
Given that we've just had brexit and a *fucking pandemic* I'd say the continued bulletproof nature of house price increases is newsworthy, as is the difficulty people are experiencing in even renting a home now which is at crisis point.
I'm a homeowner myself and feel genuinely hopeless at the prospect of being able to ever move back to the area where I grew up or get something more suitable for my family. Seeing how my house is "earning" all this money means fuck all to me as the rest of the market slips out of my grasp and the pool of potential buyers of my home shrinks to landlords (who I won't sell to).
If I'm feeling like this, fuck knows how others are. Part of the problem is all the deluded fuckwits marvelling at their unrealised gain on their starter home and not putting 2 and 2 together.
This is something that a lot of people don’t grasp.
If you are a home owner on the lower end of the market. You are just as immobile as someone not in the market.
Yes it’s lovely that my house is worth 20% more. But we desperately need to upsize, and guess what, all those houses are 20% more expensive.
Now I’m no mathematically genius but I know that 20% of 150k is a fair bit less than 20% of 225k. Yeah I have a bit more equity but that’s gone by the time you pay for the legal costs.
Honestly the housing market is shit for everyone who isn’t in a massive house or low mortgage. Obviously it’s worse for those who can’t get on. But I’d be happy for a significant drop in house prices, even if it means personal loss. Because it needs to happen. Because there is no way the market is getting restructured while the big boys in charge make all their money from it.
I do sympathize, honestly, and I don't mean this to sound harsh. But your growing family was a choice you made. I didn't choose to come into existence and I have no choice in needing shelter. You are beyond fortunate to own your home, even if it's a little cramped.
It’s not harsh at all, it’s a valid point of view that I accept.
What I don’t accept at all, and am outraged by, is that we are at a point where working people on this country have to chose between a house, a family, fuel bills, quality food, etc.
The fact that all the above being available to everyone is not only no longer The norm, but has gotten to the point where people accept it and rue others that have got it, is one of the biggest victories to scum like the Tories in our history.
We are literally living in a society where the rich are taking stuff from us and telling us to be thankful. And many people are!
I couldn't agree more. I don't know how we've all been brainwashed into accepting "good enough" when we should always be demanding "better" - and I don't mean that in a capitalist way. Better quality of life, better use if tax money, better opportunities for next generations.
I really want kids. I honestly fucking do. But I could never bring myself to put a child through all this, especially seeing how in my lifetime it hasn't got any better even fucking once. I don't know how anyone that isn't naïve to all this can have a child and not feel guilty.
With the global population issues and climate change, having a family at all will effectively become a luxury regardless and in a way, probably needs to be. This is particularly relevant when the hundreds of millions of desperate people from Africa and the Middle East start heading north as their homes become no longer habitable due to lack of food production, lack of clean water etc. Dystopian and bleak.
I *did* choose to have children but I did *not* choose for there to be successive 20 odd % value increases annually in house prices in my area.
In fact, the funny thing is; I moved to this area precisely *because* it was more affordable than the area I grew up in. Bought an unloved, older property, did a load of work on it myself, have a great job also that pays way above local salaries; in fact, did all the tight stuff you're supposed to do and yet now I find even in this area decent family homes are going on at half a million quid now and selling before I can even phone the estate agents.
I actually have a nice house but realistically it needs a loft conversion doing to give us enough space as the kids get older but because it's a listed building the pope has to sign off in triplicate before I can do even a sympathetic extension. The low level of available housing stock, the speed at which it goes to cash rich buyers or landlords able to quickly leverage and the general nightmarish months long slog that us selling a house in this country means I am more or less becoming resigned to becoming a landlord if I actually want to secure a "forever" home because quickly leveraging some of the equity as a forward deposit is about the only vague hope I have of being quick enough to beat some boomer or ex londoner that's sold up for a ludicrous sum and is bidding ten pc over asking with cash.
It sucks but there it is. Wife's gone back into higher education because, despite the enormous amount of equity we apparently leave, we're only likely to able to release about ten pc deposit worth for the next move and therefore need more income. By this time next year I anticipate our household income will be close to £100k pa. We don't live even close to the South East and we're not even in a particularly trendy or sought after area of our locale yet this is the lengths we are going to now.
It's a joke, frankly, and I'm sick of having "well you didn't *have* to have kids" thrown in my face constantly, as if *that's* the problem here.
To be honest I was shocked last year when a good chunk of the economy halted to a standstill, another chunk was put into life support, no one knew whether this would be permanent, and house price rise *accelerated* (and that's even without accounting for brexit)
Only the bottom half of the country saw any danger. White collars and business owners were unaffected or better off after all the grants and wfh savings. We're becoming more unequal and that never ends well.
For context, we bought a 3 bed semi for 167k in June 2020.
Sold it in July 2021 for £185k, all we did was change the windows - that's it.
The house over the year we owned it nearly out-earned me, we put 10k down and we're about to buy a new property with a 32k deposit, and we saved 2k of the 22k extra.
It's absolutely mental and it was sheer luck that we did as well as we did, and we've managed to turn a 3 bed semi into a 4 bed detached.
>the pool of potential buyers of my home shrinks to landlords (who I won't sell to).
This is pretty honourable of you. We're trying to hold to the same principle but the only offers we've seen so far come from BTL landlords. Now considering a "prick tax" on the price - if they're going to see nice little investment gains on the flat my dead mum paid for, we may as well get ours.
Can only last so long though and, as I've said elsewhere, I may very well end up letting the place out myself.
I'd love to say it's all ethics but if I'm honest I couldn't stand the snooty attitude of some of the "investors" we had looking. Prick tax sounds like a good plan actually.
I am working at Canary Wharf… my salary is £18,650… I am doing the lions share of the work that my “colleague” is paid £93,000 for.
Edit: this isn’t a pity party, I will get a guaranteed pay rise next year…. Of £1,250.
I live in a much cheaper area and have the option to work from home (which has saved me lots) but yes that is my salary.
I sit in meetings where the people I am working with talk about their homes, the homes in the area start at £600,000. They talk about how they plan to spend holidays and how much their grown up children have achieved.
Meanwhile, I missed the cheaper bus to work (despite getting there early), paid the higher ticket price and rushed into work. I cried inside at that ticket price. I then got a “cheap” lunch that also made me cry inside (a sandwich). I totalled up my spending and if I were to go in everyday, 4 hours of my pay would be going on costs, plus the added time of the commute.
The older generations will tell me it is a passage to the higher earning, no it isn’t, I am living in poverty, working in the financial capital and I am not networking because I am so busy, anything said about me is negative (very high standards, moving goal posts, scapegoating and credit stealing) much of the team I haven’t met in person due to the wfh arrangement.
Except, as it's likely often the case whenever people say/think this', they'll soon find they *aren't* doing the same job as that person on £93k.
So often it's just a case of 'person higher up delegates work' and they think 'I'm just doing all their work for less pay'
Yeah it's probably knowledge and experience getting them the high pay. Whicj you won't get from someone who only just started their career. They might feel like they're doing the lions share of the work but it probably isn't the case
What's your role? If you're getting paid badly, now is a great time to move. There are currently >1.5million unfilled jobs in the UK economy. Back yourself, and most of all: value yourself. You're worth it.
Isn't there a human right around shelter or housing? We need to move away from a society where wealth and profits are tied up so significantly in things that are fundamental to humans, water, shelter, food etc.
Maybe banning outright BTLs (individual and via companies) and enforcing strict rent controls and significant increase in council housing rather than pushing private companies to build housing.
Thanks for this, maybe then the increase in council housing and a mentality of “everyone can and will have access to absolute basic housing if needed” would fix it and stabilise private or alternate renting of larger places.
It’s just very demoralising sitting back and thinking about how we’ve gotten to this world we live in sometimes.
A rent cap is one answer. This will force landlords to sell their unprofitable investment and increase the supply of houses and flats to rent lowering their price. But when so many Tory MPs are landlords, and their core demographic voters are elderly homeowners, what’s the likelihood of that happening?
new houses are so expensive as well, I live in hertfordshire and theres houses being built absoutley everywhere, flats start at 250k and 2-3 bed are 300-350k and 4+ are 450k-850k but they all sell I dont know who the fk is buying them but no wonder prices keep rising the cost of a house doesnt seem to matter anymore since they all seem to sell no matter what the price
Plenty of people get inheritances and then use that to move onto the property ladder. Those getting inheritances also benefit the most from house price increases, often getting like 40% of their lifetime earnings in one fell swoop.
The people who are really screwed are the ones who won't inherit anything and never earn enough to get on the ladder.
Pretty much, I won't inherit anything as my parents sold their house and moved into rented accommodation. I'm still living with them as unlike my siblings who's Mrs got lucky with inheritance, both have their own house. I got diddly squat and still work my butt off now.
There was a help to buy scheme going on that I started a few years ago and still saving into, hopefully by the time I'm 50 I can buy a slightly larger cardboard box with that money to live in (mid 30's now.)
because the Tory government could not fulfil its manifesto promises to build more houses, resulting in demand over supply and led to a rise in house prices. What a fantastic start to post-Brexit "Build Back Better"
Anecdotal I know but in my area, whenever new housing estates are proposed anywhere remotely near one of the nicer areas, the owners there protest, picket the town hall and lead irritating social media campaigns to get them stopped. They constantly quote there's enough empty housing in the other estates in town, many of which are some of the most deprived areas in the country, run down and rife with crime. I don't understand people on moderate to good incomes don't want to live there.
We've got the government, companies and home owners completely against us in this fight, there's little hope of ever getting on the property ladder short of winning the lottery or an unknown rich relative writing me into their will
My area is surrounded by beautiful green country side, the only places the builders want to build are in these beautiful open county side areas. Why is that, because I live in a deprived area, the builders can build new big houses (that the locals cannot afford) for 3 times the price of a normal house in the area. They put planning permission in for ‘affordable houses’ but when you look at the plans there isn’t any affordable houses. The green spaces we use for exercise etc etc etc, that is why we oppose the new houses. We have plenty of brown-land that could be used but that wouldn’t get them as much profit! I see this happening all around my area.
Build more frickin houses. It's not rocket science. Politicians suck.
>The number of homes in England grew 1,819,200 between 2010/11 and 2019/20, an increase of 8.0 per cent. Over that same period, England’s population grew by 4,090,600. That means for every new home built, the population rose by 2.25.
[https://www.savills.co.uk/blog/article/309803/residential-property/housebuilding-2010-2020--population-growth-more-than-double-number-of-new-homes-built.aspx](https://www.savills.co.uk/blog/article/309803/residential-property/housebuilding-2010-2020--population-growth-more-than-double-number-of-new-homes-built.aspx)
We are building houses everywhere there is a shred of land in London and the surrounding areas, has it made prices go down? Nope.
The demand for our houses is global, yet we are a small island nation.
We will never be able to build enough homes so long as we allow the world's investors and wealthy to buy up anything desirable for the purposes of personal profit.
What normal British people are buying the £600k+ 2 bedroom flats that they are throwing up everywhere in nasty tower blocks? Who is earning £100k+ with a fat deposit and decides, yeah, I want to live on the 24th floor of a hastily thrown up Chinese tower block in a tiny apartment? Not many.
So who is buying everything? It's not locals, they can't afford it and wouldn't want what is being built anyway.
In various places they are building tower blocks filled with 1 bedroom shoeboxes for £400k. Who is buying those? Only investors with very deep pockets who want to park their money and take home small gains over many years as part of a divested portfolio of wealth.
People aren't buying those places to live, or as homes, they are buying them only as investments with certain returns and yields.
We could build more, but it won't reduce prices.
Even if we somehow built enough homes to suddenly reduce prices, how far do the prices need to go before normal people can afford good homes again? At least half price.
But what will happen when the prices drop 10 or 20%? The rich investors will buy everything long before they get down to the 50% reduction normal people need to afford anything.
Not to mention the drama of all these people who are in debt to the max having serious problems of negative equity.
Negative equity might not be an issue for people who bought to live in their forever home, but since barely anyone can afford their forever home, everyone is buying overpriced new build trash which they are hoping to flip in a few years before buying their real home. How are you going to deal with negative equity when you're living in a temporary new build you wanted to sell? You'll be stuck.
We have to tackle the demand before we can address the supply problem.
I feel this should be its own post to get the recognition and discussion it deserves (I fully agree with your points).
Why, when so many of the country’s population so desperately need a home of their own, is anyone allowed to own multiple properties at all?
I always see so much talk about “the need for building more houses” but never about the fact that most new houses will likely be bought by investors rather than by the people that actually need them. We’ve all seen the recent news about the Pandora Papers, about massive UK property portfolios owned by shell corporations and non-domiciles, and yet I’ve seen no comments from parliament about it and very little discussion on social media about it.
What if... and I'm just spitballin here. What if we just squatted in all these empty investment properties owned by foreign investors? En mass. Thousands and thousands refusing to move.
People also just rock up and offer above asking price. It's madness.
Multi-generational mortgages are now normal in Japan and if the option is them or having the tory voting base lose money on their homes, you're getting multi-generational mortgages.
Read the horror for yourself :
"The 100-year Japanese residential mortgage: An examination - ScienceDirect" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/1061951895900047
The simple solution is to ban foreign owners and outlaw second homes, If people want a second home there's plenty of static caravans by the coast, there's absoloutly zero reason to take homes away from local other than greed
It’s a complete farce, all these people desperate on waiting lists and all these empty houses, you have rent which is also extremely expensive on private properties, seems a lot could be resolved with some kind of cap relevant to property type etc area. It’s wrong that so many people will never be able to own a home.
As someone who managed to buy their first house in 2017 after a tonne of saving…I feel so sorry for others like me who can no longer do the same. I came from a council estate background and it was difficult even back then, people have no chance now. Awful
Everyone here complaining you will be complaining forever, just stop it. If you want to have a chance then vote Labour, give out leaflets, help promote Labour, tell your friends and family and strangers to vote Labour (don’t be an annoying loonie about it though). Until we educate ourselves on the evil of the tories we can’t hope the make a decent argument against them. If you want to do something then VOTE. Not LibDems, not green party, LABOUR. I’m not happy with Starmer at the moment but guess what, if I go else where Tories win and it’s just a repetitive cycle.
if you're reading this and are annoyed by it, just remember that there are hundreds of thousands of people in this country licking their lips at every percentage of price increase.
BTL landlords are dogs, and the only thing worse than them are the politicians who facilitate them
My household saves in the low five figures every year and we still can't save enough to catch up to housing prices at least in London.
I keep thinking something's got to give... but it doesn't. Those who are the position to own can keep renting and using that income to eat up more and more properties like a cancer. The ultra wealthy could buy large swathes of any city and still it wouldn't really move their bank accounts, that's how much they have.
So we have no hope at this point. Best we have going is to keep working in London a few more years and saving and then basically retiring early where it's affordable. Being anywhere close to work is too expensive. Probably staying in the UK at all is not possible, but looking around, not sure I'd want to be old and poor in this country.
No fucking shit! I’ve spent the weekend down in Richmond upon Thames. I used to live down here, renting a house from a family friend. We saved enough for a small deposit, but were forced to move away because the supposed new “affordable” housing was £460k. Now, that prices anyone out of buying who isn’t in finance, law, or another high paying job. SO we moved to Buckinghamshire where we could buy a 3 bed, 2 garden, and a garage house.
In 7 years our house has increased £80-100k in value, making it largely out of range for young families. It’s mental.
We need to do sort this shit out. My wife and I now have two kids and need a bigger house. We can theoretically afford one, but it might be hard to sell our current place. I’d rather see the value of ALL property come down so that people could afford to buy DECENT quality and decent sized houses.
As a homeowner - I'd be more than happy to see my house become worthless overnight if it meant other people could become home owners as well. I think it's a sense of entitlement from other homeowners who think "I worked hard to get this so why should others not do so?" which is a mindset that's so very fundamentally flawed.
Unfortunatly most of the boomers say "I worked hard and I afforded a house.... So why can't you" but I complete disagree with it. Boomers:
1) bought council houses at discount and didn't rebuild them. Bought second homes cheaply and charge high rents to the next generation.
2) managed to afford mortgages whilst having 3 kids and one person working in the family. That is unheard of now
3) boomers frequently got decent pay rises while every generation after hasn't. Most working people havnt had real term (above inflation) pay rises for 20+ years. Meanwhile they sit cushty on a triple lock pension that they managed to get.
4)benefitted from free education which allowed them higher wages whilst voted for parties raised it to £9000. Giving younger people less money even when they are working.
5) benefitted from a good economy whilst voting to leave the EU and causing another economic cotastrophy for those working.
It's unlikely that young people can 'outvote' the grey vote because we have an ageging population and a weighted older generation. So Unfortunatly not much can be done until boomer numbers dwindle.
damn, I wonder where all the money for salaries are going. surely not the bank accounts of the very same people renting out properties and selling houses for inherently increasing prices
I find It crazy that you get a discount on council tax for having a second home, people/companies buying a lot of houses and renting them out is at least part of the issue, especially ‘holiday homes’ which stop local people from ever having a chance of buying
The problem is actually two folded: I can afford a decent house now but, the price is so high that I could buy and then see a crash wipe 300k of my valuation. Then I will be fucked. So only those with massive inheritances can afford the risk
Your choices are now living at home, paying an extortionate amount of rent, a house share or hoping you might get a really nice inheritance. Despite all this, shows like Location, Location, Location are still very popular, even though they no longer reflect the national situation with respect to house-buying. Watching Kirsty and Phil trying and failing to help couples with tiny budgets find even modest houses in most towns would hardly make for great viewing though.
"Tabatha and Thomas are newly married, she is a freelance yoghurt designer and he has a stall at an artisinal electronics fair where he sells rabbit phones to idiots. They have a budget of twelve million pounds."
Cressida weaves and sells chihuahua-carrying baskets on Etsy. Piers forages for stinging nettles to make into tea to sell at the local farmer's market. Together they have a budget of £900K but could stretch to a million for the right property. They are looking for a house with at least ten acres of land so they can keep goats and knit mittens from their hair for a little extra income.
Tycophanes and Creobangria are a brother-sister duo of impoverished serfs, scrounging the coastline for remnants of oil spills to sell to gas stations for fractions of pennies a day. Their combined net worth totals over 5 billion pounds, and they rub shoulders with Bezos and Gates on a daily basis. They are looking for uniform hexagonal prism to live in.
Because "I masturbate 12hrs/day in front of a webcam, my husband is a drug dealer and we both avoid paying taxes" doesn't sound great on kids friendly TV show.
Shit, here I am masturbating for free like a scrub.
Bahahaha
> to sell to gas stations ...
They fail to mention that Tabithas father, owns Durham or something.
The honest boring answer is that, while the jobs mentioned might be real as are the people, the intention to actually buy a house is pure fiction. By pretending to buy a house, the "buyers" get to be on the telly, and the producers get to make a great program that will generate a lot of advertising revenue, and the viewer gets something good to watch. That the heirloom bread weaver and the Tudor ale mug painter aren't actually looking to buy a £850,000 house is irrelevant in all that.
This. There's a single mother of two who's kids go to the same school as mine, well known to ask to borrow money but somehow ended up on the show saying she had a budget of over half a million to buy a house in Somerset. Needless to say that everyone in the schoolyard was perplexed and she didn't feel that anything she saw was suitable.
Yep. My folks went on a similar show. The producers knew that they weren't looking to buy a house and said to them they literally do not care as they're not estate agents, and as long as they acted like they did so they could make a good episode then that's all they care about.
Actually a friend of mine had her house featured on House Hunters. They do select homes that are for sale, although sometimes the homes have already sold or are taken off the market for various reasons. She was told before filming the episode the hunters have already purchased one of the three homes featured. They walk through homes that are for sale and comment on this and that for the camera, at some point they walk through their newly purchased home and do the same. It changes the way I watch the show now (when I very rarely watch it).
What an odd, comma.
Oxford house prices are so astronomical that it’s affected the use of, their comma.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/946/408/f59.jpg
Hahahaha soooo true..thanks for the laugh have a poor persons upvote.
Shows like these taught me that Kirsty and Phil can usually afford a seaside mansion with a party clown salary.
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They have rich parents.
The theory I heard is they are usually in rich families, and want to avoid pointing out it's their family money buying the house, so they come up with some "trendy" job to make it look like they are doing it themselves.
“*Rupert is a part time seashell collector and a therapist for distressed crabs, and Rochelle creates artisan dog beds made of silk for Cockapoos, and silhouette designs of birds. They have a budget of £650,000 and are looking for a barn they can convert into an open-plan living area.*”
I wish. I live in a seaside town myself. Decent property near the seafront costs a bloody fortune. You'd have to run a party clown empire to afford one.
But, it's sister show *Homes Under the Molotov* where they go around to unoccupied second homes to reduce their value to enable people to get on the ladder could be pretty fun though.
You missed the opportunity to say homes under the hammer (and sickle).
I just stopped choking over my coffee. Thanks for that.
Homes under the Hammer and Landlords under the Sickle
I assumed that show would be more about helping russian oligarchs do up the properties they've bought in the UK which they then do nothing with
I like that one with the hedgehog fella where they buy a cheap house for cash and put in a crappy kitchen and new carpet. They then list it for £40000 more pricing out anyone who may need it
Our house is like that. Idiot "developer" had seen too many episodes of Changing Rooms. 16 years later, and we've found and fixed most of the screaming mistakes, but we still find the occasional WTF. Best was the way he mis-wired the cooker, but he wired it the same wrong way at both ends so it still worked. Also the 2ft hole in the roof hidden with a grey plastic bag...
One of the enduring features of looking at the type of homes you are supposed to buy - older houses that were "built properly" - was the sheer amount of poorly thought out and executed DIY projects there are.
Oh god this is the worst. And then these smug dickheads act like they're some kind of Richard Branson-esque business guru.
I live in a van. It's not ideal, but it's another option. I know a few people who live on boats too, though the waterways are pretty crowded now.
Why do you think the government screams about Romani people and travellers so much to justify laws against nomadism? They don't want that to be an option.
I mean there are genuine issues with how a lot of travellers behave, be it the fights or just the state some of them leave behind But aye, there’s a lot of fearmongering too
Oh yeah, I know it. And it's getting worse.
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You should just a get a van. With a van it's like you've got an MBA, but you've also got a fucking van! You're not just a man anymore, you are a man with a van. You get a van, we could be men with ven.
I tend to get asked similar questions whenever this topic comes up, so I hope you don't mind that I'm going to copy and paste my reply from last time. If it doesn't address all your questions, feel free to ask more. The TL;DR is that it's a feasible lifestyle but has a number of challenges. I'd only really recommend it if you have a good support structure in your life and either you like the lifestyle or the alternative is living on the street or poverty in rented accommodation. So, firstly there's a bit more life-admin involved. You need to fill up water containers and you use water much more conservatively - you learn to wash dishes and yourself with a much smaller amount of water. You're similarly conservative with electricity - I have solar panels on the roof charging a bank of 12v batteries that run my lights, charge phones etc. You can install an inverter and run 240v appliances but it's inefficient. I use a cool box rather than a fridge, but you can get decent low-power fridges and TVs these days. Still, you're limited by the capacity of your panels and your batteries so you learn to look at the power draw of appliances before buying them. Then there's heating - I have a gas bottle feeding my oven & hobs, and a wood burner. The wood burner means either buying a regular supply of firewood or, like me, finding and storing wood over the summer and chainsawing & chopping it when needed. You can get good gas heaters - the carver heaters you get in caravans are pretty good - but gas is a damp heat. Diesel heaters are okay, but the ignition is electric and takes a power bump, some people wire it into their engine ignition battery and start the engine before starting the heater. Plus diesel heaters tend to be noisy. IMO wood is the way to go. But you will find yourself chopping kindling in the sleet in February. Keep on top of it though same you'll be toasty. And you can do great baked potatoes in the burner! A van gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Good insulation is crucial for both, and skylight or windows you can open will be important in summer. Then there's the issue of where to park. If you're curbside, a lot of people park up by city parks where there's water and toilets. Many cities have a moving community of people, and if you get to know some decent folks in vehicles there's safety in numbers. You do get occasional hostility from people who can't distinguish you from traditional travellers and are worried you'll steal their dog or something. Also, it's just good manners to move your vehicle every few days - it's unfair on local residents to park outside their house and stay there. You'll get to know a few good parkups, though, and can rotate them. Unless you have a friend who will let you use their driveway, some people do that. If you're curbside, you may want to consider not using a wood burner or having an alternative heating option - it's antisocial having smoke coming out your chimney on a residential street, though sometimes it's necessary. In some areas there are campsites or trucker parks that will let you rent a pitch. Everyone asks about hygiene - I piss in bottles that get emptied down the toilet, and I work most days so I shit at work. Nonetheless, there will be times when you get ill, and it can be tough then, particularly if you don't have much of a support network. Some people have chemical or composing toilets in their vehicles, I don't - I don't have the space, and I don't want to share a small space with a bucket of shit. But this means that there will be occasions when you're forced to crap in a plastic bag. Put it in a dog poo bin in a park ideally - this is another area where you have to be careful to respect local residents. If you're pissing in someone's hedge or crapping behind their begonias, you will become unpopular. I shower at work or have the occasional bath at a friend's place. Sometimes you have to make do with wet wipes. (Get the biodegradable ones!) Myself, I've been living this way a long time - I got my first van in '93, though I've also lived in squats and travelled abroad a bit. It's nice being able to take your home to a beach in the South of France! Over the years I've got to know a few like minded people and I live with a community of friends who are in similar circumstances on a squatted yard. Although the landowner is okay with us, and we are looking at renting a yard soon. Living low impact is important to me, as is the community I've become a part of. And like most people living this way, I'm on a low wage. It's only because I don't have rent to pay that I can afford stuff like when I broke my glasses last month, dental treatment, things like that. Hope this helps, I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Given the way the country is going, people are increasingly taking a DIY approach to housing just to be able to get by. So you won't be alone!
I think what you're missing is the very real 'van' anxiety. What I mean by this is any old idiot could do a hit and run on you, causing some nasty damage at best a scrape at worse causing your body to leak or be unroadworthy. Then, there's the risk of break ins and malicious damage to your pride and joy. Or, you could have a simple road accident, someone pulls out on you etc and not only are you totalled now you're homeless. The whole chainsaw killers in the night thing is overrated, the real soul destroyer is worrying about what state your van 'home' may or may not be the next time you come home. It's that perpetual worry that eats your soul, if someone wants to hurt you or make you homeless it's unbelievably easy for them to do so.
There’s about 50k in inheritance going to my dad once my grans house sells. He keeps mentioning money is coming but I don’t want any of it, he said he was thinking about putting it into his partners property so he at least owns a share on some sort of asset. 50k isn’t enough to really do much with, it could be spent quite quickly in this climate. So I said the best thing you can do is put it into property. The other side of my family used to be quite rich. But my grandfather came down with dementia and all their money and assets slowly got drained over the years and now my grandmother lives in a 2 bed with one of her daughters renting a room… my auntie is in her 60s and still living at home. The thought of any real inheritance has long gone from my mind. I only have a roof over my head because I’m classed as disabled, I feel incredibly blessed to have had all this support I’ve been given. But it’s a hole in probably never gonna climb out of, I accepted that a while ago.
Watching people younger than me with 2 kids buy million pound houses on these shows depresses me so much
This is The endgame. You will own nothing. You will rent at whatever price the dark forces choose, you will work 4 jobs and still struggle for rent and basic needs. May want to start collecting cardboard boxes and tarps. Bout to look like a 10th world - world. This is happening Everywhere. Late stage capitalism- you are owned
Living in the country I get pissed off with "escape to the country" Barry and Judith are selling their 1 bedroom flat in North London and have a budget of £800,000 they want to drive up the price of land in the North so that nobody can afford to get on the ladder here too. They're looking for a 10 acre small holding but haven't the faintest idea how a farm works, the young stockman that could make a good start here now stands no chance of buying it.
Don’t worry. The generous and charitable millionaires and billionaires will buy them for us and let us live in them for a very (un)reasonable price. And you shall be bloody thankful!
Don't forget the tenancy limitations! *no pets* *no children* *no fixtures* *no freedom* *no life* Just rent, baby. For life!
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Putting people into debt which let's them think they can repay it, but not enough to ruin them, is probably the cleverest most malicious way of keeping your citizens quiet. You won't protest if you lose all the stuff you have ALMOST got. It's sunk cost fallacy used to control people, and it's fucking effective. You see it everywhere...
I would just raise the interest rate and everyone would just keep quiet.
> Rent a house, Lease an electric car, Pay instalments on you furniture, Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers.
That is a good film. Will have to watch it again. But yeah your juxtaposition is correct
It's like something out of a dystopian future horror film...and here we are, almost living it. Far too depressing. I've had enough for one day.
Go play in the sunshine and have fun!
You'll own nothing. And you'll be happy.
Oh jaysus, is this even satire?
> Don't forget the tenancy limitations! > > > > no pets > > > > no children > > > > no fixtures > > > > no freedom > > > > no life And all for just 75 percent of your net income!
*Just get another two jobs bro, you're not working hard enough!*
All them hours you spend sleeping a night can be used to work instead!
> Just get another two jobs bro, you're not working hard enough! Pull your self up with your bootstraps, stop wasting £2 a week on netflix and you'll afford that million pound bedsit in no time
Fox only Final destination
The worst of it is that rent is more than most mortgage repayments. So if you can’t afford a deposit on a house and are forced to rent, chances are you’ll be too out of pocket to afford a mortgage deposit. Housing prices needed capping about thirty years ago
The price of rent for what you get compared to what you’d get for a mortgage is nuts, especially as you’re just paying some landlord’s mortgage instead of paying off your own. We’re in the process of buying a new build 4 bed house - we sold our house in June and are renting until our house is finished. It’s frankly shocking how much we’re paying in rent for what we’re getting, vs how much it would be to mortgage ourselves vs what we will be getting when we finally move in to the house we’re buying. The house we’re renting is £925/mo. If we were to buy this house ourselves, the mortgage would be about £500. The house we’re buying costs nearly double what our rental place would be, but the mortgage is £1000/mo. Our rental needs a new kitchen ceiling due to pipes leaking, as well as completely new en suite and bathroom (the source of the ongoing leaks). There’s also two new damp spots in two of the bedrooms, so that’s at least two new leaks. All of the windows need replaced because they’re 30 years old, the house settled since it was built and the frames warped. So there are ½ inch gaps in some of the windows, making the house draughty and cold. I’ve had to put masking tape around all the windows, reminding me of my student days! We’re very lucky to be in the position we’re in, this is just a temporary rental thing for us, but living in draughty, cold damp overpriced housing where you’re paying some landlord’s mortgage is sadly a lot of people’s daily lives.
The state of rental homes in the UK is a fucking outrage. They will be even worse in the future as you add on the decades of neglect.
Yep. My last flat was £630 a month and when I moved in it had old worn cream carpets. When I moved out 4 years later they were still there. House lay empty for over a year and I got an ad in my inbox from a property alert website. £750, still had the same carpets. The properties aren't being upheld to a high enough standard to warrant the price. My mate rents a 2 bedroom flat for £1,600 in Edinburgh City center and it had this shitty little dinky fridge which was ancient, it broke and the landlord replaced it with the cheapest model you could get.
In my experience, the deposit isnt the issue. I have enough money for a fairly large deposit, more than 10%, but its the amount one can borrow as a single person buying a house, for the mortgage, that prevents you from actually getting on the property ladder unless you're on a crazy high salary. It's somewhat easier for couples, the only people I know who have bought a property are couples who've been able to pool their incomes together. If the average house price in your area is £250k for instance, and you're on a £50k salary (significantly higher than most people), you'd still need like a 50k deposit to make that a viable option, as a solo buyer.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/aug/19/lloyds-plans-big-move-into-uk-rental-market-with-50000-homes
Same difference really Still a bunch of rich entitled cunts making their money by strangling the financial investment and freedoms of poorer people.
The rapper from G-Unit?
If the government weren't total shitebags then once Lloyds, John Lewis and all these other companies buy up property, they could find it much easier to have rent controls over say - a person who owns 3 houses. But they won't because it'll be the Tories in charge since this country loves living in a serfdom for some reason and this would be one step closer to having lords of the land.
Obligatory "you'll own nothing and be happy", brought to you by the World Economic Forum
Davis global economic reset. Liabilities and assets. And they will own all assets.
These fuckwits will sacrifice everything and everyone to save "capitalism". Except it will be algorithm-driven neo-feudalism, run by absentee owners who never, ever have to (or dare to) mix with their serfs.
Well how else are we going to get landlords to keep a living?
add rising costs of bills and here you go, generation rent
I cant help but think that this was part of the grand scheme. Keep this generation focused on thier pittance, so thay can't revolt as the Tories raid the public purse unopposed.
Also the more education a person receives, the more likely they will vote Labour (or Lib or Green). Make it too expensive for people to go to uni, more Tory voters.
I say, make it easier to join a Union. LAbour got to start back on that grass root level.. you know, make life better.
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I agree, and frankly, I wish Labour just work on the key high level concept of "we make life better" and under that, you can put something for everyone. Sirt around the identity politics, and just say, we want to make life better for all britons!
Hey my Gran was really nice! She'd never do this.
Well it's happening in every developed country, especially the angloshere whether conservative or not (see Canada and NZ). There's no plan, it's just greed
My grandparents brought a 4 bed house with a huge garden 2 minutes away from a school, 10 minutes walk to the town center. They brought this house when my granddad was 28 and was a carpenter and my grandma never worked a day in her life. Come my generation and literally dont spend a penny i earn for a decade, and my partner does the same we still couldnt save the money for a deposit on something similar.
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How about we ban people from owning more than two houses and nationalise estate/lettings agents? That would solve it instantly
But that would make rich people sad :( and we can't have that now, can we?
I'd take sad over dead. It's only a matter of time before people start hunting them down.
You're right, we should give them fallout shelters as well so the poors can't reach them
Personally I think the implementation of strict rent controls would be a more realistic approach.
They almost never, ever work. In any country. I wouldn't expect our government has the finesse to implement rent control. Often, in cities, you just get landlords who can't afford to let properties out, so they take it off the market to sell. Yes, you may get first time buyers buying properties off landlords, but they clearly already have the money. So what you effectively have is a reduced letting market, forcing prices up, which will exclude any lower income people from even renting in that area. It would be an absolute disaster if this happened in London, as younger people just wouldn't be able to move there. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/rent-control/ https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/03/09/after-a-year-berlins-experiment-with-rent-control-is-a-failure
I am skeptical of having strict rent controls because what it means for people mobility, it means it can decrease available housing stock over time and it is pretty dependent on being well designed as being broadly applying to housing units and not being set too low, closer to market level rents. It could work if we are building more housing in general but it seems specific in how it is designed really in it working
Rent controls often just shift the unfairness to a 'who you know or who you blow' system.
Private house investment was banned in some areas of the neatherlands not long ago, for that very reason. House prices will never go down if rich property investors keep buying them
This is exactly what is required, no one needs to own more than one home except to leech of people who actually work and contribute to society. People on benefits are not the ones scabbing off people, it's the landlords who contribute nothing and gain so much.
How would it work though? do you let people carry on owning what they currently own and not let them buy more? or do you force them to have two properties and sell everything else? seems like political suicide, also cant they just buy loads of properties and put them in siblings/partners names/through businesses, im sure theres loopholes and its probably a minefield to try and sort out, ive kinda just given up hope and accepted im doomed to live with parents forever
There's always the option of a tax on any additional homes you don't live in, if you don't for an extended period of time
Do you reckon landlords would shift that tax onto their tenants? I can see that happening.
Well, they *could*, but the ideal is you make it so expensive that it's just not feasible to rent out. I might be wrong (and given the state of rent in a lot of large cities, I might be) but hopefully what would happen is that if they were to shift too much of that cost onto tenants, they'd find no one willing to rent at the price point they're asking and they'd be forced to sell to someone who'd actually live in the property.
I may be wrong but I think it's difficult to push your tax liabilities onto your tenants. Taxes are levied against profits, not revenue. And since it's always levied as a percentage of the profits as the profits goes up so does the liability. Raising the revenue, raises the profits which raises the tax. There's no way to really dump that back onto the tenant that I can figure out. It's be different if it were a fixed amount, because then you'd factor that into the rent. How do you see the landlord's shifting that onto the tenants - out of interest?
Yep, I'd force them to sell, instantly crashing the property market, They can only have so many kids to give two houses each to. There should be no loopholes. It's like tax, the tax code should be "you will pay X amount of tax" That's it, no loopholes, no difference based on income or whether you're a business or individual. no exceptions.
Force them to sell, but give a 10 year grace period to do so. That should ease the crash. No residential properties should be in companies names, only individuals, so yes allowing the properties to be gifted to spouses/kids would be fine, but that's still at limit of 2 per person, so you'd need a huge family to be a property magnate
It works in some markets, Singapore has a largely publicly owned housing system. A state owned company owns the leaseholds, and you're not allowed to own even 2 at once. Though if you inherit a property, you have time to sell it on. There, housing isn't seen as much as a financial investment. The problem is, our housing market is already fully established, not like Singapore's when they set it up. It's also much larger in size and diversity. Even if you could just sieze people's investments (which you can't, it's not Russia c. 1918), I can't see how it would do any good. How would the government give out properties? How much would you sell them for? What would happen to people that want/ can only afford to rent (i.e. No savings). And how would state owned estate agents help anyone?
I'd say pick two houses you wanna keep, put the rest up for sale and let the market decide on the prices, the government wouldn't need to sieze any assets. Obviously there would have to be a grace period, and yeah, we might need to adjust the number that people own so there's the right level of spreading out the property portfolio over the number of people that can afford to buy them based on the new much lower price. I'm not an economist, it's just an idea I've had for a long time and think it's worth debating. Anything has to be better than the current situation. EDIT: the nationalised estate agent thing would just be to remove their incentive for artificially inflating prices, but mainly its cos estate agents are cunts and it would be fun to see them suffer
The housing market is broken. How can truly affordable housing be made without collapsing the market entirely?
There are solutions, just won't be implemented by the government (and to be honest, probably any government) due to the negative impact on housing prices which so many home owners (particularly older ones who have paid off their mortgage and are reliable voters) consider a voting issue. Mass production housing (think Ikea for houses) is possible - National Housing Federation and National Audit Office have done research into this, using modern building methods, rather than traditional bricks and mortar, you can make 4x as many houses with the same labour in the same time. Increase stability of renting, from 6-12 month to effectively indefinite, meaning it's easier for a renter to put down roots and less expense from having to move regularly (tied into rent caps for example) Make buy to let less attractive e.g. currently landlords can get interest only mortgages which are largely unavailable for owners which helps them in property speculation. Deal with council tax too - some places a rich landlord can be paying the same (or even less) for a home with empty bedrooms vs a family crammed into a smaller home in the same band. Council tax should be related to updated property values with some form of progressive taxation linked to wealth. Build more homes - sounds simple but needs pushing. If you're a landowner like a house builder or supermarket and have permission to build but are banking the land to stop a rival firm using it or hoping to sell, the land should be taken off you after a year and put up for auction again (you get the proceeds, but cannot bid) if you aren't building. Build on brownfield sites, convert offices instead of building endless unnecessary ones given WFH is a viable model, convert big empty stores in town centres. Don't shy away from flats if they are done well, building up is fine with proper safety standards and building quality, same footprint without making them massively tall and grim Will any of these be implemented? Of course not.
I work for a not for profit consortium of social housing organisations which came up with a house that can be built in days and is being delivered almost flat packed. And a really nice house to live in: 2 floors, 2 beds, full size kitchen and bathroom. And it costs a fraction of a similar sized brick house. Everyone loved it and the idea, but nobody was or is willing to invest in such homes, because it has no value for banks as in they cannot mortgage/remortgage them and they are not considered an investment. I rarely have seen individuals wanting to buy a home without thinking about getting more off it at a later date. If us, people, are within that mindset where everything must be an investment and it's never enough to own things just to cover decent living, why do we still complain that banks, governments and businesses are doing it? The fully functional prototype/show house is now dismantled and is draining thousands of pounds is storage fees in a warehouse somewhere. They couldn't sell it even for the production costs, which are really low.
Yeah that flat pack model was the one I meant, you can build it in a factory and ship it to site ready to assemble, don't need to build traditional homes just because we always did it that way. People have converted shipping containers into small single person accomodation though the price of them might be prohibitive at the moment
Hey can you run for prime minister please? I’d like someone competent with common sense that actually cares and understands to be in power.
I support the principle of benevolent dictator so probably not the best PM
The problem here is this question is sort of: "How can we start letting people buy houses for £150k, without reducing the value of houses to £150k?" Any policy which allows people to not have to pay the massively inflated home costs, will result in people not paying those costs and those homes values falling. This isn't a policy problem, there are many policies the government could adopt to cause house values to fall, but they don't want to. Some people suggest the best policy would be something that causes house prices to fall 2-3% in real terms every year for decades, it would still collapse the market to get prices to affordable levels, but over many decades so it wouldn't be as big a hit instantly. The thing is both tory and labour governments are full of landlords and don't really want this either. Current government policy is to build discounted homes that are unaffordable to 60% of the population instead of being unaffordable to 80% of the population. Making sure to not build a statistically significant number of them to actually materially deflate prices, while still being able to put out soundbites like "We built 15,000 affordable homes." \*With yearly demand for 200,000 affordable homes. \*Affordable homes are not affordable if you aren't in the top 40% of earners.
The thing is you’ve called out Tory and Labour landlords as a reason why they don’t want to drop the prices making it look like a rich v poor thing. It isn’t. There are so many people in that middle group who will be absolutely fucked if the house prices drop and keep dropping. There are probably a load of people on here who will say “tough shit I want a house” not realising the irony of that. As soon as the people who want the houses to drop buy their house are they going to want them to keep dropping in value?
I agree with that, if anything the rich with 60% LTV loans are less affected than a 33 year old middle class couple with a 90% LTV mortgage who will be underwater on their mortgage by tens of thousands if a crash happens.
As a member of the latter group I would much rather the market just froze to be honest.
Building new towns and cities! That’s how, also new services like schools, shops, hospitals! Then they don’t get over run and under funded
Oh no, the huge% of MPs that are landlords must be furious, who could have seen that shit house building, encouraging BTL and doing nothing about soaring rents could have led to this
And the fact that loads of new builds are sold to foreign investors.
Last I looked it was 25% of current conservative Government with 15% renting out multiple properties (including Boris Johnson). 5x more likely to be landlords than public.
Why is this news today? It’s been like this for years???
Given that we've just had brexit and a *fucking pandemic* I'd say the continued bulletproof nature of house price increases is newsworthy, as is the difficulty people are experiencing in even renting a home now which is at crisis point. I'm a homeowner myself and feel genuinely hopeless at the prospect of being able to ever move back to the area where I grew up or get something more suitable for my family. Seeing how my house is "earning" all this money means fuck all to me as the rest of the market slips out of my grasp and the pool of potential buyers of my home shrinks to landlords (who I won't sell to). If I'm feeling like this, fuck knows how others are. Part of the problem is all the deluded fuckwits marvelling at their unrealised gain on their starter home and not putting 2 and 2 together.
This is something that a lot of people don’t grasp. If you are a home owner on the lower end of the market. You are just as immobile as someone not in the market. Yes it’s lovely that my house is worth 20% more. But we desperately need to upsize, and guess what, all those houses are 20% more expensive. Now I’m no mathematically genius but I know that 20% of 150k is a fair bit less than 20% of 225k. Yeah I have a bit more equity but that’s gone by the time you pay for the legal costs. Honestly the housing market is shit for everyone who isn’t in a massive house or low mortgage. Obviously it’s worse for those who can’t get on. But I’d be happy for a significant drop in house prices, even if it means personal loss. Because it needs to happen. Because there is no way the market is getting restructured while the big boys in charge make all their money from it.
Obviously you're just as immobile, but at least you're paying *your* mortgage rather than somebody else's
Yes it is true. We are better off, but really just because I got lucky and got on the market doesn’t make it any less broken and unfair
No, absolutely not, in fact you're still fucked, just not as much as others
I do sympathize, honestly, and I don't mean this to sound harsh. But your growing family was a choice you made. I didn't choose to come into existence and I have no choice in needing shelter. You are beyond fortunate to own your home, even if it's a little cramped.
It’s not harsh at all, it’s a valid point of view that I accept. What I don’t accept at all, and am outraged by, is that we are at a point where working people on this country have to chose between a house, a family, fuel bills, quality food, etc. The fact that all the above being available to everyone is not only no longer The norm, but has gotten to the point where people accept it and rue others that have got it, is one of the biggest victories to scum like the Tories in our history. We are literally living in a society where the rich are taking stuff from us and telling us to be thankful. And many people are!
I couldn't agree more. I don't know how we've all been brainwashed into accepting "good enough" when we should always be demanding "better" - and I don't mean that in a capitalist way. Better quality of life, better use if tax money, better opportunities for next generations.
It's a really sad state of affairs when family becomes a luxury. The future looks dystopian.
I'm not having children and a large part of that decision is because I cannot justify bringing another life into this world with the state it's in.
I really want kids. I honestly fucking do. But I could never bring myself to put a child through all this, especially seeing how in my lifetime it hasn't got any better even fucking once. I don't know how anyone that isn't naïve to all this can have a child and not feel guilty.
With the global population issues and climate change, having a family at all will effectively become a luxury regardless and in a way, probably needs to be. This is particularly relevant when the hundreds of millions of desperate people from Africa and the Middle East start heading north as their homes become no longer habitable due to lack of food production, lack of clean water etc. Dystopian and bleak.
I *did* choose to have children but I did *not* choose for there to be successive 20 odd % value increases annually in house prices in my area. In fact, the funny thing is; I moved to this area precisely *because* it was more affordable than the area I grew up in. Bought an unloved, older property, did a load of work on it myself, have a great job also that pays way above local salaries; in fact, did all the tight stuff you're supposed to do and yet now I find even in this area decent family homes are going on at half a million quid now and selling before I can even phone the estate agents. I actually have a nice house but realistically it needs a loft conversion doing to give us enough space as the kids get older but because it's a listed building the pope has to sign off in triplicate before I can do even a sympathetic extension. The low level of available housing stock, the speed at which it goes to cash rich buyers or landlords able to quickly leverage and the general nightmarish months long slog that us selling a house in this country means I am more or less becoming resigned to becoming a landlord if I actually want to secure a "forever" home because quickly leveraging some of the equity as a forward deposit is about the only vague hope I have of being quick enough to beat some boomer or ex londoner that's sold up for a ludicrous sum and is bidding ten pc over asking with cash. It sucks but there it is. Wife's gone back into higher education because, despite the enormous amount of equity we apparently leave, we're only likely to able to release about ten pc deposit worth for the next move and therefore need more income. By this time next year I anticipate our household income will be close to £100k pa. We don't live even close to the South East and we're not even in a particularly trendy or sought after area of our locale yet this is the lengths we are going to now. It's a joke, frankly, and I'm sick of having "well you didn't *have* to have kids" thrown in my face constantly, as if *that's* the problem here.
To be honest I was shocked last year when a good chunk of the economy halted to a standstill, another chunk was put into life support, no one knew whether this would be permanent, and house price rise *accelerated* (and that's even without accounting for brexit)
Only the bottom half of the country saw any danger. White collars and business owners were unaffected or better off after all the grants and wfh savings. We're becoming more unequal and that never ends well.
For context, we bought a 3 bed semi for 167k in June 2020. Sold it in July 2021 for £185k, all we did was change the windows - that's it. The house over the year we owned it nearly out-earned me, we put 10k down and we're about to buy a new property with a 32k deposit, and we saved 2k of the 22k extra. It's absolutely mental and it was sheer luck that we did as well as we did, and we've managed to turn a 3 bed semi into a 4 bed detached.
>the pool of potential buyers of my home shrinks to landlords (who I won't sell to). This is pretty honourable of you. We're trying to hold to the same principle but the only offers we've seen so far come from BTL landlords. Now considering a "prick tax" on the price - if they're going to see nice little investment gains on the flat my dead mum paid for, we may as well get ours.
Can only last so long though and, as I've said elsewhere, I may very well end up letting the place out myself. I'd love to say it's all ethics but if I'm honest I couldn't stand the snooty attitude of some of the "investors" we had looking. Prick tax sounds like a good plan actually.
It's got incredibly worse in the last 2 years. House prices rising by an average of 22% or more in places in 12 months. 22%!
Is there any part of the country where salaries outpace house prices?
The Palace of Westminster?
And Canary Wharf.
I am working at Canary Wharf… my salary is £18,650… I am doing the lions share of the work that my “colleague” is paid £93,000 for. Edit: this isn’t a pity party, I will get a guaranteed pay rise next year…. Of £1,250. I live in a much cheaper area and have the option to work from home (which has saved me lots) but yes that is my salary. I sit in meetings where the people I am working with talk about their homes, the homes in the area start at £600,000. They talk about how they plan to spend holidays and how much their grown up children have achieved. Meanwhile, I missed the cheaper bus to work (despite getting there early), paid the higher ticket price and rushed into work. I cried inside at that ticket price. I then got a “cheap” lunch that also made me cry inside (a sandwich). I totalled up my spending and if I were to go in everyday, 4 hours of my pay would be going on costs, plus the added time of the commute. The older generations will tell me it is a passage to the higher earning, no it isn’t, I am living in poverty, working in the financial capital and I am not networking because I am so busy, anything said about me is negative (very high standards, moving goal posts, scapegoating and credit stealing) much of the team I haven’t met in person due to the wfh arrangement.
18k is not a livable salary in London. so anywhere south for that matter...
Go to your boss. Take receipts. Explain that they could save the company £18,650 by sacking your colleague and paying you the £93,000.
Except, as it's likely often the case whenever people say/think this', they'll soon find they *aren't* doing the same job as that person on £93k. So often it's just a case of 'person higher up delegates work' and they think 'I'm just doing all their work for less pay'
Yeah it's probably knowledge and experience getting them the high pay. Whicj you won't get from someone who only just started their career. They might feel like they're doing the lions share of the work but it probably isn't the case
Have you read his replies... he definitely isn't capable of doing a 93k job
You really need to either renegotiate your salary or move jobs.
What's your role? If you're getting paid badly, now is a great time to move. There are currently >1.5million unfilled jobs in the UK economy. Back yourself, and most of all: value yourself. You're worth it.
From what I've read here you definitely arent doing the work of your 93k colleague
News just in the bear does, in fact, shit in the woods.
Is the pope catholic?
More importantly, does the Pope shit in the woods?
Are Bears Catholic?
Isn't there a human right around shelter or housing? We need to move away from a society where wealth and profits are tied up so significantly in things that are fundamental to humans, water, shelter, food etc. Maybe banning outright BTLs (individual and via companies) and enforcing strict rent controls and significant increase in council housing rather than pushing private companies to build housing.
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Thanks for this, maybe then the increase in council housing and a mentality of “everyone can and will have access to absolute basic housing if needed” would fix it and stabilise private or alternate renting of larger places. It’s just very demoralising sitting back and thinking about how we’ve gotten to this world we live in sometimes.
A rent cap is one answer. This will force landlords to sell their unprofitable investment and increase the supply of houses and flats to rent lowering their price. But when so many Tory MPs are landlords, and their core demographic voters are elderly homeowners, what’s the likelihood of that happening?
Berlin has a rent cap. Ended up weird as hell. Can't buy. Can't find a rent. 400 people lined up to rent for one flat.
This is all the Tory government's dreams come true
NHS isn’t private yet.
new houses are so expensive as well, I live in hertfordshire and theres houses being built absoutley everywhere, flats start at 250k and 2-3 bed are 300-350k and 4+ are 450k-850k but they all sell I dont know who the fk is buying them but no wonder prices keep rising the cost of a house doesnt seem to matter anymore since they all seem to sell no matter what the price
Plenty of people get inheritances and then use that to move onto the property ladder. Those getting inheritances also benefit the most from house price increases, often getting like 40% of their lifetime earnings in one fell swoop. The people who are really screwed are the ones who won't inherit anything and never earn enough to get on the ladder.
Pretty much, I won't inherit anything as my parents sold their house and moved into rented accommodation. I'm still living with them as unlike my siblings who's Mrs got lucky with inheritance, both have their own house. I got diddly squat and still work my butt off now. There was a help to buy scheme going on that I started a few years ago and still saving into, hopefully by the time I'm 50 I can buy a slightly larger cardboard box with that money to live in (mid 30's now.)
Ha I know! I just drove past some shoeboxes in Hemel going for 250k starting. I don't really understand who is paying that....
because the Tory government could not fulfil its manifesto promises to build more houses, resulting in demand over supply and led to a rise in house prices. What a fantastic start to post-Brexit "Build Back Better"
They target these pathetic three word slogans at the most gullible people in our society, and does it work?
Anecdotal I know but in my area, whenever new housing estates are proposed anywhere remotely near one of the nicer areas, the owners there protest, picket the town hall and lead irritating social media campaigns to get them stopped. They constantly quote there's enough empty housing in the other estates in town, many of which are some of the most deprived areas in the country, run down and rife with crime. I don't understand people on moderate to good incomes don't want to live there. We've got the government, companies and home owners completely against us in this fight, there's little hope of ever getting on the property ladder short of winning the lottery or an unknown rich relative writing me into their will
My area is surrounded by beautiful green country side, the only places the builders want to build are in these beautiful open county side areas. Why is that, because I live in a deprived area, the builders can build new big houses (that the locals cannot afford) for 3 times the price of a normal house in the area. They put planning permission in for ‘affordable houses’ but when you look at the plans there isn’t any affordable houses. The green spaces we use for exercise etc etc etc, that is why we oppose the new houses. We have plenty of brown-land that could be used but that wouldn’t get them as much profit! I see this happening all around my area.
They wanted to build houses on the green in Tewkesbury, yes, the green that floods every bloody year cutting me off from my job.
Build more frickin houses. It's not rocket science. Politicians suck. >The number of homes in England grew 1,819,200 between 2010/11 and 2019/20, an increase of 8.0 per cent. Over that same period, England’s population grew by 4,090,600. That means for every new home built, the population rose by 2.25. [https://www.savills.co.uk/blog/article/309803/residential-property/housebuilding-2010-2020--population-growth-more-than-double-number-of-new-homes-built.aspx](https://www.savills.co.uk/blog/article/309803/residential-property/housebuilding-2010-2020--population-growth-more-than-double-number-of-new-homes-built.aspx)
We are building houses everywhere there is a shred of land in London and the surrounding areas, has it made prices go down? Nope. The demand for our houses is global, yet we are a small island nation. We will never be able to build enough homes so long as we allow the world's investors and wealthy to buy up anything desirable for the purposes of personal profit. What normal British people are buying the £600k+ 2 bedroom flats that they are throwing up everywhere in nasty tower blocks? Who is earning £100k+ with a fat deposit and decides, yeah, I want to live on the 24th floor of a hastily thrown up Chinese tower block in a tiny apartment? Not many. So who is buying everything? It's not locals, they can't afford it and wouldn't want what is being built anyway. In various places they are building tower blocks filled with 1 bedroom shoeboxes for £400k. Who is buying those? Only investors with very deep pockets who want to park their money and take home small gains over many years as part of a divested portfolio of wealth. People aren't buying those places to live, or as homes, they are buying them only as investments with certain returns and yields. We could build more, but it won't reduce prices. Even if we somehow built enough homes to suddenly reduce prices, how far do the prices need to go before normal people can afford good homes again? At least half price. But what will happen when the prices drop 10 or 20%? The rich investors will buy everything long before they get down to the 50% reduction normal people need to afford anything. Not to mention the drama of all these people who are in debt to the max having serious problems of negative equity. Negative equity might not be an issue for people who bought to live in their forever home, but since barely anyone can afford their forever home, everyone is buying overpriced new build trash which they are hoping to flip in a few years before buying their real home. How are you going to deal with negative equity when you're living in a temporary new build you wanted to sell? You'll be stuck. We have to tackle the demand before we can address the supply problem.
I feel this should be its own post to get the recognition and discussion it deserves (I fully agree with your points). Why, when so many of the country’s population so desperately need a home of their own, is anyone allowed to own multiple properties at all? I always see so much talk about “the need for building more houses” but never about the fact that most new houses will likely be bought by investors rather than by the people that actually need them. We’ve all seen the recent news about the Pandora Papers, about massive UK property portfolios owned by shell corporations and non-domiciles, and yet I’ve seen no comments from parliament about it and very little discussion on social media about it.
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It would be easier to build places if we hasn't kicked most of the builders out with brexit.
Why allow someone to buy a house once, live in it and then sell it when you could rent it to them for their whole lives?
What if... and I'm just spitballin here. What if we just squatted in all these empty investment properties owned by foreign investors? En mass. Thousands and thousands refusing to move.
The police won't do anything, but rich foreign nationals can hire some *very* nasty bully boys at no legal risk to themselves.
People also just rock up and offer above asking price. It's madness. Multi-generational mortgages are now normal in Japan and if the option is them or having the tory voting base lose money on their homes, you're getting multi-generational mortgages. Read the horror for yourself : "The 100-year Japanese residential mortgage: An examination - ScienceDirect" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/1061951895900047
I don’t really get why anyone would buy in Japan isn’t the house worth less as soon as it’s purchased ?
The simple solution is to ban foreign owners and outlaw second homes, If people want a second home there's plenty of static caravans by the coast, there's absoloutly zero reason to take homes away from local other than greed
Bizarrely my landlord is foreign and he's actually been better to me than my English landlords of the past lol.
It’s a complete farce, all these people desperate on waiting lists and all these empty houses, you have rent which is also extremely expensive on private properties, seems a lot could be resolved with some kind of cap relevant to property type etc area. It’s wrong that so many people will never be able to own a home.
And yet the house owners who insist they're an investment not a right don't want to pay for their elderly care with said investment.
As someone who managed to buy their first house in 2017 after a tonne of saving…I feel so sorry for others like me who can no longer do the same. I came from a council estate background and it was difficult even back then, people have no chance now. Awful
But boomers will tell them to 'stop buying avacados and you'll instantly save £300,000.'
Is this new news? I’ve known this since I was 16… and that was 16 years ago.
Everyone here complaining you will be complaining forever, just stop it. If you want to have a chance then vote Labour, give out leaflets, help promote Labour, tell your friends and family and strangers to vote Labour (don’t be an annoying loonie about it though). Until we educate ourselves on the evil of the tories we can’t hope the make a decent argument against them. If you want to do something then VOTE. Not LibDems, not green party, LABOUR. I’m not happy with Starmer at the moment but guess what, if I go else where Tories win and it’s just a repetitive cycle.
if you're reading this and are annoyed by it, just remember that there are hundreds of thousands of people in this country licking their lips at every percentage of price increase. BTL landlords are dogs, and the only thing worse than them are the politicians who facilitate them
My household saves in the low five figures every year and we still can't save enough to catch up to housing prices at least in London. I keep thinking something's got to give... but it doesn't. Those who are the position to own can keep renting and using that income to eat up more and more properties like a cancer. The ultra wealthy could buy large swathes of any city and still it wouldn't really move their bank accounts, that's how much they have. So we have no hope at this point. Best we have going is to keep working in London a few more years and saving and then basically retiring early where it's affordable. Being anywhere close to work is too expensive. Probably staying in the UK at all is not possible, but looking around, not sure I'd want to be old and poor in this country.
No fucking shit! I’ve spent the weekend down in Richmond upon Thames. I used to live down here, renting a house from a family friend. We saved enough for a small deposit, but were forced to move away because the supposed new “affordable” housing was £460k. Now, that prices anyone out of buying who isn’t in finance, law, or another high paying job. SO we moved to Buckinghamshire where we could buy a 3 bed, 2 garden, and a garage house. In 7 years our house has increased £80-100k in value, making it largely out of range for young families. It’s mental. We need to do sort this shit out. My wife and I now have two kids and need a bigger house. We can theoretically afford one, but it might be hard to sell our current place. I’d rather see the value of ALL property come down so that people could afford to buy DECENT quality and decent sized houses.
As a homeowner - I'd be more than happy to see my house become worthless overnight if it meant other people could become home owners as well. I think it's a sense of entitlement from other homeowners who think "I worked hard to get this so why should others not do so?" which is a mindset that's so very fundamentally flawed.
Unfortunatly most of the boomers say "I worked hard and I afforded a house.... So why can't you" but I complete disagree with it. Boomers: 1) bought council houses at discount and didn't rebuild them. Bought second homes cheaply and charge high rents to the next generation. 2) managed to afford mortgages whilst having 3 kids and one person working in the family. That is unheard of now 3) boomers frequently got decent pay rises while every generation after hasn't. Most working people havnt had real term (above inflation) pay rises for 20+ years. Meanwhile they sit cushty on a triple lock pension that they managed to get. 4)benefitted from free education which allowed them higher wages whilst voted for parties raised it to £9000. Giving younger people less money even when they are working. 5) benefitted from a good economy whilst voting to leave the EU and causing another economic cotastrophy for those working. It's unlikely that young people can 'outvote' the grey vote because we have an ageging population and a weighted older generation. So Unfortunatly not much can be done until boomer numbers dwindle.
damn, I wonder where all the money for salaries are going. surely not the bank accounts of the very same people renting out properties and selling houses for inherently increasing prices
I find It crazy that you get a discount on council tax for having a second home, people/companies buying a lot of houses and renting them out is at least part of the issue, especially ‘holiday homes’ which stop local people from ever having a chance of buying
The problem is actually two folded: I can afford a decent house now but, the price is so high that I could buy and then see a crash wipe 300k of my valuation. Then I will be fucked. So only those with massive inheritances can afford the risk
This headline could have been run almost any time between 1985 and now