Sunday, Jan 03, 2010
No surprises here
Guardian: First-time home buyers at record low
Basically, in 61% of areas, houses are unaffordable for first time buyers. In 2007, the average age of the first time buyer was 36 too - and that was when house prices were still rising! Wait till you see how the BBC reported on this data though ...
Posted by paul @ 11:47 AM (2098 views) Add Comment
15 Comments
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1. paul said...
Price boost for first-time buyers
There really does need to be an independent oversight body of the BBC to investigate bias - where it comes from and why it influences reporting of key issues so badly. What are the private interests at work? Have they been declared? If they haven't been declared, what is the mechanism for exposing them?
After all, the slant of BBC reporting is an embarassement. Outside China and DPRK such reporting would not be tolerated - particularly if it was being paid for through tax as in the UK. Remember to pay your license fee etc ...
2. markj69 str05 said...
'Last year, first-time buyer properties were affordable in almost 40% of the country, compared with only 6% in 2007, based on a multiple of less than four times average local earnings.' - I wonder what %age of the pupulation live in this 40% of the country???
3. novice pete said...
Whenever the BBC tv news reports on housing it is always rising house prices are a good thing. I have never heard a counter argument to this from them.
4. krustyatemyhamster said...
I agree. The BBC's bias (on their website, but also on TV also) is astonishing and goes well beyond simple sloppy journalism, especially for something of such critical importance to a large proportion of the population.
5. taffee said...
note also how peston has disappeared bar his blog
6. markj69 str05 said...
And there was I thinking that the BBC was an unbias organisation paid for by the general public, for the interest of the general public. Surely there is no VI for the BBC or it's higher management. Surely, they are not being used as a tool by the financial organisations, to manipulate public sentiment! How dare anyone suggest our BBC is tainted.
7. markj69 str05 said...
'by the financial organisations' - via the gov't
8. will said...
First time buyers do not earn an average UK wage. If the average wage is around £25K then the first time buyer has to be earning less, IMO between £15 - £20K. So at 4 times salary a FTB could purchase a home for around £60 - £80K. The selection of such properties for sale in Devon includes converted garages and static caravans.
HALIFAX - SHAME ON YOU.
9. hpwatcher said...
Like BOE, the BBC isn't really independent at all, though they claim they are.
Expect more rubbish from the BBC as Gordon Brown tries to cling to power.
10. the number cruncher said...
I found out this week I am in the top 5% of 'wage earners' and I still cannot afford to buy a decent house. incidentally I am also in the top 0.5% of wage earners in the world.
Those with property aim to enslave those of us without and already have enslaved millions with huge mortgages on rubbish houses. NuLabour are awful and the Tories will be worse -
Someone give me Hope!
For the BBC detractors - yes the beeb has most of its senior editorial staff employed by our security services, but the private news sources are even more biased.
11. Philld said...
Well I am supposedly one the 'professionals' that become an FTB on an above avg wage - I got a first class hons at uni, have no student debt (worked instead), no outstanding cc debts and a potential deposit of £25k through not taking a holiday for 4 years. I have a 11 year old car that I've owned for 4 years (not a flash one, but still not tempted by the stupid scrappage scheme) and scrimped and saved at every opportunity - can I afford an average £160k property? Not a chance as I'd be paying over a grand a month so that ain't on the cards. So who the hell is buying into property?
Also the area I live the average wage is supposedly £24k (£360pw) which I can tell you it isn't even close, Will was closer to the mark with £15k but the stats don't say this.
12. letthemfall said...
I don't think the BBC are being particularly biased here: they are merely reporting what the Halifax said, which you can more fairly accuse of bias. The website is huge and needs a lot of filling; hence the news items are just uncritical reports. You have to look to the serious BBC journalists in places like Newsnight and Today for more analytic and critical reporting/discussion. Bear in mind that the BBC have been accused of bias by both Labour and Tory, usually quite often.
Their programmes and repeats? Now there I could vent a lot of spleen.
13. tenyearstogetmymoneyback said...
Anyone who regularly reads my posts will have read this before.
For those who haven't the BBC haven't always been biased.
Back in 2004 they did an excellent program "Mortgage Madness"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3478635.stm.
The highlight was People from Halifax telling the reporter that they
couldn't offer a Ten Times Salary mortgage, but their subsidary
Birmingham Midshires would be able to as long as he wasn't silly
enough to tell them what he earned.
I was so shocked I sold my Halifax shares the next day and was
fully expecting Halifax to go bust within months.
What actually happened was more of the same for the next three
years. Like alot of people here the BBC just made themselves look
rather silly, while the financial "experts" like Adam Applegarth boasted
about what a great job they were doing.
Is it a case of once bitten twice shy.
p.s. The thing that really does annoy me is that rises in House price rises
are always announced on the TV / Radio in the same voice as is used
when England win the Cricket.
14. tenant super said...
Will @ 8. You've made the pertinent point. Like numbercruncher, I was surprised to discover recently that my salary is in the top 5% as is my partner's. We don't live together but if we did, our household income would be in the top 3%. We both own London flats which we bought in our early twenties (back in the nineties) when a decent one-bedroom flat was about 3.5 x a graduate salary. If we were starting out now, together we could only just buy one of our flats between us (on our salaries now - two average graduate salaries could no longer afford even the cheaper of our flats). But we are now aged 33 and 40 and like most people of our age want a family home. If the average ftb is 36 they would ideally want a house not a tiny toy flat. We are lucky because we could sell both flats and get a three bedroom house in suburbia but why would we do this when we can sell just one of the flats and buy a four bedroom detached house abroad?
I look at my younger brothers (21, 24 and 28) and they just accept that they have no chance of buying a place despite the 28 year old earning more than me. Their docility astonishes me.
15. tom101 said...
Docility.... good word to describe our generation tenant super. I know of no-one willing to make a sacrifice or stand up for themselves here in blighty. Was in Denmark a few weeks back and saw an old Danish bloke stand in a crowded street screaming at some gamblers / husslers in the street "This is not allowed in Denmark!!!" continually facing them down alone until they pi-$$ed off.