RushRoad

My point was you can be selective about who you partner up with so aim to partner up with someone who is of sound mind and body and has a sound job and ideally wealthy parents. What would your advise be? To do the opposite? Or maybe your argument is something like 'you can't pick who you fall in love with'? Well yes yes you can.

Banks are already heavily regulated so remove that and im sure some of the banks would be happy to lend outside of normal criteria

Data from 2011 irrc 47% of recent graduates (0-5 years) are in non graduates roles like working at a checkout or coffee shop So for about half of those that go its clearly not worth it at all. For the rest there is provably some small element of benefit Personally I think university education should be fully paid by the student up front (annually) with no loans or grants. However 18 year olds should be given £50k by the government on their 18th birthday to be used either on a university education or to be put into a pension or to be used as a deposit to buy a house. Maybe make it £2.5k annually for each child in a government account earning interest accessible at 18 for the reasons stated. I'd wager with choice the kids would mostly opt not for university as it is overrated. £50k in an isa over 60 years (age 18-78) earning a real rate of return of 5% = £940,000 would the university graduates of today ever be able to catch up to that. Certainly not the 50% that get non graduate jobs!

Its a very legitimate idea. Its absolutely fine to pick a husband or wife for their attributes be it how tall they are how strong they are how smart they are and yes how much money they have. What's your advocated method? Get drunk in a pub and pick someone there using the most primitive reptilian parts of the brain directing brief moments of lust? For the avoidance of doubt I'm not saying 20 year olds should marry 80 year olds for their money (if they want to its upto them but I would not recommend it). What I'm saying is that while in your 20s you should aim to find someone who is also in their 20s who has a well paid job and ideally well off parents. That goes for both boys and girls in their 20s and eben early 30s.

One of my friends from a poor working class families married his wife they were both 25 when they got married. Little did he know that his in-laws were loaded. They haven't given much to him* but his kids are millionaires through inheritances *Actually they built him and his wife a nice big house on one of the farms they owned so I suppose he did get a lot just not a lot of liquid wealth. He didn't marry her for her money he wants even really aware of it. The point is even people from working class families who expect nothing will marry into wealth by the simple fact that most non migrant families in the UK have significant generational wealth. I don't think there is anything wrong with aiming to marry into wealth its not uncommon in most cultures nor is it uncommon in the upper classes of the UK. If my kids found someone they liked enough to marry them it would be a failure of my duties to not check to see that the person is financially responsible and able to provide for a family. I know one of my friends told his daughter that the man she wanted to marry was a poor bum and that if she went ahead with it she should expect nothing from him. After a while she came around to it and found someone more stable and she is now happily married with kids. Her farther did the right thing. The stupid thing is to pretend money is unimportant or a trivial factor.

You get 1/2 a house if you have a sibling but your wife/husband gets 1/2 a house from their parents to equal 1 house for your household. So if women have 2 or fewer kids which Uk born women do then inheritence wealth is concentrated down the generations. If women have more than 2 children then inheritence wealth gets diluted through the generations. This is one of the reasons low children per women nations are richer than high children per women nations.

Why do you think a government department can manage the building of houses better than a company that's been doing it for generations? More importantly we do not have a shortage of homes in the UK. Builders are building at about the rate that its possible to build and sell. Hence the new bright idea of build to rent which the government seems to want to push the idea being that more can be built to rent than sold. Personally I'm not convinced I think the only shortage of homes is a huge shortage in zone 2 London which ripples out to zone 3 and that to zone 4 and so on until it gets all the way to the south east towns. The problem with building many more homes in zone 2 London is that there is no spare land and thus you need to buy 10 homes knick them down and build 25 in its place that is far more expensive than building on greenbelt where you don't need to do that.

You can't ban parents helping their children inheritances have always existed and always will. To that end people who get help and gifts will have an easier life than those that don't. The good news is that this is a rich country and even those without inheritances are well off by international standards. Another bit of good news IMO is if you really want it you could opt to marry someone rich or from a rich family. For the avoidance of doubt I'm not saying young people should marry old people but by the simple athematic means it should not be impossible to find someone suitable that isn't poor

I do believe that many on this site are not representative of the general public. I assume if people were to answer honestly you would find people on this site are less likely to be in a relationship less likely to earn the median full time male/females wage and less likely to have had or expect inheritances/gift help. But when such a collective comes together they assume their experiences are the norm which they aren't. Its why when I post the median full time wage stats many object and cry foul and say the stats must be wrong when the reality is their perception is wrong. So if you said in your post 'you live in a parallel universe from anyone else on this website' then I would agree

Once humans stopped having 6+ kids per woman and went towards 2 then generational wealth played a bigger and bigger part. Its not something new but since its not polite conversation to have people don't discus gifts or inheritances and sums. The reality is a huge £200 billion annually goes from the old to the young and yes if you get a piece of that your life is going to be easier than you identical friend in an identical job getting paid an identical wage Lot at the inheritances stats and data its very eye opening the sums and how many estates are left. The idea that most old people spend it all on care home fees is largely incorrect. I will say again, the majority of British born people are likely to get significant inheritances and the majority are likely to get a house or multiple portions of multiple houses as their 8 grand parents and grandparent in-laws and 4 parent and parent in-laws die or in many cases before they die. And its not just homes significant pension pots and savings also get passed down

But the most up to date stats show huge numbers of estates leaving huge sums of money. From memory its a net £77 billion and that was a few years ago it must be £100 billion by now. That does not include gifts which many make prior to death or old age to limit IHT. lots of people get significant gifts and inheritances of course this site is self selecting as no one who inherited a mortgage free house is going to be here complaining about house prices. Overall my estimate is about £200 billion annually in the UK goes from older to younger via gifts and inheritances. Believe me a lot of people get significant sums. One of my neighbors is a landlord with 20 properties. Last year he had a heart attack and this year he is divesting everything as he accepts now he could go at any time. He has 6 grandchildren and will be giving each one a mortgage free property and selling the rest and paying his dues and whats left giving it to his two children. If he survives 3-7 years he will not have to pay IHT on a sliding scale above 7 years and no IHT That might be extreme but it shows two important things. One is that wealth is spread down the lines. 1 persons wealth in this case is spread down to 8 people. Another is that there are significant gifts and inheritances to significant numbers of people. £200 billion a year

That's not how it works. London is mostly already built so going forward what you need to do is Purchase x units Knock them down Rebuild 3x units Give away to the council 50% of the net increase in homes at a price the council can let them as social housing. So 1x units of your new build need to be sold to the council for £80k a piece. Let's assume x is 100 units. You purchased 100 x £300k flats for £30m and spent £36m knocking and clearing and finance costs. You then spend £120k per apartment building the 300 apartments for £36m You have spent £72m add in 20% profit and you need to get £86m. However you have to sell 100 units for £8m to the council. Leaving you with 200 units you can sell and you need £78m so you need a price of almost £400,000 per property. We've not even considered CIL or S106 costs or planning costs or delay costs (add 5% interest for each year things are delayed) etc etc Simply put it's impossible to build cheaply in areas where the building has to primarily be done by buying existing homes or ships or other buildings to knock them down and rebuilt more densely. What's needed if you wanted cheap homes in London is to get rid if the green belt and even more importantly get rid of the conditions where the builder needs to give 50% of the net new build number to the council at a huge loss

It shows wages are higher than most people on here imagine which does some/most the way to explaining how it is that people can afford to buy. The graph also includes part time workers also it's out of sate by 4 years so increase the figures you see by about 15% to take it to 2017 figures

Banks should allow renters to prove affordability with rent payments. If a renter has been paying £800pm for 2 years to a landlord he should not be turned away from a five year fix mortgage that costs less than the same £800pm

But most UK born people over their lives are not huge net buyers of homes. Most UK born people inherit housing from parents and grandparents and parent/grandparents in-laws and other family In fact for a long time the UK born women's children per woman has been below 2. Its about 1.75 now. So for a lot of younger UK born they will inherit sums of more than one house so over their lifetimes they will be net sellers of housing even if they are just 10 years old now. Just for the avoidance of doubt I'm not talking about the kids of landlords but normal families. I would make the argument that the majority of UK born have housing sorted its the migrants that need to toil as they will often have nothing coming in the firm of inheritances and gifts from parents if anything their parents might be a near lifelong liability needing constant money sending 'home' to support them. I said 91% over 14 years, 2003-2017 I agree if house prices go up x percent then someone who has only their own income and if buying in that particular year will have to buy a smaller property or one in a cheaper area. However as said above most UK born are not net house buyers. They might buy age 30 for x pounds and at age 50 they will inherit a house worth x. The two will cancle out. In fact a lot of UK born children are likely to get 1.3x property as if women have fewer than 2 kids which UK born women do then inheritences get concentrated larger down the chain. As opposites to women in some countries that have 6 kids each that means each generation has to share anything that's left between 6 kids rather than 1.7 But its only changing by the transaction levels which are only about 3% of the stock. So if house prices go up 10% 97% are impacted only 3% are and not even most of them as more than half of those buyers in that year will purchasing with previous housing wealth. I didn't say prices will go up I said prices are clearly affordable. That prices are affordable does not mean they won't go down. There are some areas in the north east where prices are £30k for a house very affordable but that does not mean they won't go to £10k a house Yes. The answer is because private enterprise new builds dropped off after the recession. For 1 less new build there are 3 fewer transactions. The 80,000 fewer annual new builds mean 240,000 fewer transactions. Most the fall in transaction is down to that. But 350,000 FTB will be buying this year. That's about a third of all purchases a significant number. Stamp duty is a problem because it is not a regional or local tax. Like council tax it should be linked to the council and set at such a rate that each council collects about £250 per property per year.