Antsy

Sorry - but there are currently two ways to secure a home on the average 25k per person wage, delay having kids till you're late 30s and want the NHS to fork out for the fertility treatments or give up and throw yourself on the mercy of the council, Lizzie Bardsley 'Wife Swap' style where you get everything paid for and then get the right to buy at a discount. Should breeding therefore be left to the very rich and very poor only?

Absolutely - prices down there are nuts. Half a mill for a four bed house, garden front and back and a granny flat upstairs. Hello? Surely most old people get to the point where they can't manage stairs before they throw themselves on the mercy of their relatives? said home hasn't shifted in 8 months. Rosemullion homes are attempting to market homes in parents' village for 225 or 235 for a three bed semi. Good luck to them. At a village meeting they had the gall to describe them as 'starter homes'. You'd need about 60k joint income to afford one so cue Straw Dogs style response from the locals...

They also put this on the Times Educational Supplement website asking for FTB teachers looking to buy so they could match them up with others... wonder who would like to share with me, my teacher partner and our often screaming 9 month old? Those co-buyers will be beating my door down, I can feel it now.....

I agree with Topher - Laurejohn has been trying to construct one of Boris's inverted pyramids of piffle.. though his won't turn out to have been true (sorry Boris..) No-one seems to think about the long term. If the middle earners are forced to rent until retirement what happens then? (obviously if you and partner are currently on about 25k each you can't afford kids AND a home unless you either give up and get a council house or suddenly become super-rich by winning the lottery / sueing the police for whatever) We already have a pensions crisis, so for those who have no rent / mortgage outgoing at 65 it will be tough enough paying council tax out of their meagre stakeholder plan. As for those still renting, is the state going to pick up the tab for their rent?

"Aren't people concerned about what they will do when their children want to fly the nest?" No, because you will have made so much money from your house you will be able to help them! How? By selling their home and freeing up cash (oh - but there are few buyers feeding into the bottom of the market because they can't afford it and all the old gits that have sold off their 4 bedders to get equity for their own ftb kids have nicked all the 1 and 2 bed flats...). Or they could always just become beholden to the bank again and ripped off via equity release... Some option.

Something may be up down there. My friends are stuck with their 2 bed house in Falmouth. Apparently it's worth 180k despite having a small strip of paving for a garden (bought for 60k 4 years ago). They've found something with 3 beds for 240k outside of town but they can't shift their home. They have now dropped by 10k and persuaded their vendor to do likewise, but no luck for the last 2 months again. It's the typical type of house a FTB like them would once have bought, but where average wages are about 14k, perhaps the BTL brigade are a dying breed? Nothing is shifting in my parents village in North Cornwall either (pics of it featured no Location Location as a v. desirable village the FTbs in question could never have afforded...). Anyone else have any views?