Generation Rent

[Eddie_George]

Channel 4 News had special reports about the young and their struggle with jobs and housing all this week, tonight's was particularly depressing.

Generation rent: where can I afford to live?

http://www.channel4.com/news/rogue-landlords-london-renting-housing-young-people-video

The road to London has never been busier with young workers looking for a room of their own, writes Symeon Brown. Post recession, 80 per cent of private sector jobs have been created in London.

Today, a third of all young adults leaving UK cities make the well-worn pilgrimage to the capital.

Up against young workers born and raised in the city, and those migrating from abroad, competition for a single room is fierce - and estate agents know this.

[MartinE]

Rent-a-bunk scheme needed to help with the cost.

[btl_hater]

What are the emigration figures for "generation rent"? The UK is a crap hole that does not value it's young, its future. If you are moving to London from another city up north then you may as well just take it a bit further and leave the UK.

[MartinE]

Meme is they spend all their money on iPods - nothing left for visas or air fares

[dances with sheeple]

Can`t wait for the "Generation Will Never Get Their Price" programmes

[WageWar]

I lived in worse abroad in my early twenties (equivalent of Slough's shanty towns). But hearing the prices that landlords are charging now made my jaw drop. I think if I went down to London now, even as a much older professional, I'd be forced to live like those guys. Very depressing.

[dances with sheeple]

"Generation Rent" is just a meme to keep people believing that they can make money off BTL. The reality is, if kids stay with mum and dad longer, or forever, you can`t rent out your BTL hovel, and you will never sell your house

[Wurzel Of Highbridge]

"Generation Rent" is just a meme to keep people believing that they can make money off BTL. The reality is, if kids stay with mum and dad longer, or forever, you can`t rent out your BTL hovel, and you will never sell your house

+1 It's propaganda from one of the various VI's..

[SNACR]

Not heard that statistic about 80% of private sector job creation being in London thrown about much. That's a problem in itself.

Probably worth another outing for this

Edited February 14, 2014 by SNACR

[renting til I die]

"Generation Rent" is just a meme to keep people believing that they can make money off BTL. The reality is, if kids stay with mum and dad longer, or forever, you can`t rent out your BTL hovel, and you will never sell your house

So true.

[MarkG]

What are the emigration figures for "generation rent"? The UK is a crap hole that does not value it's young, its future. If you are moving to London from another city up north then you may as well just take it a bit further and leave the UK.

Except most of them won't qualify for most Western nations outside the EU. They expect you to bring money and useful skills to qualify for a visa, and keep tightening the requirements because they're massively oversubscribed.

I'm lucky I got out when I did; I'd be screwed if I wanted to leave today.

[spyguy]

"Generation Rent" is just a meme to keep people believing that they can make money off BTL. The reality is, if kids stay with mum and dad longer, or forever, you can`t rent out your BTL hovel, and you will never sell your house

Yup. as I've repeatedly said on various threads - 'rental demand is very elastic'

Me 1991. Put up in a 1 bed flat with the company stubbing up the rent for 4 months.

End of 4 months me + 3 others took on a shared a house. 4 flats -> 1 HMO.

The saving on utilities was pretty impressive and we got a lot more space.

What a weird phenomena - your housing demand suddenly shrink when you have to spend your own, hard owned money instead of someone else's.

[winkie]

I would have thought the best way to rent a single room is to rent the spare room off a nice landlady/gentleman.

[StainlessSteelCat]

80% of new private sector jobs made in London? There's the problem right there.

Got to say, the rest of the video resembles my experience of living in London even down to a South African chap renting shared rooms out in a normal terrace (around a dozen people lived there - and one person was sleeping in the utility room). Nothing much has changed in the last decade if seems.

I too, spent around 40% of my salary on my first room in shared house in London (£541/month back in 2000 was a serious amount of cash). You do begin to get savvier and better connected though. The cheapest and best places are rarely advertised but simply passed onto friends. My next move, three years later when I got married, traded the relatively nice house share for a freezing, grotty hole of a shared house much further east. Rent now £240/month incl all bills except electric & gas - which was regarded a complete bargain by everyone I knew. There were better deals to be had though - I remember being envious of a NZ chap who was paying £300/month all in for a huge room on Oxford St. Seriously, you could fit around a half a double beds in his room alone. The flip side is that I had four Pakistani friends paying £1K for a studio flat - that they were sharing!

But the cheap place in east London was really our saviour. We, or rather I, saved loads there - but the prices of houses were also going through the roof too!

We never actually bought in London, the prices of even the cheap stuff gave me the fear - even with a decent deposit - and I never felt I could relax there. Sleep would be regularly disturbed by a police helicopter rumbling overhead at 4am.

Edited February 15, 2014 by StainlessSteelCat

[porca misèria]

I lived in worse abroad in my early twenties (equivalent of Slough's shanty towns). But hearing the prices that landlords are charging now made my jaw drop. I think if I went down to London now, even as a much older professional, I'd be forced to live like those guys. Very depressing.

Really?

A simple zoopla search[1] setting max rent to £1k shows a decent selection of self-contained flats. Expensive for what they are, yes, but a huge improvement on the shared room in a slum HMO you could get for the equivalent proportion of a modest income a generation ago.

No, I don't want to go back there. Not when I can pay £700/month for a house the size of two of those flats, set back from the road behind a long garden, and with fantastic views!

[1] [edit to add] That was a search on the area of Peckham where I first lived as a young graduate.

Edited February 15, 2014 by porca misèria

[spyguy]

I would have thought the best way to rent a single room is to rent the spare room off a nice landlady/gentleman.

I bet Fred West had spare rooms.

Nope. Go for a house share with your peers.

[Dorkins]

Yup. as I've repeatedly said on various threads - 'rental demand is very elastic'

Me 1991. Put up in a 1 bed flat with the company stubbing up the rent for 4 months.

End of 4 months me + 3 others took on a shared a house. 4 flats -> 1 HMO.

The saving on utilities was pretty impressive and we got a lot more space.

What a weird phenomena - your housing demand suddenly shrink when you have to spend your own, hard owned money instead of someone else's.

How much further can the housing demand of under-35s realistically shrink? Already around a quarter of that age group is still living with their parents. I know many single people in their 30s who are still living in HMOs, but once you are in a couple it's almost impossible to keep living like that because the HMO dynamics get really weird. The late 20/early 30something couples I know live in 1 bedroom flats.

I don't think there are many more housing compromises the under-35s can make before they start hitting some major psychological and physiological stressors. Sure, they could theoretically go from the current 1-2 adults per bedroom towards 3 or 4 but the psychological pressure would be intense and within a year or two those people would begin to lose their ability to function at work and in their social life. Human beings are not infinitely elastic, they do have limits to what they are willing and able to tolerate, and I don't think people outside of the under-35 age group fully appreciate how close to those limits we already are.

[spyguy]

How much further can the housing demand of under-35s realistically shrink? Already around a quarter of that age group is still living with their parents. I know many single people in their 30s who are still living in HMOs, but once you are in a couple it's almost impossible to keep living like that because the HMO dynamics get really weird. The late 20/early 30something couples I know live in 1 bedroom flats.

I don't think there are many more housing compromises the under-35s can make before they start hitting some major psychological and physiological stressors. Sure, they could theoretically go from the current 1-2 adults per bedroom towards 3 or 4 but the psychological pressure would be intense and within a year or two those people would begin to lose their ability to function at work and in their social life. Human beings are not infinitely elastic, they do have limits to what they are willing and able to tolerate, and I don't think people outside of the under-35 age group fully appreciate how close to those limits we already are.

Oh I dont question its not something you'd be wanting to be doing 35.

I think housing benefit should be set to a max 30% of the local take home wage.

Equally, I think social tenants should be forced to do the same as young working people - share, slum it.

[zugzwang]

Oh I dont question its not something you'd be wanting to be doing 35.

I think housing benefit should be set to a max 30% of the local take home wage.

Equally, I think social tenants should be forced to do the same as young working people - share, slum it.

What miserable, defeatist Tory crap. It's the criminal Friends of Boris Johnson who should be forced to share and slum it, and the middle-class home owning nimbys their crimes continue to advantage, not the working poor and unemployed.

[Jason the 4th]

How much further can the housing demand of under-35s realistically shrink? Already around a quarter of that age group is still living with their parents. I know many single people in their 30s who are still living in HMOs, but once you are in a couple it's almost impossible to keep living like that because the HMO dynamics get really weird. The late 20/early 30something couples I know live in 1 bedroom flats.

I don't think there are many more housing compromises the under-35s can make before they start hitting some major psychological and physiological stressors. Sure, they could theoretically go from the current 1-2 adults per bedroom towards 3 or 4 but the psychological pressure would be intense and within a year or two those people would begin to lose their ability to function at work and in their social life. Human beings are not infinitely elastic, they do have limits to what they are willing and able to tolerate, and I don't think people outside of the under-35 age group fully appreciate how close to those limits we already are.

I think this is very very true. While I would put the point at which you're disadvataged by when you're born as being nearer 25 than 35, there's no doubt that the game really is rigged against those starting out now. Hopefully, the political dynamic wil change over the next few years to the point where something meangingful will be done about it. We certainly can't go on like this.

[@contradevian]

Oh I dont question its not something you'd be wanting to be doing 35.

I think housing benefit should be set to a max 30% of the local take home wage.

Equally, I think social tenants should be forced to do the same as young working people - share, slum it.

Because you are suffering everyone else has to suffer?

Was a time that public sector building standards, from garden estates to Sir Parker Morris advanced the standards of housing.

You have to ask yourself why the private housing sector is now driving the whole process into reverse.

[Dorkins]

I would put the point at which you're disadvataged by when you're born as being nearer 25 than 35

I think it's a spectrum. As an early 1980s baby I'm glad I'm not a late 1980s/early 1990s baby because although we are equally shafted on housing at least my age group got a degree for less than £50k and a chance at steady work instead of zero hours contracts and unpaid internships. I can see that the mid-1970s babies who managed to buy a house before they went completely stratospheric are doing better than my age group. My line manager in my last job was a mid-1970s baby and was astonished that I still hadn't bought at age 30 given that he had followed the same career path and bought his first place in his mid 20s. Both my 1950s-born parents and 1920s-born grandparents were able to raise their families on a single income, my parents in an owner-occupied detached and my grandparents in a council semi.

[The Knimbies who say No]

Because you are suffering everyone else has to suffer?

Was a time that public sector building standards, from garden estates to Sir Parker Morris advanced the standards of housing.

You have to ask yourself why the private housing sector is now driving the whole process into reverse.

And public sector rents, as you've highlighted just keep on rising well in excess of inflation. My own council will be voting on a recommended rise in council rents of over 6% in the near future.

[spyguy]

Because you are suffering everyone else has to suffer?

Was a time that public sector building standards, from garden estates to Sir Parker Morris advanced the standards of housing.

You have to ask yourself why the private housing sector is now driving the whole process into reverse.

No. That's what I had to in my 20s, not now.

The state should only intervene on housing in extreme cases, for a short period.

High social rents only benefit the LL.

They need to set in proportion to local wages.

People in soclal housing benefit as there is not a massive gap between what they get in employment and on benefits.

People not in social housing benefit as local rents are not distorted by the social sector and they don;t have to pay the extra taxes to support the nuts scheme.

Social housing scheme were a good thing.

However, the sector has gone to cr.p in the last 30-40 years.

You had the likes of Paulson scamming the scheme, with his corrupt collection of councillors and builders.

Indeed, councils these day consist of clique of property developers and the naive.

Then you've had the benefit changes which have resulted in social housing going to to the more dysfunctional rather than local need.

The points system has resulted in filling up estates with the most dysfunctional, on a supported rapid breeding scheme.

The local estates in my home town consist of nice OAPs who've been there since the houses were created, and younger scum-of-the-world type.

[@contradevian]

And public sector rents, as you've highlighted just keep on rising well in excess of inflation. My own council will be voting on a recommended rise in council rents of over 6% in the near future.

Yup at the moment a singleton on NMW will find even in the North half his income go on rent and council tax, even in a social tenancy. Traditionally it was about 25-30%

In the not too distant future a one bed social flat will be pretty much unaffordable, and only couples will be able to afford them.

So in a sense what spyguy desires is gradually happening, but the idea this will free up a load of cheap housing for everyone including him is laughable.

If there was any chance of that happening they would demolish, flatten, landscape. plant tree's or turn it into supermarket car parking, which is pretty much what is happening in my town.

The UK economy is about leverage existing property assets to the hilt and always has been. Its basically a mega property based hedge fund.

Edited February 15, 2014 by aSecureTenant