Is Life Harder Today? You Bet It Is!

[London Landlady]

I'm not looking for sympathy, a helping hand, a state hand-out, or any other kind of charity from the older generations.

I would appreciate it if you'd stop buying-up all the affordable housing that *should* be bought by young people and young families though.

How can we compete financially with middle-aged boomers sitting on £100,000's of equity when it comes to buying a flat/house - generally speaking we can't!

Forgive me if I'd rather start a family instead of funding your pension.

Quite a few FTB's get help from parents who MEW equity out of their house - it also avoids inheritance tax later on.

[OzzMosiz]

Quite a few FTB's get help from parents who MEW equity out of their house - it also avoids inheritance tax later on.

Me and my brothers have never had any help from our parents, probably because they are not that well off. I would never ask my mum to pull equity out of her house to help me!

[since the beginning]

Sorry - I didn't make it clear - it's the proportion of affordablr homes which are empty - not the commercial ones.

The affordable homes are empty as apparently either not enough people qualify or some other reason.

Probably not really affordable. For instance alot of people are probably on less than £25,000 affordable to them would be £80,000. These affordable flats are probably more.

[bandylegs]

The affordable homes are empty because they are not affordable!!!

And, anyone who could afford them is canny enough to know that spending £105k to buy 67% share (+ £50pcm rent + service charge) of a pokey 2 bed flat on the edge of a council estate is not really good econimcs.

In order to afford this a single person would have to be on about £30K a year to buy that flat based on income multiple of 3-3.5. I would be surprised if there were any couples earning this between them in the immediate area around these flats. Yet they target people within a very specific post code around the development.

Funnily enough - one of the criteria for being accepted for this scheme is that you can not afford to buy on the open market. That makes a bit of a joke of the scheme because if you earned anough to buy one of their shared ownership properties you earn enough to buy on the open market!!!

There is a lot of confusion about 'affordable homes' and many developers have jumped on the bandwagon. The proper affordable home scheme set up by the government targets key workers and is only available in certain geographic areas.

Most of the affordable homes advertised by developers are nothing more than an opprtunity to buy a percentage of the property at the market rate and pay full rent on the rest of the percentage. It isn't cheaper - it just means they can sell houses to people who can't afford to buy them and keep the full asking price of houses artificially high.

Cheers 2005, it's stuff like this that makes the site worthwhile, you can learn so much.

I think that LL's response completely missed the point.

I also want to say that I think that having to rely upon your parents for a deposit is hardly an acceptable solution. It would more fairly be described as a symptom of the problem.

[theChuz]

Quite a few FTB's get help from parents who MEW equity out of their house - it also avoids inheritance tax later on.

Quite a few = Some, personally we live in a rented council house, i will never inherit anything, i will never have anything given to me financially, i work a shift rotation that most people wouldnt touch, i dont do anything illegal, im constantly doing various courses to better myself. Ive not being to the doctor since i was ~ 16, ive only used up A+E resources once in the past 8 years*. I pay my tax's, NI, road tax's. I do everything i am supposed to do.

So lets not forget that quite a few priced out FTB'rs are exactly like me.

* When p*ssed do not pick up a lit garden candle so you can pretend its an olympic torch, the molten wax that pools in the candle tends to come out in one go and remove a large area of skin instantly.

[Guest rigsby II]

I would appreciate it if you'd stop buying-up all the affordable housing that *should* be bought by young people and young families though.

HPC, I know what you are saying, but really the housing stock doesn't *belong* to young people any more than anyone else. Its a free market anyone can join in. Its just like any other investment vehicle. Morals don't come into it at all.

Forgive me if I'd rather start a family instead of funding your pension.

How do you work out that you are funding *my* pension ? You mean the state pension that I probably won't get in another 24 years of paying my stamp, even though I've paid in for the last 28 years ?

[2005]

I am talking about London.

Apparently (I'm using apparently as it is what I have been told) ALL new developments MUST have a proportion of affordable housing - 30-50% [i think that this is Ken Livingstone's policy.]

Theyare not all on council estates - there is one which has just received planning round here which is on prime residential.

I am not familiar with London but I am familiar with the idea that all new developments must have a percentage of 'affordable housing' on them. In my expereince this usually ends up in a number of ways;

First: the development gets planning permission and then towards the end of the project, when everything is built and they are just about to build the affordable housing it suddenly ..runs out of cash/space/potential buyers/the market has changed/it is no longer profitable/legislation has changed..etc etc (delete as appropriate)

Second - they build an estae of 4/5 bed luxery homes and just round the back - in the car park- out of sight- in the grubby ex storage part - they build a few pokey flats that look like council flats.

Three - they are creative with what 'affordable' means and price any real first time buyers on low/average incomes who would benefit from this out of the market.

Builders/developers are businesses - they do not build homes that could sell for £250k and then just give a few away at reduced prices to those on low/average incomes.

Even if those homes are built they stand out on the new development like a sore thumb. You can usually buy a cheaper house on a road of similar houses than you can an 'affordable home' (cr'p, pokey flat) and live surrounded buy 4/5 bed detached houses.

If first time buyers are priced out of the market it is because houses are too expensive - no amount of creativity will change that. All these schemes do is keep houses artificially high and that doesn't benefit anyone.

[London Landlady]

Quite a few = Some, personally we live in a rented council house, i will never inherit anything, i will never have anything given to me financially, i work a shift rotation that most people wouldnt touch, i dont do anything illegal, im constantly doing various courses to better myself. Ive not being to the doctor since i was ~ 16, ive only used up A+E resources once in the past 8 years*. I pay my tax's, NI, road tax's. I do everything i am supposed to do.

So lets not forget that quite a few priced out FTB'rs are exactly like me.

* When p*ssed do not pick up a lit garden candle so you can pretend its an olympic torch, the molten wax that pools in the candle tends to come out in one go and remove a large area of skin instantly.

This is the bit I don't quite understand.

Are you saying you live with your parents in a rented council house?

If so, you will be in exactly the same situation as they are.

[Ritters]

How many more times does it have to be stated on this mong-board, it's not a conspiracy FFS :angry:

Does this sound like today's 'housing ladder' to you?

[munro]

The eastern europeans who work here consider us ungrateful, winging, and lazy, most i know have multiple jobs and work 100 ->120 hours a week, they think were winging it and relaxing when we could be working our asses off (for what they consider alot of money)...

Of course this might be because our average wage is 5 times as big, or we could be lazy. One lad i know was bemussed by the other people working in the factory being so keen to leave. These economic migrants consider a job a privelidge, and are lapping it up. One girl i know tells me she sending £800 a mounth out of the country....

Life is harder, but not as hard as you think, and not as hard in other places. Interestingly all the EE i know dont want to stay in the uk as it is too expensive to settle here permanantly, they love there own countries, and believe there will be ALOT more opertunities in there own countries in future

Point is they can come over here for 3 or 4 years, earn what is for them a lot of money, go home and buy a house/farm/business. There is no equivalent in this country - where could some poor hard-working UK person go to live in squalor for a few years, work their butt off, and come home with enough dosh to do the same? I'm talking about average people here, not those who have saleable skills (the sorts of people who don't work in factories, building sites, etc). Probably find the enterprising E Europeans have even driven wages down in places like Dubai.

It isn't because our average wages are 5 times higher, it's because the cost of living is much much more than 5 times higher. Until, of course, all our brave boys go over there, use their UK housing wealth to leverage loans on all their property, and reduce them to serfs in their own country. Then see how they feel. I'm quite sure they won't like it up 'em, so to speak.

[underpressuretobuy]

HPC, I know what you are saying, but really the housing stock doesn't *belong* to young people any more than anyone else. Its a free market anyone can join in. Its just like any other investment vehicle. Morals don't come into it at all.

I think the point that HPC was making was not that housing belongs to young people but rather was a specific point about affordable housing.

Affordable housing is subject to regulations about who can and cannot buy it and therefore in this specific case it is not 'a free market anyone can join in'.

Affordable housing is supposed to help with problems such as making sure key workers like nurses can afford somewhere to live local to their work.

I think HPC was referring to the fact that some unscrupulous BTL landlords have been illegally buying up these properties making it even harder for FTBs and key workers to get onto the property ladder.

I don't think HPC needs to worry though, most affordable housing is new build and like a new car it loses some of its value immediately after purchase, when prices are rising this isn't a problem, in a house price crash it is a problem. But the person left holding the negative equity will be a BTL landlord who acted illegally and not a hard working nurse. I don't see the downside.

[HPCheese]

HPC, I know what you are saying, but really the housing stock doesn't *belong* to young people any more than anyone else. Its a free market anyone can join in. Its just like any other investment vehicle. Morals don't come into it at all.

Right. In the same way that because one kid is bigger than another he gets to push him around in the playground. Aren't there supposed to be systems in place to make sure this doesn't happen? We don't live in a darwinist soceity where the strong prosper and the weak are trampled on. If there was true capitalism in the housing market we'd all be renting from a handfull of multi-nationals and be investing in shares in up & coming towns.

How do you work out that you are funding *my* pension ? You mean the state pension that I probably won't get in another 24 years of paying my stamp, even though I've paid in for the last 28 years ?

Given your name I'm assuming you're a landlord. By saying "your pension" I was speakign rhetorically of course, althought you could be my landlord for all I know. Either way, someone is paying their wages into your 'retirement vehicle' instead of their own mortgage.

[theChuz]

This is the bit I don't quite understand.

Are you saying you live with your parents in a rented council house?

If so, you will be in exactly the same situation as they are.

Yes, will with my mum, i am in exactly the same situation as her. What would you suggest i do?

EDITED:

Actually not exactly the same situation at all, but we both live in the same council house.

Edited December 1, 2005 by theChuz

[2005]

Yes, will with my mum, i am in exactly the same situation as her. What would you suggest i do?

Just as uggestion but is there any chance of you buying the council house now?

If not...

Will you be entitled to take over the tenancy of the house when your mum (sorry if this sounds awful but parents do pass away in the end) passes away.

Could you then buy it at a later date?

I'm not sure what your situation is or if you would want to buy the house etc but it is an option if that is what you want to do.

[London Landlady]

Yes, will with my mum, i am in exactly the same situation as her. What would you suggest i do?

The point I'm trying to make is that some FTB's are in the same position as their parents - yet seem to be unhappy with the situation.

[Guest rigsby II]

Given your name I'm assuming you're a landlord.

Never assume anything. I wouldn't dare to assume that you were some top-hatted tw*at.

Someone is paying their wages into your 'retirement vehicle' instead of their own mortgage.

I wish...

[Scooter]

I am talking about London.

Apparently (I'm using apparently as it is what I have been told) ALL new developments MUST have a proportion of affordable housing - 30-50% [i think that this is Ken Livingstone's policy.]

Theyare not all on council estates - there is one which has just received planning round here which is on prime residential.

Same near me, Swiss Cottage "Visage" project. £1m upwards for a penthouse with health centre and pool but about 20% mandated social housing so you might just see Vicky down in the gym. Apologies for snobbery but if I was paying that much, I might be a bit annoyed that my neighbours were getting it free or heavily subsidised...

[Alfie Moon]

Anyone think it has got 'harder' to buy an average priced house over the last 8 or so years? If not why are you a house price bear?

Anyone more worried than they were 10 years ago that it has become 'harder' to ensure that you will have a decent pension when you retire?

Do I think my students have it financially harder than I did when I did my first degree? You bet I do. I received a full grant and was easily able to complete my undergraduate degree without building up debt. Average student debt currently about £15k to £20k and rising.

[Casual Observer]

that these people will have a continued vested interest in restricting the number of houses built in order to create a shortage that will maintain the value of their houses. These people will be strongly in favour of more immigration as the sharp decline in the birth rate means that there are simply not enough young people of UK birth to rent there surplus properties.

What planet are you on? If you ask 1000 people of my generation whether they hold these views they would probably look at you as if you were a loony.

[theChuz]

The point I'm trying to make is that some FTB's are in the same position as their parents - yet seem to be unhappy with the situation.

Of course im unhappy with it, my mum doesnt care, she actually likes living in a coucnil house, i do not but i have little choice. My mum used to live in a mortgaged property with about an acre of land as a garden, it was a great rural settings to be brought up in, dad was an abusive alcholic who used to kick the cr*p out of us all the time,, belts, sticks ect, so my mum finally divorced him which meant that when i was 15 ish we had to live in a council house, been in the same place ever since.

To touch on a point you made 2005 i intend on buying this place when it gets cheaper, my mum has no savings at all (comes from having nothing for so long, when you finally have some money you spend it all the time) She has a limited pension pot - Only started 10 years ago. So my intention is to save enough money to buy this place for her outright, whilst starting my own mortgage with next to no deposit. At the end of the day the house is a sh*t hole anyways, bad location, small, i.e living room and kitchen with bedroom and bathroom upstairs, no central heating, tiny garden, heavy smoking atmousphere, still, when it rains i dont get wet, when its cold i can put on more cloths and put the gas fire on, not much wind comes through the windows, so its more than some have borrow.

I do not want to live on a council estate all my life, correction, i will not live on a council estate for the rest of my life.

[2005]

Same near me, Swiss Cottage "Visage" project. £1m upwards for a penthouse with health centre and pool but about 20% mandated social housing so you might just see Vicky down in the gym. Apologies for snobbery but if I was paying that much, I might be a bit annoyed that my neighbours were getting it free or heavily subsidised...

They won't be getting it free or subsidised - that's the point. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If apartments are that expensive then I can imagine that the 'affordable' housing will probably be an option to buy an ever decreasing share of an apartment and pay full rent on the rest of it.

These shared homes aren't cheaper. They are not called 'cheap' housing - they are 'affordable' housing.

All that means is that if a couple can't afford an apartment at £250K because they can only get a mortgage for £150K then they buy £150K worth of the apartment and pay rent on the rest.

The idea is silly. If a bank thinks that a couple can only afford to pay a mortgage of £150K then they can not afford to pay the mortgage plus the addtional rent on the rest of the flat!!!!

It has nothing to do with subsidising the cost of a property - it is a creative way of getting FTB to get a mortgage and carry on buying property at the full market value (it's just that they can only afford to buy 1/2 or 1/3 of it)

[London Landlady]

Of course im unhappy with it, my mum doesnt care, she actually likes living in a coucnil house, i do not but i have little choice. My mum used to live in a mortgaged property with about an acre of land as a garden, it was a great rural settings to be brought up in, dad was an abusive alcholic who used to kick the cr*p out of us all the time,, belts, sticks ect, so my mum finally divorced him which meant that when i was 15 ish we had to live in a council house, been in the same place ever since.

To touch on a point you made 2005 i intend on buying this place when it gets cheaper, my mum has no savings at all (comes from having nothing for so long, when you finally have some money you spend it all the time) She has a limited pension pot - Only started 10 years ago. So my intention is to save enough money to buy this place for her outright, whilst starting my own mortgage with next to no deposit. At the end of the day the house is a sh*t hole anyways, bad location, small, i.e living room and kitchen with bedroom and bathroom upstairs, no central heating, tiny garden, heavy smoking atmousphere, still, when it rains i dont get wet, when its cold i can put on more cloths and put the gas fire on, not much wind comes through the windows, so its more than some have borrow.

I do not want to live on a council estate all my life, correction, i will not live on a council estate for the rest of my life.

That is extremely sad.

I am horrified that she did not get any divorce settlement at all - that seems completely unjust.

Good luck.

[2005]

Of course im unhappy with it, my mum doesnt care, she actually likes living in a coucnil house, i do not but i have little choice. My mum used to live in a mortgaged property with about an acre of land as a garden, it was a great rural settings to be brought up in, dad was an abusive alcholic who used to kick the cr*p out of us all the time,, belts, sticks ect, so my mum finally divorced him which meant that when i was 15 ish we had to live in a council house, been in the same place ever since.

To touch on a point you made 2005 i intend on buying this place when it gets cheaper, my mum has no savings at all (comes from having nothing for so long, when you finally have some money you spend it all the time) She has a limited pension pot - Only started 10 years ago. So my intention is to save enough money to buy this place for her outright, whilst starting my own mortgage with next to no deposit. At the end of the day the house is a sh*t hole anyways, bad location, small, i.e living room and kitchen with bedroom and bathroom upstairs, no central heating, tiny garden, heavy smoking atmousphere, still, when it rains i dont get wet, when its cold i can put on more cloths and put the gas fire on, not much wind comes through the windows, so its more than some have borrow.

I do not want to live on a council estate all my life, correction, i will not live on a council estate for the rest of my life.

The Chuz

I know you have probably looked into all the options but have you tried your local council and housing asociations to see if they can help (that is if you want to move out of your current home).

I know there is a common perception that there is no point trying this because waiting lists are so high but that is not always the case. The biggest demand (and highest waiting lists) is for family sized houses.

Some time ago many housing associations started building flats for single people because they could see the problems young single people had with affordable housing.

It's worth a try putting you name down. You may get lucky with a lovely new flat.

It seems like a long shot but near me there have been times in the last few years when the council etc have actually be advertising for tenants for certain flats!!!!

[MarkG]

If you ask 1000 people of my generation whether they hold these views they would probably look at you as if you were a loony.

Meanwhile, they'll continue voting for politicians who support just those policies.

The Boomers have been voting for more free stuff from other people's taxes for most of their lives, while claiming there's no 'conspiracy' to loot the wealth of their kids. Actions speak a heck of a lot louder than words... their entire lifestyle has been built on borrowing more and more from the future: i.e. us.

Edited December 1, 2005 by MarkG

[Scooter]

They won't be getting it free or subsidised - that's the point. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If apartments are that expensive then I can imagine that the 'affordable' housing will probably be an option to buy an ever decreasing share of an apartment and pay full rent on the rest of it.

These shared homes aren't cheaper. They are not called 'cheap' housing - they are 'affordable' housing.

All that means is that if a couple can't afford an apartment at £250K because they can only get a mortgage for £150K then they buy £150K worth of the apartment and pay rent on the rest.

The idea is silly. If a bank thinks that a couple can only afford to pay a mortgage of £150K then they can not afford to pay the mortgage plus the addtional rent on the rest of the flat!!!!

It has nothing to do with subsidising the cost of a property - it is a creative way of getting FTB to get a mortgage and carry on buying property at the full market value (it's just that they can only afford to buy 1/2 or 1/3 of it)

Possibly, in which case they are being well and truly shafted for a part share. However I think the social housing may be rented to council tenants and title kept public, whcih was Camden's requirement before granting pp.