Halifax Jan 2021

[Who am I?]

1 hour ago, Twenty Something said:

But he can. I don't buy for a second that he has 50% of properties unavailable to him unless he is looking in some very exclusive postcodes, which by his admission he is not. Come on - 500k in pretty much any part of the country will buy you a fantastic house. Sure you can point at pockets of London and some other parts of the country and go well I can't afford jack all, but then that is where compromise comes in. 

I don't care whether you buy it or not. It's my reality.

It's not some exclusive suburb. It's a normal middle class area. It's not a small area either. The are I'm looking in is miles across. Right now there are 28 pages of properties on Rightmove in my area (most of them STC). The first five pages are all over 1 million quid. It's 16 pages before it gets to 500k. Most of my friend live in this area. None of them earn more than about 60k. All of them now live in houses worth more than 600k. All of them bought 10 years ago for about 350. Many of them think the same as you, that I'm somehow being too picky or something. Apparently I just don't earn enough to live next door to them.

 

insane.

 

 

[Deckard]

10 hours ago, Twenty Something said:

maybe there are some statistics somewhere that back you up.

Hello? Are you for real?

10 hours ago, Twenty Something said:

I don't feel poor either

I said poorer than your parents, which is a simple statement of fact, based on what you said yourself in your previous post.

10 hours ago, Twenty Something said:

I'm just at peace with the whole thing

Hence my remark about you being delighted.

But let me ask you a question: if we continue along the current path of neverending HPI vastly outstripping wage growth, how do you expect your kids to be able to afford even basic shelter?

[dugsbody]

10 hours ago, Who am I? said:

I don't care whether you buy it or not. It's my reality.

It's not some exclusive suburb. It's a normal middle class area. It's not a small area either. The are I'm looking in is miles across. Right now there are 28 pages of properties on Rightmove in my area (most of them STC). The first five pages are all over 1 million quid. It's 16 pages before it gets to 500k. Most of my friend live in this area. None of them earn more than about 60k. All of them now live in houses worth more than 600k. All of them bought 10 years ago for about 350. Many of them think the same as you, that I'm somehow being too picky or something. Apparently I just don't earn enough to live next door to them.

 

insane.

 

 

You can always find out who really believes this sort of nonsense.

Just ask them if they are ok if properties go back to the price they bought for plus a little extra to account for minor wage inflation. So maybe £370k.

You'll soon find out who really believes that properties are "just as affordable".

[dugsbody]

15 hours ago, Twenty Something said:

The issue seems to be you are a single man looking for a family home? Add in a partner earning even average wage and you have around £650k. This in my view is the shift we have seen over the past 30 - 40 years. When my parents brought, my dad was the earner and my mum stayed at home with us. This was how things were. Now both people have careers, and therefore the cost of family homes has gone up significantly. You might want a large detached house, but you are competing against couples who between them earn the same / more than you, so you are onto a loser from the off. If you look to flats or smaller properties, you will be competing against first time buyers, and I'm sure you can have your pick. 

 

From having brought last year, and being of a similar age to you (early 40's), this was the key to my buying the house I have now in probably a similar area to what you are looking at. As a couple it nearly doubled my mortgage offer, and I now have a family home to hopefully raise a family in. As a single man, a flat would have been the extent of what I could have afforded, and to be honest I have no real complaint about that - why should I be able to buy a 3 bed house? 

Maybe because earning a top 2% salary in the country you'd expect to be able to afford something better than a postman could have in the 1990s?

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=67630825&sale=8938552&country=england

Even a top 2% salary can't afford that house until they've saved up an enormous deposit. The issue is that people are now growing up, looking around them and seeing that they can never have the same quality of life that a previous generation had. And never mind the top 2%, where does the postman now live?

There are reasons why this has happened, almost entirely down to monetary policy and double incomes becoming the norm, but don't just hand wave it away and pretend that people are just expecting too much. 

Edited February 8, 2021 by dugsbody

[nickb1]

On 05/02/2021 at 15:38, TheCountOfNowhere said:

They try and make it sound like it's a bad thing.

Vile Vile Vile BBC

BBC local radio is even worse. They describe slow rates of increase as house prices "not performing" (Radio Berks about a year ago; I nearly crashed the car. Only way to get a crash).

[Smiley George]

32 minutes ago, dugsbody said:

Even a top 2% salary can't afford that house until they've saved up an enormous deposit. The issue is that people are now growing up, looking around them and seeing that they can never have the same quality of life that a previous generation had. And never mind the top 2%, where does the postman now live?

100% this...a succinct appraisal of the current situation.

[Si1]

16 minutes ago, nickb1 said:

BBC local radio is even worse. They describe slow rates of increase as house prices "not performing" (Radio Berks about a year ago; I nearly crashed the car. Only way to get a crash).

I believe Victoria Derbyshire once called a caller 'vile' for suggesting lower house prices were a good thing....

[Former postman]

37 minutes ago, dugsbody said:

Even a top 2% salary can't afford that house until they've saved up an enormous deposit. The issue is that people are now growing up, looking around them and seeing that they can never have the same quality of life that a previous generation had. And never mind the top 2%, where does the postman now live?

There are reasons why this has happened, almost entirely down to monetary policy and double incomes becoming the norm, but don't just hand wave it away and pretend that people are just expecting too much. 

Good question. 

Edited February 8, 2021 by Postman

[Deckard]

2 minutes ago, Smiley George said:

100% this...a succinct appraisal of the current situation.

'sall good, @Twenty Something is cool with it.

Gotta love the sheeple...

[Former postman]

 

2 minutes ago, Postman said:

Good question. 

In a one bedroom council flat at age 33, frantically saving with his partner. Looks like we won't be starting a family til I'm at least 35. 

[NoHPCinTheUK]

If you’re on a six figures salary in London good chances are you can get a similar job somewhere else and buy something with much more price value ratio in the UK and abroad. 
Families, especially in London and the SE should really start voting with their feet. 

[NoHPCinTheUK]

10 minutes ago, Postman said:

 

In a one bedroom council flat at age 33, frantically saving with his partner. Looks like we won't be starting a family til I'm at least 35. 

I could have written this message. Same age, same flat, same saving as much as we can. However, I decided last year I won’t let this situation to dictate my life path. Next year I will start my own family and if anything, I will move to somewhere more family friendly. Maybe the west or the north or maybe somewhere on the continent. 
But I know one thing: I won’t be in the situation where I would need to decide if a new pair of shoes for my kids will sink my monthly budget or not. I have an education, skills and experience and I won’t be living as a XIX century dockworker. 

[jiltedjen]

The problem is with london many people think they are on decent salaries, but in reality its a poor salary with a london premium.

A lot of people will find their decent salary is actually below average when they move out of london, its tricky as a lot of people will find they are not as valuable as they thought.

Earning real term poor salary in the big smoke and living in terrible conditions is pretty moronic, might as well be poor outside of london, come to terms with their real self worth and have a better quality of life as 'one of the plebs' as they actually are.

The issue comes when people see their 'decent' salary as decent when its not at all, people derive a lot of self worth from that, especially when all they have to their name is crummy flat.

People are their own worse enemy, how many times do we hear londoners say 'i earn above average i deserve a decent middle class lifestyle' when the reality is that they are just bottom feeders to real wealth in the capital, with near zero worth outside the capital, even outside the capital they would struggle to have a middle class life-style as the reality is that they were never middle class to start with

 

[Twenty Something]

4 hours ago, Deckard said:

Hello? Are you for real?

I said poorer than your parents, which is a simple statement of fact, based on what you said yourself in your previous post.

Hence my remark about you being delighted.

But let me ask you a question: if we continue along the current path of neverending HPI vastly outstripping wage growth, how do you expect your kids to be able to afford even basic shelter?

I guess at some point my kids will inherit the large London house that I have with my partner, and assuming I live a long and happy life, it will be all brought and paid for. They will also inherit a substantial shares portfolio that I have been building the past few years, and will continue to build until they are 21 (they're not born yet!) This I think is at the heart of many arguments on here. It isn't that houses are unaffordable, but that they are unaffordable to most. Many people obviously can afford to buy, and they do in their hundreds of thousands each year. I don't think that this is a fair or equitable situation, and it explains why the government needs to step in with HTB etc etc. Housing in my view on the 2nd rung upwards is sustained through the same money moving around the system, and has almost become detached from needing new money at the bottom. You have two markets, the first time buyer government supported market, and then the rest of the market populated by those already in the system with significant equity. 

 

The top 10% of the country holds the vast majority of the wealth, with the top 0.1% holding unimaginable wealth. Assuming that I have two children, and in 40 years time I kick the bucket, they will inherit a substantial amount of wealth from myself and my partner, which yes will perhaps stretch less far, but still it will give them a substantial deposit. If we don't have kids, well my brother's two kids will inherit my half of the wealth, and then his ontop. They will be extremely well off with two large London houses to split up.

 

This won't help them until they are into their 40's, perhaps 50's, and this is certainly an issue with them trying to buy something in their 20's, but they could well be in the position of not needing a mortgage fullstop so it perhaps isn't too bad a situation for them. As above, any child of mine will also get a significant sum of money on their 21st birthday for a deposit - hopefully a six figure sum depending on shares over the next two decades. 

 

I'm not sure where I said I am poorer than my parents? Can't remember typing that anywhere in this thread? 

[Twenty Something]

3 hours ago, Deckard said:

'sall good, @Twenty Something is cool with it.

Gotta love the sheeple...

I think I have posted multiple times that I don't think this is an equitable situation, but I am at peace with it. As to your parting comment, does it strike you that the sheeple as you put it have actually been right for the past two decades? It was a term in use in 2003 when I joined this site, and the postman who brought then is sat in his mortgage free house whilst you are on here trying to assume intellectual superiority on the background of a reality that doesn't back you up. Would you say that the predictions of property armageddon over the past two decades have been right or wrong? Assuming you base your answer in the reality that prices have gone up by a huge amount barring a brief blip in 2008, are the sheeple actually the ones laughing at you? 

[Twenty Something]

3 hours ago, dugsbody said:

Maybe because earning a top 2% salary in the country you'd expect to be able to afford something better than a postman could have in the 1990s?

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=67630825&sale=8938552&country=england

Even a top 2% salary can't afford that house until they've saved up an enormous deposit. The issue is that people are now growing up, looking around them and seeing that they can never have the same quality of life that a previous generation had. And never mind the top 2%, where does the postman now live?

There are reasons why this has happened, almost entirely down to monetary policy and double incomes becoming the norm, but don't just hand wave it away and pretend that people are just expecting too much. 

So to humour you, from doing a bit of reading a postman earns around £23,000 per annum in 2021. The house you linked to was £145,000 in 1998. So using today's salary in 1998, the postman requires a mortgage of around six times earnings, so I can only imagine that house would have been 10 - 12 times earnings for a postman in 1998. Maybe some of the postal workers on here know what they earned in 1998 - I did a summer holiday job for about 6 quid an hour I think it was. That house is not a first time buyer house, nor is it somewhere a single person outside of banking and top level jobs would ever have been able to afford.

 

I do however agree with your premise that things are becoming increasingly more difficult. I think we both agree that if you are not part of a couple you are priced out of a lot of property. I think we both agree that things aren't fair at present, and I think we both agree that various government props have caused the market to become distorted. Where we seem to disagree is that someone with £550k at their disposal cannot afford a decent house. It might not be that house pictured, but that is where they need a partner also earning similar amounts. This may be fair, it may not, but it is the situation we are faced with today.

 

The system is setup for two people earning good money, getting a bit of luck perhaps along the way, and selling their soul to the man for 25 - 30 years. If you don't want to play by the rules that the elite put in place then fair or not you're not going very far. 

[ST675R]

9 minutes ago, Twenty Something said:

The system is setup for two people earning good money, getting a bit of luck perhaps along the way, and selling their soul to the man for 25 - 30 years. If you don't want to play by the rules that the elite put in place then fair or not you're not going very far. 

Seriously the current system can't be predicated on that. It's just not realistic.

[Deckard]

21 minutes ago, Twenty Something said:

I guess at some point my kids will inherit the large London house that I have with my partner, and assuming I live a long and happy life, it will be all brought and paid for.

Let's hope they don't inherit your spelling skills too...

Seriously though, do you really think it's fair that the young of tomorrow should wait for their parents to croak, in order to be able to get shelter?

Is it even sustainable, from a social perspective? I think not.

The rest of your post is just pathetic d1ck waggling.

You know nothing about me: I benefitted massively from HPI in the past. It set me and my family up for life. And you are not the only one who has financial assets, dude.

But I don't  brag about it here, and belittle other posters for complaining about the state of the housing market in the UK.

It's simply unfair and unsustainable, and no one here gives a toss if you are "at peace with it".  Go and brag on Mumsnet, they'll welcome you with open arms.

[sta100]

22 minutes ago, Twenty Something said:

The system is setup for two people earning good money, getting a bit of luck perhaps along the way, and selling their soul to the man for 25 - 30 years. If you don't want to play by the rules that the elite put in place then fair or not you're not going very far. 

 

The system isn't set up for anyone. Money that goes into bricks and mortar is money we lose for innovation and public services.

Houses are increasing in value, while quality of life is decreasing rapidly. That's set to continue until the vast majority are anxious and depressed. It's something like 1 in 3 amongst the young now.

[sta100]

44 minutes ago, Twenty Something said:

I think I have posted multiple times that I don't think this is an equitable situation, but I am at peace with it. As to your parting comment, does it strike you that the sheeple as you put it have actually been right for the past two decades? It was a term in use in 2003 when I joined this site, and the postman who brought then is sat in his mortgage free house whilst you are on here trying to assume intellectual superiority on the background of a reality that doesn't back you up. Would you say that the predictions of property armageddon over the past two decades have been right or wrong? Assuming you base your answer in the reality that prices have gone up by a huge amount barring a brief blip in 2008, are the sheeple actually the ones laughing at you? 

As someone who didn't buy a house around the 2007 period and has made wealth of their business (I can afford a decent house in cash now), I'm not laughing at anyone. I've experienced first hand how HPI and it's cheerleaders are stifling any form of ambition, innovation, or pride in their work. It's a sorry state of affairs.

[sta100]

15 hours ago, Who am I? said:

I don't care whether you buy it or not. It's my reality.

It's not some exclusive suburb. It's a normal middle class area. It's not a small area either. The are I'm looking in is miles across. Right now there are 28 pages of properties on Rightmove in my area (most of them STC). The first five pages are all over 1 million quid. It's 16 pages before it gets to 500k. Most of my friend live in this area. None of them earn more than about 60k. All of them now live in houses worth more than 600k. All of them bought 10 years ago for about 350. Many of them think the same as you, that I'm somehow being too picky or something. Apparently I just don't earn enough to live next door to them.

 

insane.

 

 

It sucks your ability to give a toss or want to contribute. Studied and worked hard? Saved? Should have just been a bomad kid with 10 years of HPI gains doing very little.

Message for youngsters, if you want to get on in this life:  borrow as much as possible, buy houses, let them out. Don't be an idiot and become a nurse or something.

[sta100]

5 hours ago, Deckard said:

Hello? Are you for real?

I said poorer than your parents, which is a simple statement of fact, based on what you said yourself in your previous post.

Hence my remark about you being delighted.

But let me ask you a question: if we continue along the current path of neverending HPI vastly outstripping wage growth, how do you expect your kids to be able to afford even basic shelter?

Sadly not only for real but very common.

Lots of people look at their house price and think it's gone up so that's ok because I'll be able to leave it to the kids.

The same kids who have had had 3 major life crises by the time they're 22 and have to manage their mental health on an hourly basis. Yet 2 and 2 just can't be put together on this one.

[Deckard]

4 minutes ago, sta100 said:

Sadly not only for real but very common.

Lots of people look at their house price and think it's gone up so that's ok because I'll be able to leave it to the kids.

The same kids who have had had 3 major life crises by the time they're 22 and have to manage their mental health on an hourly basis. Yet 2 and 2 just can't be put together on this one.

Yes, it's shocking and sad. 

[Twenty Something]

51 minutes ago, Deckard said:

Let's hope they don't inherit your spelling skills too...

Seriously though, do you really think it's fair that the young of tomorrow should wait for their parents to croak, in order to be able to get shelter?

Is it even sustainable, from a social perspective? I think not.

The rest of your post is just pathetic d1ck waggling.

You know nothing about me: I benefitted massively from HPI in the past. It set me and my family up for life. And you are not the only one who has financial assets, dude.

But I don't  brag about it here, and belittle other posters for complaining about the state of the housing market in the UK.

It's simply unfair and unsustainable, and no one here gives a toss if you are "at peace with it".  Go and brag on Mumsnet, they'll welcome you with open arms.

I don't know how many times I can post in a thread that I don't think that the current situation is fair, and I don't think it is equitable - have you actually read anything? Not sure what I am bragging about either? I have been attempting to explain my thought process in that the system is not setup to support those who aren't lucky enough to have parents / relatives who can help them into the market. I don't think that the situation I have is different from large swathes of the middle classes, and this is why the gap between the haves and the have nots is growing. 

 

I'm not entirely sure why this has got your back up, and from what you have posted it seems that by and large we agree? Not sure how much more simply I can put it? 

Edited February 8, 2021 by Twenty Something

[Deckard]

15 minutes ago, Twenty Something said:

I'm not entirely sure why this has got your back up

Because you disputed a new poster's statement lamenting the state of things - for no apparent reason other than devolving into self-congratulatory, condescending babble when challenged.

Why did you feel compelled to do that?