Relative values, becoming very introspective.

I am not sure that earnings have risen quite as fast as house prices, certainly around here anyway. My DD is earning just under twice what I was when I bought my house (sold when I bot married). I bought it on my own, a 2 bed end of terraced, and still managed to pay commuter fares. This same house has now gone on the market with a few improvements, but no extensions, for 10 times my DD's annual salary.

I know what the OP means though; every now and again, for no apparent reason, I will remind myself that I have just paid 16/- for a Mars Bar, or a week's housekeeping for some when I have paid for a simple lunch for two.

Norah Moving house is not necessarily a waste of money. We have moved 4 times in 55 years and the current value of the house we now live in is more than twice the current value of our first home - and is twice the size. We use every inch of it

A friend who’s a little bit older, told me that when she was in her early 20s her mother urged her to buy a house - a Georgian or Queen Anne (forget which) terrace - in an area of London that was a bit rough (and despite gentrification, still is, in parts.)

At the time (probably mid 1960s) they were going for £1000.
But she didn’t feel like buying then.

A year later they’d gone up to £2000, so she thought her mother had been right, and bought one.
She still lives in it.
Obviously it would have needed a lot of modernisation, but it would now sell for around £1m.

Witzend

A friend who’s a little bit older, told me that when she was in her early 20s her mother urged her to buy a house - a Georgian or Queen Anne (forget which) terrace - in an area of London that was a bit rough (and despite gentrification, still is, in parts.)

At the time (probably mid 1960s) they were going for £1000.
But she didn’t feel like buying then.

A year later they’d gone up to £2000, so she thought her mother had been right, and bought one.
She still lives in it.
Obviously it would have needed a lot of modernisation, but it would now sell for around £1m.

Brilliant example.

We've owned and lived in our home well over 60 years. Very fortunately we've never had the expenses of moving house to relocate for a job. Our mortgage was paid over 35 years ago. We could've never afforded a different mortgage.

Our very old home has required modernisation, revision of loft for 2 bedrooms and storage, adding an oversize conservatory, work on trades entrance/ laundry. Original 1950s price of £1800 then adding costs listed above - we've spent nearing £20K for a modest home on an enormous piece of land. Seemingly reasonable to prices today.

I remember when I was expecting my first son I had a walk every day and stopped at Tesco for yogurt that cost 6d.
A few years later we bought a house for £4000. It had 3 bedrooms a good-sized garden anda driveway. We sold it 10 years later for £21000.

My income fluctuates as I'm self employed but on a good couple of weeks I can earn what my parents paid for their large 3 bed house in the 50s.

HettyBetty

My income fluctuates as I'm self employed but on a good couple of weeks I can earn what my parents paid for their large 3 bed house in the 50s.

Astonishing, isn't it? Wages have truly gone up.

Any of our children could purchase our home using a weeks income.

Just back from Las Vegas where a 8oz fillet steak was $80 and the chips were extra. Wonderful trip but horrendous prices .
All you could eat breakfast $30, my appetite couldn’t justify that price

gulp!!

The restaurant I went to on Saturday evening charges £35 for a fillet steak but it does include a large mushroom, a stem of roasted vine tomatoes and chips.
A sauce is extra but can’t remember the price.
We didn’t indulge.
My GD had a salad and I had posh fish and chips both £15.
It was lovely.

In the early 1960s my husband was a medical doctor and I was a teacher. As newly weds, we worked overseas for 4 years to save for a deposit for a house in the UK. We did not participate in the usual expat activities, lived in a basement flat and expended the minimum.
After 4 years we had saved £3250 and found a house in Kent on the market for £3750 We went back to the BS with which we had saved to ask for a £500 mortgage. They turned us down
We continued to save for a further 5 years back in the UK and managed a deposit on a house in the south of England ( about £8950 I think.
It was interesting that could we have managed £1000 more at the time we could have bought a house + 1 acre of land in the centre of the town Most of the garden was immediately sold on for £1,000,000 and a new estate immediately built

It all depends upon where you buy what

Interesting.
I'm moving house to the other side of the country. We bought this present house just over 10 years ago, it has been put on the market for just under twice what we paid for it... Not just inflation from then to now, is it?

Like most here, we struggled to pay for our home. We didn’t have holidays or meals or coffee out. We survived on the very basics and unemployment resulted in moving for work. We had 17% inflation and mortgage.
When I hear the youngsters say that you only paid £60000 for your home and it’s worth £x now. I do get cross because we did struggle and life was not improved by the greedy government. We still have a fairly frugal lifestyle because that’s what we’ve become used to. I’d love to go on a cruise or have a ‘flash’ car. Not for us now.

Houses are built on land and that is a limited resource - they’re not making any more of it.

Years ago you could buy a house on 2 and a half times the man’s salary plus a tiny percentage of your own.

No longer, even with wages as high as they are.

Do you have regrets LovelyLady that you gave up ‘living the life you might have enjoyed’ for bricks & mortar?

I remember my mum worrying because the mortgage on our then family home had gone up to £10 a month ,she said “how will we ever manage ?” .That house cost them £4k in 1964 my grandma thought my parents were mad to take on such high debt !!.

About 6 years ago my dd2 bought a 3 bed ex council house - a probate sale - in what is now a pretty expensive area of the SE. Dh had a good old nose on the Land Reg and found that she’d paid almost exactly 100 times what the previous owners had paid - £3100 IIRC - when they bought it from the council in 1971.

Which was well before Thatcher, so sales were evidently going on for some years before she was PM.

My father bought a new three bedroom house in 1923 when I was just born in south London for £100. That house is now on Rightmove for ££630. 000!
In the 1930s Dad was earning £14 week. We were well off having a motorcar and sister and I went to private schools.
In 1946 my husband and I had just been demobbed and because of lack of houses owing to the air raids could only find an attic room. I was earning as secretary £6 a week and husband £5. 1s 6p. Then a top floor flat 15s a week.
We managed to buy a house ten years later for £2000 which sold in 1965 for £6000 to buy a bungalow in Hampshire for £5500. In 1978 we got £32000 for that and paid £9000 for one in Norfolk now worth £140,000
Prices will always escalate.

I found a postage stamp the other day that said one farthing on it,that boggles the mind——I still have a couple of farthings,really sweet little coins.

We lived in London and paid just under five thousand for our first house. We couldn't afford to buy it now!

Most 20 year olds can't afford a deposit these days as you did annesixty. In 1971 first house we bought was a 3 bed terrace wreck in central London. Deposit was £600. DH wage was £11 a week. I didn't work due to having DD. No childcare then. Sold 2 years later for double the price we paid. From then on house prices at least in the south seemed to be on the upward spiral. Nothing new. Could just about get my utility room fitted now for what that first house cost.

Despite the low wages, I think times were much easier for young people in the 70's.

My husband was a student nurse and we had a baby so I stayed at home for about 2 years - and even after that only worked part time. Admittedly our hospital house rent was subsidised (and I don't think nurses - student or otherwise - get subsidised accommodation any more, more's the pity). However, we still had the normal outgoings, and, although we had very little spare money for anything but the essentials, we had a warm home and good food.

I think people on low pay these days have a really dreadful time - sometimes even with both parents working. I don't know how they go on, day after day, with not even enough money to feed themselves - and no better future in sight.

I think we were very lucky.

We bought our first home in 1978 paying a deposit of ten percent. The monthly mortgage payment over a term of 25 years was £137 which was my monthly net salary exactly as a student nurse at that time.
To buy a similar house here now over the same number of years with a 10% deposit paid would require a £2400monthly mortgage payment .
To my knowledge that is approximately a student nurse's net monthly salary too.
So when young people say you got your house for pennies I have to beg to differ.
I do feel for young people trying to buy a home but I also think young people expect a lot more a lot sooner than we did.

We bought our house over 50 years ago when my DH was 2 years out of uni! Last year we had our lounge suite reupholstered and that cost more than our house, as did the patio we had laid 15 years ago.

1976 Bury Manchester outskirts. Newbuild flat £5500 0%deposit borrowed from the builder at extortionate rate!! 3 years on 1979 sold for £8250 bought house in Chorley £14995 to avoid stamp duty paid £5 for 'built in wardrobes ' ....was a plank over bulkhead🤣 our seller a solicitor who managed to avoid all agents fees by taking off market then selling to us privately all above board but clever! Sold for£198k in 1999 . Current home large 3king beds detached still Chorley bought 1999 84k today? 300k ish.....crazy world wish I could go back to 176 knowing what I know now!!