Should older people move house to make way for the young?

Absolutely not! I now live alone in a 3 bed detached home as my children have recently bought their own homes. I worked hard to buy it on my own and have no intention of moving. It is full of memories of my family growing up and now my grandchildren.

M0nica

Casdon

I think it’s all but impossible for young people who are on minimum wage or low salaries. If they earn an average or above average salary, it’s the choices they have made about what to do with their income that prevent them saving for a deposit. That’s why a lot of couples delay having children, and share housing with others for longer than they did in the past. Once they are on the housing ladder it is often cheaper than renting, certainly after a difficult first couple of years.

But that has always been the case. This is why, in the past, we built so many council houses. Before the depredations of Mrs Thatcher one third of all households lived in council homes. Secure lifetime tenure, and with maintenance the responsibility of others. Although as so many tradesmen lived in these houses, many were kept in beatiful order by the tenants, and upgraded with central heating, new kitchens and bathrooms etc.

The difference now is that private rental costs have risen exponentially, and council housing is much less accessible, so people have to spend a much higher proportion of their income on rental costs, it becomes a trap they can’t get out of.

Casdon I think it’s all but impossible for young people who are on minimum wage or low salaries. If they earn an average or above average salary, it’s the choices they have made about what to do with their income that prevent them saving for a deposit. That’s why a lot of couples delay having children, and share housing with others for longer than they did in the past.

Once they are on the housing ladder it is often cheaper than renting, certainly after a difficult first couple of years.

I agree.

With average salary Choices Made prevent buying.

People spend more now, than in past, on stuff. Saving is not priority.

The difference now is that private rental costs have risen exponentially, and council housing is much less accessible, so people have to spend a much higher proportion of their income on rental costs, it becomes a trap they can’t get out of.
Exactly. And to make matters worse, many are privately renting ex council houses that were sold off cheaply and would once have provided decent homes, lifetime tenancies and reasonable rents, but now they have insecure tenancies and rents are astronomical. The houses were built with taxpayers' money and rents covered maintenance etc, but now we keep hearing about how landlords have to cover their costs, so rents include profit margins for both landlords and mortgage companies. Many rely on UC top-ups as wages are too low for people to afford to live, so on top of the profit margins taxpayers are paying for that, too.

An average salary after tax, NI and student loan is around £2000 a month, according to Google. If £1000 of that goes on rent, another £200 as conservative estimate for council tax, and there are still bills, food and commuting to pay for, there is not going to be much left to save, whatever choices people make. Obviously if couples are buying jointly the income doubles, but even then, if childcare is deducted, then as often as not one parent is working for next to nothing.

Also, 'average' salary covers all age groups, and younger people at the start of their careers are less likely to have achieved it yet.

We married young, and were still able to save for a deposit in a couple of years. Yes, things were tight at first, but it was quite usual for couples in their early 20s to buy houses - now the average age is 35.

I'm not sure how to make things better, as so many things are tangled together. IMO anyone working a full week should be able to earn enough for secure housing with money left over for living expenses, without needing benefits to do it. It's ridiculous that so many benefit claimants are working for their poverty, and are not allowed to save more than a certain amount, even if there were enough money to do so.

Thatcher definitely has a lot to answer for, selling off council houses and not building any replacements. Oddly enough, some years later Grantham actually came up with a very good plan, which I knew someone who was involved. So as with many people families had grown up and there would only be one or two people in a council house, who had lived there for many years happily with their neighbours and social group. So the council came up with the idea of building some bungalows and offering that the group could all move there sort of en masse. That way they were still with their friends, there was appropriate provision and the buses etc and that freed up the 3 bed houses for families. Of course these days no one is prepared to build appropriate housing for single people whether old or young and the builders just try to get out of providing any social housing at a decent price so until there are practical and sensible chances to move and not be stuck miles outside a town centre with no bus available things will stay as they are

Margaret Thatcher may well have sold off a significant amount of the social housing stock madeleine45 but the 9 following prime ministers, both Conservative and Labour, did very little to redress that. They are all culpable in the current situation of their being a paucity of social housing.

I don’t think that’s fair. When people got used to getting up to 80% (I think) off the price of a house it would have been political suicide to withdraw the right. Even now, there were people pointing fingers Angela Rayner when she said she wanted to do that. I do think it should have been removed, but I don’t think there is equal culpability.

There is no sale of council houses in Scotland it was stopped a few years ago.
Local councils have a housing budget and if they don’t use it and some don’t for party reasons,the money gets taken back and given to a council who will build.
There have been around 140 ,000 housing association and council houses built here in recent years.Over 70% council
New houses come with solar panels,heat pump central heating and electric charging for cars.
A three bed semi detached is around £800 a month.
It is possible to include flats for pensioners ,in my small town 1960s pensioner houses are being demolished and new ones built to decant the inhabitants into.
It seems that English and Welsh councils / welsh assembly don’t have the will to build not that it’s a surprise.
It seems we have the only government on these isles who think of the ordinary folk and not the rich

I really don't now why we don't all move to Scotland!
Including all my Scottish friends who have moved away and live in Wales and England.

There is no right to buy council houses in Wales either Allira, there hasn’t been for a number of years. What paddyann54 says could be construed as a load of eyewash as far as Wales is concerned, as what she describes is happening here too - I don’t know about England or NI.

Casdon

There is no right to buy council houses in Wales either Allira, there hasn’t been for a number of years. What paddyann54 says could be construed as a load of eyewash as far as Wales is concerned, as what she describes is happening here too - I don’t know about England or NI.

I didn't even know one existed still in England.

Even now, there were people pointing fingers Angela Rayner when she said she wanted to do that.

And quite rightly so. It's been blatantly obvious for years that their is nowhere near enough social housing across the UK. In 2024, Ms Rayner actually referred to "a council house revolution in the next 10 years" and "to stop new council homes from being sold via Right to Buy". The finger pointing was because she'd omitted to tell us that, actually, she'd bought her own council house, using the very same scheme she now wanted to ban, in 2007! A bit like pulling up the ladder behind her.

I agree that RTB should be scrapped. The fact that AR bought her house is not ‘pulling up the ladder behind her’ though. Times change, and if a policy is wrong it needs to change too. The attitude that things have to stay the same just because they were once in place prevents progress IMO.

"I don't know why we don't move to Scotland" yes after all the population of Scotland stands at around a mere 5 and a half million, compared to the overall of around 70 million for the UK as a whole. Maybe an incy wincy factor as to why we have a shortage of housing in many of the far more densely populated areas of the country.

I don't know Scotland at all, sorry, but if you're earning, say £50k there, wouldn't that need to be around £80k or more in London.
£800 in Scotland a month for a 3 bed house sounds unreal to people in the South East. Where is that? Surely not Edinburgh?
I guess it's all relative depending where you live and need to work.

Might sound selfish but if you are going to down size it should be because you want to for your own reasons not because you feel you ought to or feel pressured by who ever !!

MartavTaurus

I don't know Scotland at all, sorry, but if you're earning, say £50k there, wouldn't that need to be around £80k or more in London.
£800 in Scotland a month for a 3 bed house sounds unreal to people in the South East. Where is that? Surely not Edinburgh?
I guess it's all relative depending where you live and need to work.

The price differential is around 30%, so you have over- estimated the London effect somewhat. The salary differential is also around 20% though. It’s largely about the choices people make regarding how and where they spend what they earn..

paddyann54 as usual writing about a fantasy country absolutely unknown to us other Scots!

Rents around here have soared in the past few years, so I do wonder how young people on fairly ordinary salaries manage to save a deposit, or a big enough one. The irony is that mortgage payments for the same e.g. 2 bed flat would often be less than the monthly rent.
Unless they have family help, it’s surely very hard.

2 bed maisonettes (Edwardian, purpose built) in a SW London area I watch, were often selling for £90-100k in the mid-late 90s.
The same ones (albeit probably considerably modernised) now routinely go for £500-550k.

MartavTaurus

I don't know Scotland at all, sorry, but if you're earning, say £50k there, wouldn't that need to be around £80k or more in London.
£800 in Scotland a month for a 3 bed house sounds unreal to people in the South East. Where is that? Surely not Edinburgh?
I guess it's all relative depending where you live and need to work.

And here too, on the Welsh/English borders!

It is possible to include flats for pensioners ,in my small town 1960s pensioner houses are being demolished and new ones built to decant the inhabitants into.

So they are demolishing the homes of elderly people where they may have lived for years and decanting them (!) into flats!
We are people, not wine. Presumably against their will, rather like the notorious Pathfinder programme beloved of John Prescott and Yvette Cooper, causing distress to so many.

I like Yvette Cooper but that was a blot on her copybook.

Ps that was in reply to Paddyann, the quote was from her post of Sun 12-Apr-26 22:02:23, just to be clear.

Witzend I do wonder how young people on fairly ordinary salaries manage to save a deposit, or a big enough one. The irony is that mortgage payments for the same e.g. 2 bed flat would often be less than the monthly rent.
Unless they have family help, it’s surely very hard.

Perhaps saving, never spending on any excess?

My husband worked 2 years, lived at home, spent nothing, to save our deposit whilst I was still at school. When he was 18, I was 16, we married and bought our home.

Everyone is different. We're savers not spenders.

They could use one of the 0% deposit building society mortgages maybe?

My husband worked 2 years, lived at home, spent nothing, to save our deposit whilst I was still at school. When he was 18, I was 16, we married and bought our home.

An unqualified 16 year old working whatever job he could find on the statutory wage would earn £8 ph, if he could get a full-time job that is. Take out necessary expenses, even if he lived at home, I very much doubt today's child could save enough in two years for a deposit for a house, especially one as large as you say yours is. Added to which, I doubt a 16 year old and 18 year old could get a mortgage nowadays.

In fact, I'm astonished that you did back in the 1960s on an 18 year old's wage.

We bought our first house in late 1960s; DH was 30 and on a good salary, I was a bit younger and on a good salary but they disregarded mine.
That was after two years of hard saving but also paying a reasonable rent and all bills.

We were luckier then that rents were more reasonable.