Baby boomers and housing

If homes were really unaffordable the estate agents windows would be littered with starter homes that no one could afford to buy so the prices would reduce until people could buy them. In fact that isn't the case.

We need to look back to the 1960s and 70s when over half the population lived in rented accommodation, most of it provided by councils. Home ownership was 45%. It may be that that figure is a better guide to home ownership than the current high but declining level

The percentage of homeowners in the country shot up in the 1980s as a result of Mrs Thatchers policy of selling off council houses to their tenants at a fraction of their market value enabled many people to buy homes who could not otherwise have afforded to have bought a home at market prices.

As a result many young adults today with parents with modest incomes have grown up in owner occupied households and assume that on similar incomes they should also be able to afford to buy their own home, but, unlike their parents, they will have to pay full market prices, which they can no more afford than their parents could have.

The problem today is that succeeding Conservative governments have had a policy of privatising the rental market by loosening controls and tenancies and insisting that councils and housing associations operate on the same open market principles resulting in generation rent having to living shifting lives in rented properties on short tenancies and at full market prices.

What is needed is a return to a large and stable local authority or housing association sector, providing lifetime tenancies, or at least leases until retirement age when needs can be reassessed and tenants re-housed where appropriate, with rents based on household income not going market rates.

When younger people who cannot afford to purchase their own home can be sure of a stable affordable appropriate home in a public sector much of the heat will go out of the current controversy

Daft thing is he had no need to make reference to Baby Boomers!!!! He could have described the situation as he sees I it the younger generation without any reference to other generations. I think I was to change the nature of the media focus to his speech to baby boomer baddies rather than historical and present politics mistakes! Its worked!

So easy to chase headlines with ill informed comments as Javid does. Not worth arguing about in my opinion.

No one has a right to own their own home. What they do have and what millions of us used to have was the right to a council house ( depending on meeting certain criteria) which gave us security of tenure, a fair rent and a well maintained home. Thatcher maliciously and wickedly took that away to buy votes and the suffering that has come from this which no government is prepared to put right is truly truly dreadful

Let's be clear. The reason councils did not use the money from Thatchers right to buy scheme was that the government would not allow the funds to be used to build social housing.
The government is now including tenants of Housing Association properties in the right to buy scheme. A large proportion of former Council houses are now owned by buy to let landlords. It's just plain wrong.

As we all know, young people who don't have cash from their parents have little chance of buying a home as rents are so high they can't save. Don't blame our generation but introduce some effective social policies, including stopping foreign investment in property that is then left to decline (especially in the London south east ares)

And as others have said - DH & I are baby boomers and we've helped all our children to buy their own homes

I have friends & family who would never have had the chance to own their own homes were it not for the right to buy scheme. It gave the opportunity of home ownership to many low income families. The fault was that the money raised should have been used to build more council homes, thereby maintaining the social housing stock.
I found MaizieD's post interesting - near where I live there are three sites currently being built on and all three pieces of land have been available for developing for quite a few (10 in one case) years - and all the houses being built are "executive" expensive detached - no affordable homes at all. I don't understand why the council let them get away with it. And these houses cost eye-watering amounts - what size mortgages must the buyers have? and what's going to happen when the interest rate rises?

Yes I think absentee house owners and buy to let has a lot to answer for. As well as the iniquitous right to buy scheme taking loads of social housing away. I don't know where we would have lived as a child when our slums were compulsorily cleared and we were moved to a council house. Suppose it would have been to a private landlord-oh yes that's whose house we were living in, in the slum.

jura, I remember exactly the same as you! Our first home was a very pretty but tiny two up two down terraced cottage with no bathroom and an outside (flushing!!) loo. Everything was second hand or hand me downs. We did get a grant for a downstairs bathroom extension which our small son was delighted with as his playgroup ladies testified!! I can remember this being some of the happiest times of our lives, the children were very small, our home though modest, was ours, we were young and full of hope. We had very little but they were happy days and we were content.

Did we have it easy- well I can't remember for sure. We had everything second hand, made bean bags, made beds out of bits of wood, the pram was from a friend for a fiver and the square folding push chair another 3 quid- our dining table was from the neighbour, and I made all the kids' clothes. We found ourselves with mortgages at 19.5% at some point. No holidays, apart from camping in North Devon and once a mouldy damp cottage in Cornwall- no dining out- no wine apart from very special occasions and we 'made-do'- if we could not afford it, we didn't have it and waited.

Far from being to blame for youngsters not being able to afford houses, many of us baby boomers are actually enabling them to buy, as Suzied mentioned in her post. Neither of my daughters would have been able to buy their homes without a loan from the 'Bank of Mum and Dad', and I know many of my peers have done the same for their children. In addition, by offering free childcare, as so many do, we enable them to earn more.

They can't blame the Baby Boomers (us!) for the youngsters not being able to afford houses. The fault lies with the banks and building societies years ago. When I bought my first home in the late 1960's I was only allowed to borrow 2.5 times my salary. If they had stuck to this rule house prices would not have escalated beyond general inflation.

My memory of living in Cornwall includes many young people who had to move away from the land because there was no housing. Some were lucky and were able to put a caravan on their parents' land, but the council didn't encourage it. I imagine there is still little available to families who might want to move to the country and pick cabbages. This is why immigrant labour has been ideal, they can come over for a few weeks, live communally and go home when the work is finished or move elsewhere to another harvest.

I'm not sure baby boomers can do much. We could move into a smaller house, but that would just leave yet another 3 bedroom house that people like DS could never hope to afford. Or of course it could be bought by a buy to let landlord who can then charge desperate people exhorbitant rents. I wish someone could get it into MPs' heads that we don't need more (un) affordable housing we need more social housing.

www.sajidjavid.com/news/hundreds-retirees-attend-mp-sajid-javids-second-pensioners-fair

He runs pensioners fairs in his constituency. I hope they throw a few very soft avocados at him next time he sees them.
Sorry, I forgot, they are not supposed to know what they are.

I hope he's bought his parents a very nice house.
He was earning £3 million a year when he left Deutsche Bank as managing director.
I hope he's not criticising his own parents as they were probably baby boomers. They had five sons.

Newquayyour ill informed remarks about young people preferring to sit at home on benefits instead of picking cabbages is exactly why these bloody newspapers publish these articles; to divide society and always have someone to blame. I am saddened that someone can even think this way. It Has been suggested that there is not a shortage of housing as such,more a case of a shortage of jobs. In some areas, such as former mining areas, housing is very affordable by South East standards, chiefly because there is no work. Maybe the government should be looking at encouraging business investment country wide, taking the pressure off the expensive and overcrowded areas where the low unemployment leads to appalling house prices. I would also tax, severely,the practice of buying property for investment without even living in it.

Extremely irritated by this attempt to set one generation against another. It's unhelpful, unpleasant and not based in any reality I live in.
I know no one who hasn't helped their own children to the very best of their financial and emotional ability. The vast majority of young people I know count their blessings, love their families and work hard. That was the same in my grandparents generation. What's new? It's just nonsense to suggest we baby boomers somehow set out to exploit those who went before us and those who are following us. The vast majority of people do their best. Give us a break Savid J

No, durhamjen you shouldn't even know what an avocado is!

Sorry, but I've just had a smashed avocado on toast. As a baby boomer, am I allowed?

Newquay No, a lot of the young do not find it more attractive to sit at home on benefits. That is just another example of one generation being set against the other.
As regards reducing the population, the most sensible way to do that would be to introduce compulsory euthanasia for those of us that are past our usefulness to the economy, and I don't think any of us would like to start that game.

houses !!!

Here's a reason why

a) there aren't enough hoses being built
b) the ones that are built are very expensive

Land Banks

The same old characters are relentlessly held up as the arch villains of the housing crisis; from greedy developers to bureaucratic planners, to the armies of Nimbys. But it’s fair to say that, beyond these usual suspects, one of the fundamental causes for the current lack of affordable housing, and simultaneous glut of luxury developments, is the iniquity of the land trading industry.

Of course it makes sense if you’re an absentee landowner; why would you sell your field as just a field, when you could sell it as a field with the lucrative permission to build 100 homes on it? In turn, why would the successful buyer actually want to build those 100 homes, when it’s more profitable to sit on the land for a while, then sell it on again?

By the time a willing builder finally gets their hands on the land, several transactions later, they’ve had to pay so much for it that the only viable option is an enclave of executive homes or luxury flats. The same vicious cycle makes it impossible for smaller housebuilders or community groups to ever dream of getting access to land.

www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jan/31/britain-land-housing-crisis-developers-not-building-land-banking

The Telegraph version of much the same story for those who are Guardianphobic

www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/12/18/top-10-biggest-house-builders-control-land-almost-one-million/

When we bought our first house the amount we could borrow was limited to 2.5 times my husband's salary. Although I was working full-time and we had no children, my income was disregarded as the assumption was that I would soon be pregnant and give up work for good.

When we bought our current house the mortgage rate was 17% (that's right SEVENTEEN PERCENT).

Having told you all that, I need to say that I would like it to be easier for our grandchildren to get a home of their own without having to wait for us to keel over and leave them money. Their generation is more divided than ever because of the chances of inheriting quite a lot or nothing at all.

Hello ilovecheese (me too!). If we stopped this excessive immigration I think our own population still produces enough young to work. Sadly, of course, a lot (not all!) of young find it more attractive to stay home on benefits rather than work eg fruit picking, agri work etc. The good book says "let him (her) who WON'T work not eat"!

Newquay says "We cannot go on letting our population increase either-all our lives it was about 40-45 million now it's nearly 70 million. Little wonder we're short of housing!"

I assume Newquay is a hundred years old as the last time the UK population was approx 40 million was just before the end of WWI.

www.populstat.info/Europe/unkingdc.htm