Baby boomers and housing

We have discussed this before, its either "blame the baby boomers", to set one generation against another, or "blame the immigrants", to set one group against another, or "blame the government" ( whichever one you choose,), or " blame the banks" etc. Surely it s combination of factors - the right to buy policy, councils not being allowed to build more affordable housing, luxury flats sold to foreign investors who never live there etc. I'm not sure how people who have paid off their mortgages are to blame, apart from being alive, many of us are using our life savings or equity in our homes to enable our children to get on the housing ladder.

Also let's not forget that the government has done very well out of house rises via stamp duty.

humptydumpty yes, you are right, the Govt could and should have stopped it. But de-regulation was all the rage, which eventually resulted in the banking crash.

Oh dear, blame the baby boomers again instead of looking at the real causes of the problem.

I accept that there is currently a shortage of suitable housing accom. to buy for young people.
But I think they're under-estimating the difficulty of the situation when we were their age. There was also a shortage of housing, and it cost a fortune to get a mortgage:
www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/Documents/articles/2015/6jul.pdf
As well as that you had to have already had a savings account with the BS. Many of us never owned our own house, (rented or lived with parents), or had to wait until we were 30+.'
Where we did have an advantage though was in the much freer Labour market/ choice of jobs.

Completely agree Ilovecheese (me too!) about the multiple of income that people are lent, but surely the government could have stopped this? If people hadn't been able to borrow as much, they wouldn't have been able to pay as much, which would have kept a lid on prices except for wealthy cash buyers.

IMO the advent of buy-to-let mortgages is also responsible as Joe Public was allowed to have a mortgage on more than one property, thus simultaneously removing stock from the market and pushing prices up.

Not sure it was the fault of any Government but more the fault of the building societies who started lending out more than 3 times one salary. Now it is the norm to take two salaries into account so impossible to buy a house on one salary.

I certainly sympathise with young people, trying to get on the housing ladder, and as has been said, it is the price of housing that is an enormous part of the problem,but to BLAME a previous generation for this problem is, I think very unfair, and implies that we deliberately set out to do down following generations while sitting pretty in our almost fraudulently acquired homes! We did what we did all those years ago with the best of intentions and the extortionate rise in house prices is something we couldn't possibly have anticipated and certainly NOT our fault, but very firmly the fault of government of whichever colour.

Newquay Regarding population, if we stop letting the population increase that will increase the imbalance between the numbers of young people and older people. There will be a lot more old than young. A shortage of younger people to do jobs like harvesting fruit and veg, will again lead to us having to pay more for our food. Again, are we willing to cough up?
Totally agree with you about HS2, and about Beeching

I agree about using brown field sites first. I'm sure our DC or DGC will ask what on earth we were thinking of destroying farm land when food will be in short supply. Like we now all know how crazy allowing Beeching to destroy all those rail links. Then we're now-slightly off piste here-paying billions for this crazy HS2! Must be mad! And agree with you Golden, same here in Staffs, loads of new builds on former farm land, more traffic, no extra schools, Doc's and hosp under strain already. 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 agree with using the brown field sites, but who will? Building companies don't want to because it is more expensive. When you say, Oldwoman70 "lets use up existing sites first" then if you mean "us" that is "us" the taxpayers, we would have to be willing to pay more in tax so that Local Authorities or the Govt could do the building and are we willing to cough up?

I think it is fashionable these days to blame "baby boomers" for everything. We all know it is hard for anyone to get on the property ladder, most of us are in favour of more house building - but why does it always have to be on green field sites.

There are many "brown field" sites which would be suitable but it is cheaper to build on green fields rather than clean up an existing site. I'm not saying there are not areas where it would be necessary to build on green field sites but lets use up existing sites first.

I think there are plenty of houses being built - at least in our area - but it's the COST of purchase that's the problem AND the fact there is no additional infrastructure eg school, medical centre, roadways - one new estate opens onto an already clogged route making it even worse. I was looking through a book the other day and was reminded of the Prefabs that were built after the last war and many of which are still standing. I had a friend who lived in one and it was lovely and it was a lively community too. Could this be a possible solution once more?

This has to be a very stupid non-story. How come an Australian millionaire's ridiculous comments are being interpreted as the opinion of all us baby boomers? What on earth does he know? As he's a 'millionaire' he's living on a different planet from most of us anyway..

Though I have to confess that I have seen Gnetters pooh poohing the idea that it's difficult for millenials to get on the housing ladder I think on the whole that many of us are deeply sympathetic to them, and, we know very well that there aren't enough houses being built.