house prices

Yes, you'd think we were to blame for the increase in house prices! It's not our fault property has risen in price and become unaffordable for many.

Like you, we were on our uppers when we got a mortgage. It was a massive commitment and interest rates were very high. 15%. We had no life and no disposable income for most of our youth. Holidays, cars, eating out, socialising, new clothes, etc, etc, we went without. We had second hand everything and both worked long hours. My children may not have property but they have great lives, lovely cars, regular nights out and disposable income, as do their friends. Not only that, they'll inherit too. Even on our pensions we are still budgeting and need a roof over our heads.

I can see it from both sides tbh. Yes we expected less because we'd always had less and we went without things to get what we needed, we made sacrifices if you like. In 1963 I was still in primary school so a fair few years behind you. Our first house cost us £11,500 and we couldn't afford to buy where either of us had grown up. We both worked and I took 16 weeks off when I had my Children not the year that everyone seems to take today. I've had a few house moves and 2 divorces and I'm currently sitting in a house worth over £500,000. My Sons have mortgages but they started with smaller properties than us, we had a 3 bed house they had 2 bed flats. What should they give up to get a mortgage ? The car they need to get to work, the mobile phone ? I think they've found the middle ground they haven't complained, they still go out, they still go on holiday and one is still planning his wedding. Look at the wages we were on I was on about £2k a year when we got our mortgage my Son is on about £50k. My mortgage did go up to 15% I hope his never does. It's hard to imagine you can afford things when the media keeps telling you how hard it is, I didn't believe we could afford kids but we did and then wondered what all the fuss was about. I think a lot of it is they expect to have a house like Mum and Dad's and most won't want somewhere that needs a shed load of work but that's what we took on and it was hard work being at work all day and coming home and working on the house all night and every weekend. I don't blame them for putting it off, we were 18 when we bought our first house, my Sons were 26 and 28 respectively and they're with different people now too. Life is simply different today to what it was back in the 60's,70's and 80's. We're not to blame but we are fortunate that we bought when we did.

Yes, I also hate all this resentment, and the implication that it was easy for our generation, when we all know that it took a huge effort on our part, especially with the high interest rates we paid.

The trouble is that young people these days want it all don't they?

We, like most of our friends lived with our respective parents while we saved hard for the deposit on our first house. Now, youngsters insist on moving in together and renting, then complain bitterly that they can't save for a deposit!

We actually bought our first house on a new estate the year before we got married, yet we still continued to live with our own parents, thereby managing to save yet more to furnish the house. Plus of course in those days, living together before marriage was very much frowned on, wasn't it?!

How quaint that sounds now, but those views enabled us to get started, and after some years, once we could see what a good investment property was, we started buying other properties to rent out. Yes it was a huge gamble taking on more debt especially as we had children by then and I didn't work, but we took a chance and it paid off.

These kinds of threads make me sick.

So many bloody assumptions about "young people today having it so good" what a load of cr*p !

Did you live on porridge made with water and share a pair of shoes with your siblings?

No telephone
No television
No car
No washing machine
Second hand furnishings and furniture, apart from things I made with my trusty sewing machine.
Couldn’t afford new clothes, all second hand, not easy in the time before Charity Shops
No holidays
We never ate out
And when Mum found a second hand washing machine with a mangle on the top, oh what a relief that was, especially for the nappies.

I could go on, but how ‘lucky’we are that we own our own home!

Im afraid you make your own luck, if you have your health then you are perfectly capable of saving enough to buy a home, it took us years but we never gave up and when the interest rates went sky high we nearly lost everything, but we went back to basics and managed our way out of it.
I can’t feel sorry for people who have all the trappings of wealth that we never had and complain that they can’t save.

It’s only in the last few years that Mortgages have been difficult to obtain, before then it was relatively easy to get one. You can’t spend and save.
I’ll go back into my corner now and put my head under a dustbin lid to avoid the flack.

.....and would you like to go back to those times ContraryMary ?

Again you are making massive assumptions that all young people have "the trappings of wealth" which is complete rubbish. Do you know what minimum wage is ? Or the average rent? Save? are you joking?

What utter tosh!
And that is the politely response I could think of.

I was slow typing - that wasn't in response to your post, gillybob.

It was a different world back in the 60's, 70's and 80's though wasn't it? We did have lower wages and higher interest rates on our mortgages but we also had much better job security then. Young people now are often on zero hours contracts with no security. I can remember leaving a job on a Friday and having the choice of several jobs to go to on the Monday; that isn't the case today. Our generation left university with no debts to pay back and we got generous grants too. Nowadays, students leave university with tens of thousands of pounds of debt to pay back.
When I first got married, we rented a tiny cottage for about £5.00 a month and that equated to about 10% of our monthly income and it was easy to save up fast and get a good deposit on our first house purchase. Rents today are in the upper hundreds, if not thousands, and that equates to a much higher percentage of their monthly income, meaning that they struggle to save anything towards a deposit to buy.

In the village that I live in, 80% of all terraced cottages that have come on the market have been snapped up by a property investor and then rented out at high cost. That means that small starter houses for first time buyers are removed from the available purchasing stock. They have no chance of buying the next size up because they're in excess of £350,000 and way beyond their means. The property developer is a man in his 50s who used his redundancy money to begin his new career. He's doing very well too. Not so the young people in our area.

ContraryMary88 says 'you make your own luck' and that is it in a nutshell.

Yes of course there will always be the haves and have nots.
There were years ago, as there are now, but the assumption amongst too many young people that it was easy for us is just wrong.

Another thing I hate is the resentment - that somehow it's our fault property prices have risen.

When we got married my parents and in laws had paid off their mortgages, and were living comfortably in their homes with little debt.

Did I feel resentful? No of course not.

'Politest', not 'politely' in my last post. Grrr!

When we got married my parents and in laws had paid off their mortgages, and were living comfortably in their homes with little debt

Where I live in Tyneside, people of my parents and grandparents generations very rarely bought or owned houses Jennifer they worked in heavy industry with pathetic wages and dangerous jobs that often saw them half dead by the time they reached 50.

So many assumptions based on individual experiences and failure to look at the bigger picture.

Can I ask those who say that they "made their own luck" if they started their home ownership off in a small cottage? Did it have the bare basics and you did it up yourselves whilst either saving for a deposit on a bigger house or you started and raised your family? Because those are not really an option for today's young people. As I said above, many of the small terraced houses have been bought up specifically to rent out out. They haven't been replaced with new build starter homes either (at least not around here anyway).

Regarding the minimum wage and zero hours contracts - what's wrong with ambition? There is no compulsion for those on low wages to remain in those jobs for ever. In this day and age there is SO much help for people to better themselves, to get qualifications for a better paid job.

If we are not happy with our lives it is within our power to do something about it.

Why is that such an alien concept?

How exactly do you "make your own luck?"

Does it involve planting 4 leaf clover seeds?

Because we no longer live in the times where you could leave one job and fall into another Jennifer . Rents are sky high making saving an almost impossibility for most youngsters.

We don't all live in the land of milk and honey you know.

Most of the wealth in this country is concentrated around certain areas. Sheer greed has caused the house prices to raise as dramatically as they have in these areas. Nothing else.

gillybob if you read my post you would see that I said that I can’t feel sorry for the people who have the trappings of and complain that they can’t save
Not all Young People.
Yes, I do know the minimum wage and the price of a 2 bed rental cottage with damp walls, because my daughter is renting one at the moment with her friend and is working 2 jobs to try and save, both at minimum wage.
Due to her health she had to give up a well paid job which has set her back.
I wish I had dug up the 4 leaf clover plant we had in our damp cottage and moved it around with us, we could certainly use it now.

Should read trappings of wealth.

I think it's a bit like comparing oranges and pears to be honest. Life, and expectations are very different now, but there are still people of all ages doing very nicely and still people of all ages struggling just to put food on the table. And that is the problem with sweeping generalisations; they don't address the circumstances of individuals.
I did smile at gilly's comment though: yes, I did have porridge made with water and once (fortunately briefly) shared a pair of shoes with my older sister. We used to laugh (though not at the time) and say that the first one of us up was the best dressed.

My apologies if I got the wrong end of the stick ContraryMary

I do hate these threads based on unrealistic assumptions that all young people have the same opportunities to save and better themselves when they clearly do not.

Aaaah but did you ever live in a cardboard box grannya

I would say I can see both sides - but there are no sides, just the media whipping up discord as usual. 'Baby Boomers' struggled to get where they are, and are not to blame for the current situation. 'Millennials' have a whole host of different problems. It is nigh on impossible for you average 20 something to get on mortgae ladder. The deposits are too high and you have to be earning an absolute fortune to get one even if you can get the deposit. They need to re evaluate how you are deemed acceptable for a mortgage. To my mind, if you are in steady employment, and have managed to pay a ridiculously high rent for a few years, then regardless of income or deposit, you should be classed as being able to afford a mortgage. It's not rocket science.

Well my parents never owned their own home, they always rented. Of their 4 children I'm the only one who bought their own home, my brothers and sister all still rent. I think I bought out of necessity, at 18 I would have still been living at home but as both my parents had died that wasn't an option. So I bought a house with my BF we had a £500 deposit between us and that was enough. Today you'd need around £25k just for the deposit then you have to add on stamp duty, legal fees etc.That's a massive amount to save up even if you are still living at home and trying to have a relatively normal life but nigh on impossible if you rent your own home. I talked to my sons and we agreed they'd live at home rent free if they saved a deposit, which thankfully in their case was a while ago but they still had to come up with £15K deposit + all the extras. It's not easy, I couldn't afford to give them a deposit but I could afford for them to live rent free and they had the sense to accept the offer rather than rent a flat, they knew it made sense but not everyone can do that.