house prices

I'm with you gilly.
It's patently obvious that some posters have absolutely no idea of how folk live outside their own privileged, narrow-minded and ignorant circle!

One big advantage we older people had was that the labour market was completely different in our days. We could pick and choose what job we had and many of us changed jobs often . Jobs were more secure too.
So we could be more sure of our income, and what we could afford.
I know this didn't apply to everyone, but to the majority of us.

Nonnie I completely agree. Good post.

Becoming a home owner was hard, and still is hard, for many, many people - most of our generation included. Times have changed and so in many ways life is easier today, but financially many still struggle - even older people. The OP asked about the unfairness of blaming our generation for the housing situation now.

We are not to blame, nor should we be blamed.

We bought our first house in 1970. It cost £2,750. We were both working ( nothing special, DH was a lorry driver) and living in a rented flat. It took us a year to save the deposit which was about £150. The trouble started when banks started lending several times annual income and taking both incomes into account. As money became easier to borrow prices escalated beyond anything we could have imagined. Factor in the right to buy which decimated council housing and the rise of the private landlord with a portfolio of overpriced properties and anyone with an average job hasn't got a chance.

House prices have escalated in some areas to such an extent that many young people will never own their own home and in many poorer working class areas (like Tyneside) the wages have stagnated making it equally as hard to get on the housing ladder.

We cannot and should not, even try to compare life in the 1960’s with life today, it’s just ridiculous and no different to trying to compare 1960 to 1900 !

I was born in 1962 and we lived in a one roomed flat with a shared outside loo until I was 8 years old. I probably shouldn’t have been born either according to some as I doubt my parents could afford me. Very different to those who were able to find deposits and pay mortgages.

There's an awful lot of self-congratulation going on here. Speaking personally, I don't think it was anywhere near as difficult for young people to live comfortable lives and raise a family as it is these days. My husband was a nurse when we first married and I didn't work for the first year or so after our child was born. We were certainly not well off but we had a warm home and good food. I think that would be nigh on impossible these days on a nurse's pay. I think in many ways we were a good deal more fortunate.

For many young people these days life is very hard. If you want to buy a property, it is much more difficult than in the 70s. Rents are also excessive and prevent people from saving towards a deposit for a home. Even for those people who are able to get a mortgage, generally they need two incomes to do so - and there are fewer and fewer people buying their own homes now.

I expect that parents in the 50s and 60s were sometimes deemed to be doing much better than their own parents and subject to the same resentful comments. My grandma and grandpa - who were quite well off - nevertheless did not have a fridge for quite some time - they had a cool larder which was kept under the stairs. My own parents - who had far less money - saw a fridge as a priority, though they didn't own a washing machine for quite a few years. I guess most people now, including me, could not imagine managing without a washing machine.

Obviously, when certain products - like TVs - come on the market they are very expensive and only the better off can afford them but when the majority of people have a phone or a fridge in their home then it is seen as the norm.

One in five homes are now owned by landlords, so some people are doing OK out of the system, but many are not.

Agree completely Eloethan, so many houses that would have been considered to be "starter homes" are now owned by landlords who rent them out for rents that often exceed the cost of a mortgage. Another factor is the cost of council tax. Before Council Tax banding system was introduced in 1991, rates were considerably lower, having been based on the rateable value of the property. High rents, plus dearer council tax, student loans to repay and zero hours contracts.... yup kids today don't know they're born.

Council tax is one giant rip off and effects the poorest parts of the country the most . Do you know Buckingham Palace with its 775 rooms is a band H property ? In 2016 BP and many houses in Westminster worth £millions had a council tax bill of around £1375 per year pretty much the same as a house worth around. £154,000 in Nottingham.

This is an extreme example but there are plenty others where the poorest people in the poorest boroughs pay the highest rates of council tax and those in the most expensive properties in the most expensive areas pay the least. Hardly a fair society is is?

Assuming most people on GN are over 55, when we were buying 30, 40 or more years ago we didn't have to resort to Shared Ownership and the like to buy our own homes.

Modest average salaries would support a mortgage to buy a property in London - today that's just not possible. Young buyers can save until kingdom come but they'll never be able to buy as we did.

I can't believe the smugness of some posters.

And complete and utter silence from the OP . Not that I am in the slightest bit surprised.

I’m alright Jack.

Something's gone very wrong somewhere, hasn't it

It certainly has petra

mcem you are right, none of us knows what it is like to be much poorer than we have ever been and none of us knows what it is like to be much better off than we have ever been. I don't think anyone on here has ever suggested they do. Nor was there any need to state it as it is obvious imo.

Gilly I find it very hard to believe that people in expensive houses in the same borough are paying less in council tax than those in cheaper properties, can you give an example or did you mean not in the same borough?

Someone upthread talked about an annual council tax bill in the £1300s, that is quite a low figure imo.

DH did a pools round in 1971 to help us get by when mortgage rates went up to 15% and that was on top of a 1 1/2 hour each way commute to work. We didn't put the heating on because we couldn't afford it and we certainly didn't have holidays. DH stopped going to watch football because of the expense.

I am not suggesting that all young people can do what ours have done but I do think there is a lot to be said for thrift at any age. We have a comfortable retirement which I put entirely down to thrift.

Good post, Nonnie (6 Aug 18:39).

For reasons set out in this thread, the housing 'market' really militates against the JAMs. The rot started with Thatcher's Right to Buy. The scheme could only have worked equitably if for every council house sold to sitting tenants, that provision were replaced one for one with a new build affordable/council property.

That was never going to happen under MT though was it?

Nonnie
15% in 1971!!!
That wasn't a good deal. More like 7.5%.

Of course not the same borough Nonnie rich boroughs pay far less than poorer ones. I thought the example I gave of Buck palace and multi £million pound properties in Westminster pay far less than a small home with £154,000 in (say) Nottingham.

The council tax system is unfair because there is a relatively low ceiling for even the most expensive properties.

Some extracts from This is Money November 2017:

"In some cases, billionaire oligarchs in West London pay less council tax than owners of modest family homes in Wiltshire.

"Picture a £136.4 million penthouse apartment in London’s Knightsbridge. The service fees alone are more than £3,000 a week and it’s no more than a five-minute walk to the famous Harrods department store.

"Now consider a three-bedroom semi in rural Wiltshire, on the market for £335,000.

"Its driveway can accommodate two cars and it boasts a modest garden. It may seem hard to believe, but the owner of the penthouse - Rinat Akhmetov, who happens to be Ukraine’s richest man - will pay £344 a year less in council tax (at £1,376) than a family moving to Wiltshire (who will pay £1,720).

"This absurd situation is playing out across the country, where wealthy homeowners are asked to contribute less than those in dire financial situations.

"Despite boasting some of the world’s most expensive homes, London boroughs including Westminster and Wandsworth impose some of the UK’s lowest council tax bills. No property in Westminster can be charged more than £1,376.28 a year."

Riverwalk I'm glad you mentioned about shared ownership. I think it is a very bad deal but many people have no option but to buy using this method.

There are even more extremes than that
Eloethan like Buckingham Palace and a house worth just over £150,000 in a poor borough ( like mine ) The whole thing stinks . No wonder the rich get richer and the poor get poorer .

There is inequality, Eloethan but then again, there are many cases of older/elderly people living in houses in the South-East which they may have bought 50 or 60 years ago and which are now worth ridiculous amounts of money - not through anything they have done themselves. It will be 'the family home' and perhaps not particularly large - so should their council tax be based on the value, which in many cases, they could ill afford to pay.

That is not to say that properties in these London boroughs should not be charged at a similar rate to those in other parts of the country - on size, not on value?

No property in Westminster can be charged more than £1,376.28 a year."
Why?

Here the highest band pays over £3,500

It’s because all areas can decide how they want to impose council tax, and no two councils seem to be exactly the same.
We pay far more now where we are in the south ( in a smaller house) than we did in a large house in the West country.

Many baby boomers who bought property decades ago are now in the fortunate position of having paid off their mortgage and able to live on their final salary pensions. Lucky them. What worries me is the current generation who are paying high rents, paying off student loans and not enough money left at the end of each month to contribute to a pension. How are they going to manage when they retire and only have a state pension to live on? We have a time bomb ticking away in our society and government needs to do something about it.

The poorest LA’s are forced to charge the highest rates of council tax in order to protect essential services . Wrong on so many levels .

nonnie I said it was 'patently obvious' but perhaps instead of using the phrase 'don't know', I should have been more blunt and said don't care!
Smugness abounds!

Bossyrossy I would some some, but certainly not all. There are plenty of pensioners who are JAM in properties worth quite a substantial amount - but they're not large properties so downsizing, leaving an area they know and people/families is just not an option. And their pensions may not necessarily be good, some of these people could be widows surviving on a very small pension.