House Prices

[Homebird44]

Hahaha!!! NO REMORTGAGE FOR THE SEXUAL DEVIANTS!!! CANT ENJOY SEX IF YOU WANT A MORTGAGE, SEX IS AN UNNECESSARY LUXURY!!!

Think she told my husband that and he's stuck to it.
*puts another order in with love honey*

 

[Homebird44]

I paid for my own phone at uni- do her kids have jobs at uni like I did so I could afford to go? If not then I’m entitled to my opinion that this is an example of unnecessary spending IF owning a home is important to you and you say you can’t save.

Hi thats me!! My daughter works in McDonald's when she's back and saves for her rent. She's going into her 2nd year this year and she'll hopefully get a job once she's back. My son was furloughed and then made redundant, he's just finished his last year and is applying for jobs. He pays his car insurance, petrol and anything else he needs from his student loan.

 

[Clairer86]

Wow, what an interesting thread. Its been really interesting reading all the posts here.
I dont know anything about buying a house. My parents were always in a council house, and my mum still lives in the council house where she raised me and my siblings.
My partner and I, have a mortgage. Our little house is an ex council house on a small estate that was council but i think its all mortgaged houses now.
I have always always always wanted to live in a new build! But my partner who is an electrician said no because he has worked on enough of them to know how they are thrown together and normally have loads of issues a year down the line. But i cant lie, i love New Builds. I dont know if its because im shallow and dont know about houses, or what. But at the time, in my head i thought if we got a new build then we really would have 'made it'. I hope that makes sense, i know i probably come across as a right vain bitch here! But i had nothing growing up, i am the first person in my family to go to uni and get a mortgage and have a 'professional' career, so it was probably more of a status thing caused by me not knowing anything about houses. I am very proud of our house though, i mean its nothing special- just your average 3 bedroom, semi detached house. But it needed loads of work doing to it, luckily my partner is an electrician and just generally very good with everything so between him, his plumber friends and his builder friends, we were able to do it up to a really high standard. But i think this is our forever home, im almost 35 and he is 46. We have a friend who has moved houses 3 times during the past 10 years and now lives in a huge beautiful house, but the mortgage is sky high. He is the same age as my partner and i know he is absolutely skint now and he said he wishes he was still in the first house he got.

 

[Anne1448]

My last landlord was like that. I had to negotiate every year with each rent increase to have something updated or replaced. All whilst the rising damp was destroying the house and the walls were barely held up with lining paper. He just doesnt care about the house, but is happy to take the money.

Sounds like my previous landlord... he said that he would increase my rent so I asked what was going to be updated and he said nothing. He needed to increase to "keep up with the rentals around us". But the rentals around the neighbourhood were brand new luxury apartments owned by massive corporation. Greed really is a sickness.

 

[BettyCrockerr]

Sadly there was a history of giving people large mortgages with next to no deposit who couldn't afford them, hence the crash. Banks don't give out mortgages to help people, its all to make money and if you default it is worse for them so its easier not to grant it, along with the next legislation which means they can't.

No I know, but it can’t carry on like this. Give it another 20 years and only the very rich will be able to get a mortgage if things stay as they are and with a lack of social housing stocks there simply won’t be homes accessible for a large proportion of people to live in.

 

[JoeBloggs]

I feel the same, unless you're in the very fortunate position to buy a house outright then effectively the bank is your landlord anyway.

True. but the bank cannot kick your out with two months notice when your still paying.

I have rented for a long time, I enjoyed the freedom but now we have bought I enjoy the investment on the work we are doing to the house. We have no plans to move for 10 or so years. I think renting is ideal for some, especially as it doesn’t tie you in to the area or the person you choose to rent with.

 

[JoeBloggs]

A lot of is for show too. We could easily move, make £100k on our house and buy something quite special. But I enjoy our current disposable income, I like our home and our area (we had to move 20 miles to buy) but the likes of my cousin, he’s just had a £35k increase (madness!!) and she’s moved up a band in the NHS. They are late 20s and looking to buy a £900k house, I can’t believe for one second they can actually afford it but like their parents that doesn’t really matter. Even if I could afford that, that debt, maintenance and possible interest rise, no thank you!

 

[Nebbymoo]

Weve been looking for the past year and the house prices round here have trebled in price in the past year alone. Some of the houses on the worst street can go for between 5k-10k usually (awful houses damp with the copper pipes ripped out by criminals etc) are now priced at 50k+ that's how mad the prices have shot up recently.
We have been given a decision in principle for upto £110k which for our earnings is fair but I'd never be able to justify the house youd get for that price at the moment. So it looks like we will be continuing to rent for another couple of years until the madness ends. It was difficult enough for us to manage to raise the deposit that we have and get a decision in principle as it is without then having the rug pulled under us with the state of the market currently. Its disheartening. No sooner is something listed that its been sold. Literally within hours. First time buyers just stand no chance at the minute it's all being snapped up by investors

 

[JoeBloggs]

Not really though, the artificial pushing up of house prices means people are having to choose between them and its shit. Or in some cases will never be able to get a mortgage because they just dont earn enough if the area they live in is expensive.

People can say oh years ago we didnt have x y and z but years ago most households had 1 income. We live in a society where most households have a dual income. It should be possible to buy a home and have some sort of a cultured life, have experiences.

I grew up financially disadvantaged, I wouldnt say poor but we didnt have a lot for a variety of reasons. My parents home is 5 times more expensive now than it was when they bought it in 1990, we dont live in a very expensive area. Has the average wage increased 5 times since 1990? No. Thats the problem. Yes there may be other factors at play for people struggling to get on the ladder but this is the main problem.

I am a home owner (well I pay the bank, dont own it outright) and even I can see the issues that people face and its not giving up £5 lattes, sadly.

My parents bought their house in 1996 on one wage for £180K, it is now worth nearly £1mil. Their first house they bough for less than £10K on a 100% mortgage which allowed them to get on the market.

I bought in 2017 with two wages, circa £65K, we could only get a £250K mortgage and needed at least £325K to get on the ladder. Where do you get £75K from when paying £950 rent a month plus bills before the price goes up again. We were very fortunate and were gifted money but I know so many who it is not an option for them regardless of how much they work and save, especially not in the South East.

 

[Mrs McCarthy]

They're just out to get as much as they can, and playing two people off another is an easy way to get another 10-20k. It's so frothy at the moment I'm not even looking.

The government are about to extend the eviction ban. I think this is good, gives renters more rights and rightfully reminds landlords buy to let is gambling on an essential thing for life and quite rightfully has controls.

The problem is that this extension is going to hit small landlords rather than big ones. We know a couple that only have two BTL. With one of them everything is fine, but the other is not. They were trying to evict them from February because they were not paying rent before Covid, and now they didn’t get any money from it from last November or something like that. And they still need to pay the mortgage.
My partner’s aunt and uncle are also “landlords”. His uncle’s mum has dementia, so she is in a nursing home and they use the rent on her house to top up the payments for the nursing home. Even with that and her pension they still need touse her lifetime savings. Their tenants are not paying their rent either because of COVID, but they live on the same street and frequently see delivery drivers with big parcels from Amazon, etc. They are now draining their own savings to pay for her nursing home, and yet they cannot evict either!
The majority of landlords in this country are just ordinary people with a small number of properties, not moguls with 100s of houses.
Why are these people meant to suffer when some tenants chose not to pay rent and yet they cannot be evicted?

How many landlords and tenants are there in the UK? | Letting Agents | HomeLet

As the UK's PRS continues to grow in size, HomeLet summarises the figures which indicate just how many landlords and tenants there now are.

homelet.co.uk

At the end of the day, if you don’t pay your mortgage, the bank can kick you out and repossess. But the landlord can’t, because it seems cruel? It isn’t. And a lot of tenants treat the rental properties so badly that at best you need a professional clean after they leave, at worst redecoration!

 

[JoeBloggs]

Isn’t there a whole thing about leasehold houses , I can’t remember the ins and outs although am sure Google or someone here will know, but they have so many problems and not going to be allowed anymore

Yeah it was all a farse by housing builders and there were some which meant they couldn’t sell or remortgage and were stuck I think. It was to make more money!

Personally I’d never touch a leasehold house.

 

[Caffeine Fiend]

It’s also the biggest middle class delusion going that it couldn’t happen to you. You, like the peasants you look down on, are also only an average of 3 pay cheques away from homelessness. Your jobs aren’t forever - there is no job security anymore and look at what happened at the start of the pandemic.

I’m guessing from what you’ve said you’re most likely a middle management level at most so not likely in a high demand burn out situation but for people with v high incomes (ARTP or entrepreneurs etc) burn out happens and it happens fast. Or a bad tax advisor fucked you over and suddenly your wife’s leaving you and taking 50% with her. The stories I hear are horrifying and why you’d have to be dumb to max yourself out at 4-5x, but it’s the only alternative the majority of the country have. But it means you’ve got a system where the avg FTB is in their mid 30s signing up to earn the same as their youthful peak for 20-30 years? Bleak.

Yes and the current government are playing a blinder at keeping that delusion going.

 

[Lanavalentine]

I blame Kirsty and Phil, remember when she accused sir lord Alan sugar of looking at her tits during the apprentice on twitter then claimed she had been hacked

But the daytime and evening schedule for over a decade has been full of property ramping shite

Yeah, all the property TV shows have a lot to answer for.

It’s like everyone thinking they’re an interior designer now because they’ve slapped on some Farrow & Ball and bought a velvet sofa from Made.com and a berber rug from La Redoute. Got to start a new Instagram account to document it!

 

[theweekend]

Problem is the elderly move out of these massive houses (that they bought for £4K decades ago and is now worth £500k) into a retirement flat but no one local can afford to buy the houses they move out of.

I've honestly no idea how long this can continue? These people think they're so clever simply because they own a house that has tripled in value, as if their London home is a goldmine they're sitting on. Well that may be true, but only if there is someone out there able to purchase it?

As someone in their late 20s who grew up in suburban London, absolutely none of my peers in my personal/work life are buying here. One in a shared ownership flat on the outskirts of London, but that's it. It's really not even a consideration anymore. Every house that goes on sale on my street is bought by developers and turned into flats (depressing as well as fucking annoying as there's a constant stream of renovation works happening to put up with, but that's another story).

3/4 bed houses that look halfway decent are going for £950k+. They've even started knocking down mansions near me to replace them with luxury flats. I've really no idea what the future will be for all of these beautiful London homes because there's certainly no surplus let alone an equal level of demand vs supply coming from our generation, for those who are lucky enough to have buying be a possibility at all.

 

[Bitofthebubbly]

The beggy little cards and letters estate agents put through my letterbox piss me off so much. We rent so maybe I’m over sensitive to it but obviously we don’t want the landlord selling as that could mean we lose our home, from a tenants perspective it’s just so thoughtless. I also hate the assumption that everyone owns where they live, like hello tenants exist in the world too. I wonder if anyone has ever responded to those cards or if they’re pointless, I can’t imagine you’d get one and suddenly be like “let’s move house” it’s usually something you think about for a while and then seek out an estate agent yourself. Like I say it’s probably a sore spot for me so annoys me even more. I just want them to stop hounding us and reminding us that this house isn’t really ours tbh.

I can’t look at house prices in my area right now, they are actually disgusting. It makes me sad.

edit: wording

 

[Anne1448]

The media here (Australia) does lots of Millennials v Boomers stuff (which I dislike immensely) but it is interesting comparing:

OK Boomers, who had it easier?

It’s a battle for the ages – with Baby Boomers and Millennials pitted against each other.

www.news.com.au

Wages not increasing while property prices have (by a lot) sucks.

I visited a place in the West of Ireland and it was priced at 175.000€. I went on the Property register to see what was the original price and the owners bought it for 50,000€. Mind you they haven't changed a single thing in the apartment in the last decade. The location has fishing jobs only, there are no transportations and the nearest town is more than 30 minutes away.

Now, if someone can explain how an apartment can be 250% more expensive in ten years, I am listening.

 

[Nebbymoo]

Where I live landlords/owners leave houses empty they are charged additional council tax as punishment.

Its criminal how some of the beautiful homes are allowed to just be left to decay or get vandalised beyond repair.

 

[Bitofthebubbly]

What annoys me about where I live is that all the new builds tend to be shared ownership to make them look ‘affordable’. It’s not something most people I know looking to buy would ever be interested in. If anyone has done shared ownership I’d be really interested to hear your experience, I’m not really sold on the idea myself.

 

[Lanavalentine]

I’m not that surprised people regret it. We bought last year and there was a LOT of pressure at viewings, like basically trying to get you in and out in five minutes. My partner & I were good at standing our ground and taking our time, but I can imagine some people find that difficult, especially if moving was a necessity at that stage.

Also, a friend of mine was told she’d have to offer on a house purely on a video call, rather than an in-person visit! She walked away, but again, if you’re desperate to move for whatever reason, I can imagine it’s easier to give in…

 

[Clickbait]

The motivating factor for anyone renting out a second property is to make money. Often they do this by spending the bare minimum on decoration and maintenance, appliances etc. because “it’s for the rental market” so no point in making it nice because it’ll only get trashed. Sadly because it’s all worn and run down, some tenants can have the mindset that it’s not worth treating nicely.

The worst landlords are the ones who try and scam you for any minor or perceived damage just to keep your deposit and use it to either fix a pre-existing problem, or in a lot of cases just line their pockets and try the same trick again. I used to take photos and document every issue then email the landlord with them at the start of a tenancy. Saved me from losing my deposit when the worst landlord I ever had to deal with tried to keep our full deposit to replace the kitchen floor because of a cracked tile that was there when we moved in.