If there were more potential buyer then building companies would be prepared to build more houses - simple supply and demand proposition?

This is a very densely populated island in global terms - if we want to encourage people to live and work here we need to increase the housing stock. Mass building of rental properties is storing up a huge problem later down the line. Building affordable properties that people can get affordable mortgages seems like a win win to me.

Some really good points - but the low of averages suggests the 80/20 rule fits so 80% of the population will earn below the median. So if you take the poverty measure to be what you have alluded to then you will have loads of kids in "poverty" - they are not really in poverty though are they?

The rise in food banks is directly correlated to the universal credit issue - a good idea very badly executed. Once/if this settles down then the reliance on food banks will diminish - although why buy food when you can get it for free?

I agree our politicians are very poor and nearly all have very little experience outside of political life. We need less of them, they should have had experience in proper jobs - I don't mean working for think tank/union/quango - a proper job and their should be limits on how long they can be an MP say 10-15 years. We need to pay them more to attract better candidates.

Completely agree - even a modest move in interest rates to say 5% which is historically very low would see huge property defaults. If the banks were pragmatic they would extend mortgage periods to cushion the blow but that is not how banks work sadly.

Oh you're spot on. We were sold a 40 year mortgage. Fixed for 3 years so the interest rate was high. It was a terrible deal, but it was a deal. We had no chance of 25 years & we were turned down on other applications (we had no bad credit history between us and had a 5% deposit).

You're correct RE peers. They are struggling by comparison. If they aren't in a relationship there is no chance. If anyone falls pregnant and are living at home they inevitably rent.

Perhaps someone on this forum will explain otherwise but I really believe if you have started off renting, I truly fail to see how you get a property of your own. I rented once for a job for 3 months in Manchester and I would have had no chance of saving.

40 years ? that's one hell of a commitment

As you say, it's a real catch 22 - if you try and rent, there is little left towards saving for a deposit. Therefore, it's either live with the oldies, get some financial help from them or rent for a lifetime - unless you win the Euromillions

It's probably too late for you to change but, I would definitely recommend an offset mortgage if you can, as it will allow you to shave a few years of your loan.

My mortgage was a 40 year mortgage when I took it out. It was the only way I could get one at the time, and that was with help from parents and one of them acting as a guarantor. I imagine a lot of first time buyers buying in the last 10-15 years will be on 40 year mortgages to start off with.

In the old days parents used to guarantee bank loans to their kids - happy days

Quote: Sal Paradise "In the old days parents used to guarantee bank loans to their kids - happy days They still can on pay day loans, the Tory alternative to food banks: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 38076.html Force people to use food banks and then extort money from them through payday loan companies

Quote: Sal Paradise "In the old days parents used to guarantee bank loans to their kids - happy days They still can on pay day loans, the Tory alternative to food banks: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 38076.html Force people to use food banks and then extort money from them through payday loan companies

On your first paragraph - yes, if the market functioned efficiently and there weren't barriers to supply. The problem is there are barriers to supply eg through the planning permission process, NIMBYism.

I know the Conservative party is having a revival now on the back of Brexit but the housing situation is the biggest existential problem to the Conservative party's future. When the voting analysis comes out from this election and you see all the breakdowns of age, gender etc, the one to really look for is housing tenure. What is often seen as an 'age' story dividing Conservatives v Lab/Lib/Green is actually a correlation on housing tenure. In the old days it was social tenants vote Labour and home owners vote Conservative. Now you have a growing body of renters in the private sector and they hate the Conservatives.

A couple of years ago I went to a Resolution Foundation event looking at the policy future of the Conservative party. David Willetts and Nick Timothy (after his No.10 days) were making this point forcefully. Timothy had a bad media image as an aloof bully but he came across as an intelligent guy who understood the problem, as did Willetts. Their big concern was the Conservative party had built its election success in the 1980s on being the party that enabled a property dream for people who previously didn't think they could get one. Now its turning in to a party of pulling up the ladder and preserving established divides between those who have property and those who don't. They were saying, if a Conservative government doesn't do something to turn this around for the younger generation and enable them to get onto the ladder, how can we credibly appeal to them. There were a lot of people in the audience coming out with the old tropes 'nobody has a God given right to a house', 'the problem is with the young people today, they don't want to start at the bottom and work their way up like we did, they're lazy'. Sure...but don't expect that attitude to be one that wins young people over to the Conservatives. I got the feeling that Willetts and Timothy were fighting a losing battle. I expect both have been totally sidelined by the current leadership.

You may not have had a cash injection from your parents but you certainly benefited from living with them if I read your post correctly. That's not a criticism btw. You achieved what many simply don't have the willpower for - £250 a month saved is a decent deposit within a couple of years.

You also touch on a good point often mocked by many liberals: "no holidays/no wild night outs and the discipline to pay yourself first every month". It's packaged as 'avocado on toast' and sneered at, but there's a degree of truth there. You simply cannot afford to save for a deposit if you're paying £50 a month for the latest phone, have subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime and whatever else, you want a couple of holidays a year, big nights out 3-4 times a month and get takeaways in most nights of the week.

However, it's simply not true a single person can't buy a house. There are plenty of properties for less than £100k available in loads of areas commutable to Manchester for example, and many other major cities. Some might not be in the most salubrious of areas, but that's kind of how it works, start on the bottom rung and work your way up. Right now within a 5 mile radius of Manchester city centre there are almost 3,000 properties for sale under £150k.

After uni I rented a very rough little 1-bed flat above a hairdressers for several years (£30 a week, no heating, icicles on the ceiling in winter). I then lived overseas for several years so I was well behind the curve when I came back. I eventually bought a little 2-bed in a dodgy area for £79k in the early 2000s, and being on the 'ladder', saving and career progression enabled me to buy a 4-bed detached in a cracking area a couple of years ago. All that with a family and basically on a single wage.

you have a seriously deluded view on life