Unaffordable Property Prices?

 
I am constantly being told that it was much cheaper in relative terms to buy a first property in my youth than it is today. I refute this. I had no silver spoon, no money from parents, nothing.

My first flat cost £16K in 1981. 4 times my salary with 10% deposit. As I write this, the cheapest 1-bed flat in my area today is £130K with 10% deposit. That remains about 4 times the average wage. So what has changed?

I’m not saying it is easy for them but I was prepared to scrimp and save enough for a deposit. I don’t think this generation is. They refuse to go without holidays abroad, designer clothes, flash cars and socialising. The phase cake and eat it springs to mind.

The article I have linked to insists that property prices have gone up in proportion to salaries. My example above suggests otherwise but even if this is true living costs have gone down, especially food. Also, interest rates were much higher in the 80s. And the problem of jumping on the housing market is not recent, it goes back beyond the pandemic when they were virtually zero. They were moaning then.

A young couple I know tell me I had it easy back in the day, houses were virtually given away. They are surprised to learn I had to move 30+ miles away to get a start as the cheapest property in the area in which I was born and bred was 8 times my wage and unaffordable. The first mistake they make is to look at prices back then and think “that’s nothing” not realising we were earning a pittance. Their 2nd mistake is to scorn any notion of saving. Putting away even £100 a week would amount to a deposit on my above example within a few years, especially now with prices dropping. Give up Just Eat deliveries, costa coffees and the odd night out, buy good quality 2nd-hand clothes from charity shops and take staycations. Make just a few sacrifices and you’d be surprised at what you can achieve.

However, the MSM encourages people to wallow in self-pity, to create victims whilst upholding the myth that previous generations never had it so good. And this generation laps it all up.

Or do ISACers think I’m being too harsh? What do you think?

Sky news

Nominated by Lord Helpus.

59 thoughts on “Unaffordable Property Prices?

  1. I think you are spot on.

    It seems to me a large proportion of younger people have no idea about financial matters at all.

    Plus the country has gone soft and entitled,with added piss poor policy decisions by the political class as an added bonus.

    Morning Gents.

  2. Ma first house were a converted shithouse at bottom o’ garden. It cost 250 years wages and mortgage rate were 200%. Tell that to t’kids these days and they won’t believe ya.

  3. Geordie you were lucky 🍀 T hav a converted shit house. We used T ave t shit ova fence inta neighbours yard we did

  4. Don’t think your being harsh, think you’ve got a point.

    It’s always took a bit of sacrifice to save a deposit and get on the ladder.

    Think modern people just moan a lot more.

    I move people into new homes all the time ,
    Young families seem to be buying and have money.

    They don’t seem to be capable of making little savings?
    A packed lunch.

    I have been using some casual labour lately,
    Told them

    ” bring butties and a drink.
    Big job tomorrow”

    One cunt empty handed said his mam forgot to make him butties?!!

    If you can’t make a few butties, chuck in a packet of crisps an a mars bar your fuckin doomed in the world of work.

    He asked could we stop at a shop or McDonalds!!
    Can we fuck.
    busy.

    He looked thirsty at the end of the day,
    I of course had a positively wonderful packed lunch, almost a picnic,
    Made the night before by myself, not my fuckin mam.

    • I remember those people. Can’t drive, can’t make themselves a sandwich, go on the piss mid-week, aren’t out front when you pick them up, and if they are they’re hung over and often want running home after a few hours because the blazing sun has made the hangover worse, but they’re chomping at the bit to get paid at the end of the week when the client comes home, so they can go out all weekend and pretend they some word-hard, play-hard Jack the Lad stuffiing shit cocaine up their hooter, but really they’re lazy, soft little mummy’s boys.

      As for workmen going to McDonalds, I’ve noticed that a lot of them make the lunchbreaks last a few minutes longer each day, and sites get messier, with wrappings of McMuffins, coffee cups and McFlurries left around. They always get told to fuck off.

  5. The price of anything is usually determined by what people are willing to pay for it.

    What people are willing to pay for a house in the UK is usually determined by how much the lender is willing to lend.

    Mortgage lenders are not out to do people favours, they are there to make money and they do that by lending the absolute maximum that they think that you can afford.

    It’s them that force up property prices.

    It seems bizarre that a Victorian house in the suburbs of London which cost a few hundred pounds when it was built should now be on the market for a million.

    I understand that a few hundred pounds over a hundred year’s ago was an enormous amount of money but that’s not really the point.

    The house, regardless of its condition is simply not worth it.

    It’s never going to happen, but if house buyers collectively made the decision that what is on the market is not worth the money asked, then house prices would have to fall to a more reasonable level.

    • House buyers get together and force a dutch auction Artful? As you say it’s never going to happen. Reason is that to the vast majority spending on housing is not discretionary. It could only be so if you were prepared to join the poor sods already living on the streets.

  6. I’ve much sympathy with the point you make LH. My wife and I met up in 1971 and for the next three years we lived frugally to raise the deposit on our first house. It seemed to us only common sense.

    However, the real problem with housing costs today as ever is high demand and restricted supply. Housing is pretty well a free market and if you could magic up a million houses or lose a million people over night those costs would decline smartly. To claim that shipping in hundreds of thousands of extra bodies annually does not push up housing costs is perverse. People who make such a claim are not to be taken seriously. Having said that it would really piss me off if I were renting to know that the rent I paid comfortably exceeded what the repayments would be on a mortgage to buy the place.

    Morning all.

  7. Some very valid points. The griping by the young shavers is stoked by the media, which is now full of entitled, bitter cunts straight out of university.
    They always use London as the example never places like the North East, where there are plenty of cheap,properties.
    Then there are a plethora of useless think tanks and charidees pumping out meaningless reports that blame every current ill on “boomers”.
    Finally, there is social media. If the young aren’t constantly bragging about their latest life experiences they feel they are not really living, and all these holidays and nights out cost money that would be better put towards a deposit.

  8. God, I wish I’d been smarter and more dilligent when younger.

    Land.

    That’s the smart thing to buy.
    Buy up bits of land.
    Can sell it on at a profit when the times right.
    Build on it yourself if you can get the planning permission.

    Id love to own a small rural bit of land.
    Only a couple of acre like.
    A getaway for me, Mrs Miserable and the dog.

    Fiddler had it right

    • Dead right Mis! I think it was Mark Twain who advised; “Buy land young man. They’re not making it any more.” True on a human scale with the exception of Iceland.

  9. There is a programme on UK telly which shows people buying properties from auctions, toshing them up and then selling them for a profit.

    The presenters of the programme richly deserve a cunting of their own.

    A bumbling, middle aged idiot who thinks it’s cool to dress like a teenager with gelled hair.

    An annoying, midget Scottish woman.

    A big, black ex footballer.

    An obviously alcoholic, ex builder.

    A zero personality black woman, there to keep the boxes ticked.

    Many year’s ago I used to buy houses in auctions.
    But unlike the people in the programme I did absolutely nothing to the properties.
    In most cases I didn’t even see them.

    I would just put them into the next auction with a fixed reserve.

    I never lost money and I never got stuck with a property.

    Even though I was making a lot of money for doing fuck all, I couldn’t help thinking how stupid the situation was.

    • “An annoying, midget Scottish woman”….Martel Maxwell, whose ginger fanny I would ruthlessly plough with every cubic inch of my slaghammer.

      • I’m impressed Thomas.
        The show goes out at a time when your morning horn should have subsided and still you can imagine shagging a ginger dwárf gobshite.

        I watched one episode where the boring black woman had her T-shirt blurred out.

        It must have had a slogan which the shows producers thought was inappropriate.

        Instead of telling her to change her shirt and dress properly they decided to use computer trickery to hide whatever was written.

        I suppose that it would have been racist to do anything else.

        The BBC.

      • Morning TAC, it was probably “kill whitey” or “save Kunte Kinte” or some other pro-black nonsense.
        I’d have been impressed if it read “my husband is a chınky”!

  10. Supply and demand.

    The UK population swelled by over half a million in 2022. There is insufficient housing stock to accommodate what we have.

    We can’t build at anywhere approaching the rate needed.

    If demand reduced so would prices. QED.

    • Morning PM…surely we could starting using immos to make the houses?
      By which I mean put the immos into an industrial press and crush them into a mould. I reckon 99% compression would reduce the average dinghy sponger into three average-sized house bricks.
      Then any subsequent immos could live in houses constructed of their predecessors with pieces of jawbone and partial thumbs sticking out of internal walls.

      • Excellent Thomas..and of course it would be prudent to buy shares in air freshener companies as these houses you’ve suggested would assuredly stink of goat curry or some such shite.

  11. All depends where you live, my nephew has a good job and earns about 80k and has 50k.for a deposit, he asked me to come and have a look at a property he was interested in buying, it was a 2 bedroom flat in Hackney in a glorified tower block, the locals reminded me of the film zulu, flat was at best OK, I said how much is it, he said I think I can get it for 350k,the prices in London are a fucking disgrace, forget average wage, you won’t get anything ever

    • But you’ll still be expected to find £2k per month in rent for some squalid shithole.

  12. Spot on. When you look at the multipliers, nothing has changed other than the inclination to forego basic human rights – like foreign holidays, Netflix, phones, eating out…..

  13. Gimme gimme gimme. The fucking spoilt cunts had everything as children and expect the same when they “grow up”/ become adults….

    • Damn right, HTB…a kid at my company (well, he’s 28) was bemoaning what his Mum had put in his lunch box then got a little offended when I said, “your Mum makes your lunch?! What are you, some sort of spa§tic?”

  14. What they don’t get is that it is all relative.

    Aged 18, I was earning £125 a week. £150 if I worked Saturdays too.

    A two bed flat in town or a two bed terrace in the sticks was around £28-30k.

    Therefore it was 5 times my salary and unaffordable.

    A package of smokes and two pints came to £4.61. The same packet of smokes and two pints now costs £27.

    The two bed flat or terrace now costs.£350k

    Still unaffordable to anyone not on £70k plus.

    Still requires two wages to afford a place after scrimping and saving for the deposit and fees.

    Nothing has changed.

    • Well that’s clearly your fault, Odin…for not being a darkıe and turning up on the shores of this benighted country with your two-tone hand outstretched for unending free stuff.

      • My immediate mental image was of one of these Blek Key cunts sauntering up the beach with its hand out..to have it cleaved by a broadsword weilded by,well,me dressed as Henry VIII.

  15. I recall interest rates were mental when Mrs Twenty and I bought our place. Well into double digits. My first pay packet yielded the princely sum of £14, and I thought I was rolling in it. I wasn’t of course but I was on my way. I support this cunting. Youngsters need to do less moaning, less protesting about carbon emissions and suck wank, stop skiving and get their sleeves rolled up.

    On the other hand they could carry on stressing about their gender identities, listening to their whining celeb heroes, take more drugs, and fuck right off.

    Good morning everyone.

    • Morning 20👍

      Proper bank holiday weekend here,
      Fuckin chuckin it down.
      Yesterday thunder and lightning for hours,
      Like Transylvania .🦇🦇

      • Morning MNC. Another fine British tradition! Pac-a-macs, Ice creams eaten in bus shelters, and then all back in the car to make an early start for home – to beat the traffic.

      • Hehe! Yeah!
        Nowt better than sat in a bus shelter drinking tea from a flask as the storm at sea crashes against the sea defences and soaks your fish paste butties😁

      • Jeepers!!

        Looks friendly eh Thomas?
        I can see why it was chosen for story hour in Transylvania infants school.

        Fuck me, Salem’s lot

  16. History used to be described as “progressive”……..every generation expected to be healthier and wealthier than their parents. That quite clearly is now in reverse and it’s not a fucking accident. What we are witnessing is the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. If you’ve got money you have a licence to print more. There’s always a reason……the plandemic, net zero, “refugees”, war etc etc. Plenty more to come. You will own nothing and be happy.

  17. I thought young people these days continue to live at home, usually rent free, until the parents either cark it, or get shuffled into a care home, at which point they move…. Into the big bedroom with the en-suite!

    • My daughter is still at home at fuckin 28!!!

      Fuck me☹️
      I left home at 16 and never went back.

      She was talking on the phone to a mate and said
      ” oh I’m very independent…”

      Any less independent she’d still be breastfeeding.

    • Just afraid of hard work… rough calculation follows:

      If you’re 21 or over, the minimum wage is over £10 an hour.
      40 hours a week, 4 weeks in a month is £1600. Lose a bit for tax, say £1500.

      I’ve not even suggested getting an extra 15 hour a week bar job in the evenings or having to do more than just one job.

      Your life partner/whoever you’re shagging does the same. You both live at home or both parasitise the parents with the better house. Outgoings: £0. Okay, maybe you have to run a car if you’re not good at the ‘parasite’ thing.

      You’ve got £3000 (yes, three fucking grand) a month in disposable income.

      Can’t afford a place? Can’t afford a nice house like the one you’re tucked away in at the moment and wouldn’t be able to enjoy that lovely fountain of squanderable cash, more like.

      Idle, unambitious, lazy, whining cunts.

  18. I agree with this cunting. I lived in a caravan on my grandad’s farm while my parents struggled to get money together for a home. That was around the mid eighties and inflation was about 16%. There was also a time limit for them as I was due to start playschool in a year.

    The country is just full of whingers now. No iniative, so self-restraint. It’s ‘I want, I must have’.
    everyone gets A stars and first class degrees in Feminist film studies, and it’s still not enough.
    We’ve turned into Americans, but without the work ethic and capable military.
    You see the whingers on social media.
    Twitter has always been the same;
    ‘Nobody’s feedin’ my fuckin kids for me!
    Fuckin tories!
    ! ‘I broke my adult-size Barbie-themed BMX! Fuckin’ tories! ‘
    ‘Idropped my cheese and ham toastie in dog shit! Fuckin’ tories!’
    ‘I left having kids too late and my baby has Downs. Fuckin’ tories!’
    ‘My boss asked me to work on a friday but I need to play on my Xbox! Fuckin’ tories!
    ‘Trump’s a Brexit voter and hates the gays! Fuckin’ tories though, innit?’

    Geoff Norcott said something similiar about British Twitter, if Labour win the election the losers of Twitter will have nobody to blame for their lives being disasters.
    Fuckin’ tories!

  19. If I remember rightly, 1st of July 1981. First mortgage payment £191.28. Interest rate 15%. Weekly income £100-£120. That’s a fucking big slice out of my wages. Solution work, home have evening meal out again doing private work. Finish about 10pm. Home sleep repeat.
    The house needed knocking into the second half of the twentieth century so you can see where the money went.

    My late Mother in Law left my stepdaughter enough for a deposit brought a place. Fuck me the look on her face when the mortgage was cheaper than the rent she and my son in law were paying. Fast forward 10 years been over paying the mortgage, two years left to pay. Result.

  20. Quite right LH, remember it well …
    Needed a deposit, so in order to save money, just spent evenings watching old black and white TV or shagging, so to not go out and save money!!
    When we eventually got there the mortgage was a wholeweeks wages.
    Do kids these days understand the word – save ?
    No matter how little you have coming in, you have to cut your cloth…

    • Undeniably true, but still not as cheap as ‘not going away but picking up some casual work’ or ‘booking your holiday to go daffodil picking in Cornwall and trousering £1000 a week for a fortnight’

      Everyone has to make their own judgments. Which do you want more? Any sort of leisure travel is pretty low-hanging fruit in terms of an expense to cut.

      Both my spawn are on their third holiday of the year (3 abroad, 3 at home between the two of them) and certainly forfeit the right to give me the ‘saving as hard as we can’ bollocks.

      • I try to find the right balance with both. I’m planning a short trip to Budapest next month plus a few weeks in Germany to experience the Christmas markets, but I’m making in sacrifices in other areas to ensure that those trips don’t eat into my savings too much. I expect to have slightly less money than what I otherwise would do but not so much that I can’t make it back within a couple of months.

  21. As a young person, I saved a lot with the aim of eventually putting down a deposit on a house. Then Liz Truss came in and drove interests rates up, making it unaffordable. So until they go down, I’m going to travel a bit more and have some of the holidays I sacrificed in earlier years – so long as you book out of season and make sacrifices in other areas it ends up being fairly affordable.

  22. Whilst I agree somewhat, the first house I bought was a three bed semi in a nice area. Had a garden front and back, drive for the car and it backed into playing fields. Crime virtually zero. All middle class honkies.

    Now, it needed a bit of doing up (central heating, new doors and bathroom), but I got it for £46500 I think.

    That was mid 90s. Now, that house is worth 250k.

    I think their is a difference and it is harder nowadays to get on the market, but yes, some do moan and think people like me bought houses with no sacrifice. The tart I was with at that time and I went without nights out, deliveries and holidays. Aye crappy cheap food. For about two years.

    But if some cunt who works his arse off now wants a home with a garden in a nice area (to live with dignity in other words) they’ll need to be on 80k a year or so. Or a couple on 90k between them.

    ‘Strong wimminz’ nowadays don’t settle down as much as they used to.

    So the younger lads I know have to look for a place on their tod for the most part.

    But some cunts deserve never to be able to afford a decent home.

    I’m talking about the ‘say it loud, day it clear, refugees are welcome here’ mob and the Greta Cuntberg Net Zero shithouses.

    Guess why houses cost so much, you daft cunts?

    Supply and demand. Maybe mass immigration from the third world isn’t such a great idea if you want to buy a house?

    Bills up? Good prices up? Fuel? Train ticket prices (if they’re not on strike for another wedge). Gets a bit much, doesn’t it? Well, I don’t suppose net zero has anything to do with all this either, eh?

    Keep sucking Greta’s tits (that gave me the horn) and welcoming millions of dregs in.

    By the way, the invaders are also starting to corner the fucking rental market (councils, housing associations and now even private rentals)

    So if you’re young, can’t afford to buy and all the rentals are being given (free) to invaders…about time you woke the fuck up, isn’t it?

    I don’t need no man, innit?

    • Lol that last sentence was supposed to be after the strong wiminz bit.

      What the actual fuck.

  23. My first house cost £22.5k

    The mortgage rate was 15%

    I paid more than 2/3 of my wages on the mortgage. I earned £100 per week.

    This was 1986.

    It was only just doable – it inspired me to want to do better and earn more.

    • My first house cost £1,350.

      1978

      Paid cash – practically all my savings.

      1982 Received generous improvement grant courtesy of Labour council.

      Sold it in 2002 for £95,000.

      Bought our current abode for £240,000.

      Again paid cash.

      Spent 10 years doing it up myself.

      Currently valued at £800,000.

      3 storey house – no plans to move again – despite horrendous energy bills!

      • Problem now is people can’t take the cash out of older houses that have multi bagged and buy properties at current market rates with cash.

  24. There’s vacancies on a lovely houseboat down in Portland…with all mod cons, including a gym, free transport to and from the town centre. Superb health facilities with in-house GP and dental care.

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