Re: Boris Johnson - spinless leader ? : Wed Dec 11, 2019 9:45 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

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.

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.

Re: Boris Johnson - spinless leader ? : Wed Dec 11, 2019 10:31 pm  

cadoo wrote:

Not true. I didn't get a penny from either mine or my partners parents and we were on average UK salaries (£25K each approx). What we did was save £250 each a month (our outgoings were low with living at home) and within 16 months (ish) we had a nice deposit saved up. We took advantage of the brilliant help to buy ISA scheme that paid for solicitors fees and we are on the ladder with a 3 bedroom semi detached house bought at £147K. However in that year and half saving we were disciplined. No holidays/no wild night outs and the discipline to pay yourself first every month (I.e save). I think in schools we should educate - or certainly as parents should educate - our children about money and how to make it work for you. A great book I read in my early 20s was "the richest man in babylon". Some really easy, digestible and instantly actionable measures you can take to be better off.

I think what definitely has changed is both my dad and my father in law were able to buy a property in their early 20s on their own. That is unheard of now. I think you absolutely need 2 people in full time employment as the cost of living has gone up since then. It was relatively easy (certainly easier than now) to get on the housing ladder. Even if you by some chance have the money on your own, getting a bank to grant you a mortgage on 1 full time wage is rare.

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.

Re: Boris Johnson - spinless leader ? : Wed Dec 11, 2019 10:47 pm  

wrencat1873 wrote: 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 That isn't what he said at all though, is it. He's saying (clumsily to be fair) that some people struggle to manage their money (often true), and one of the things they sometimes do when struggling is look for a payday loan. He then says one of the things he wants to do if he's in Parliament is to "stop payday loan advertising because that just makes the whole problem worse." It's very clear - if you bother to take a moment to pay attention - he's against payday loans. Your blinkers skew your hearing it seems.

wrencat1873 wrote: 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 That isn't what he said at all though, is it. He's saying (clumsily to be fair) that some people struggle to manage their money (often true), and one of the things they sometimes do when struggling is look for a payday loan. He then says one of the things he wants to do if he's in Parliament is to "stop payday loan advertising because that just makes the whole problem worse." It's very clear - if you bother to take a moment to pay attention - he's against payday loans. Your blinkers skew your hearing it seems.

[Mild Rover]

Re: Boris Johnson - spinless leader ? : Thu Dec 12, 2019 9:21 am  

Cronus wrote:

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.

That’s not massively dissimilar to my own experience. However, I think we both ‘beat’ the banking crisis and our experiences are of limited relevance to those that did not. I came out of university owing only about £6k, and the deposit for our first house was just £7k. Speaking to a younger colleague, who’d followed a similar path, a couple of years or so after the crash and that deposit wouldn’t have got me and my wife anywhere by that point. And we (me, my wife and you) went to University - plenty of people don’t, so while they don’t have the huge debt associated with a degree nowadays, they typically don’t earn as much as graduates either.

I went into academic research for some years, and occasionally we’d receive advice from senior tenured staff about how we could advance our careers as they had done. Work hard, publish in high impact journals etc. They had the experience, but it was of something that had by that point largely disappeared - well-funded and rapidly expanding higher education and basic science. It was still possible to advance, but much less likely. The advice was still basically sound, but was undermined sometimes by a lack of recognition of the extent of the change - whether from missing that point, or wanting to be positive, or not wanting their own achievements to seem diminished. I think telling the next generation that ‘well, we managed it’ on housing probably elicits similar feelings to those I felt back then.

Re: Boris Johnson - spinless leader ? : Thu Dec 12, 2019 9:33 am  

Cronus wrote:

That isn't what he said at all though, is it.

He's saying (clumsily to be fair) that some people struggle to manage their money (often true), and one of the things they sometimes do when struggling is look for a payday loan. He then says one of the things he wants to do if he's in Parliament is to "stop payday loan advertising because that just makes the whole problem worse." It's very clear - if you bother to take a moment to pay attention - he's against payday loans.

Your blinkers skew your hearing it seems.

Sorry Cronus, it wasn't supposed to be a serious reply.
My attempt at humour seems to have flown straight past. Never mind.

Re: Boris Johnson - spinless leader ? : Thu Dec 12, 2019 12:16 pm  

Cronus wrote:

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.

Yes but this is a stereotype that is just made up to support a point. All the younger generation today are wanting is a 'fair chance.'

It is a total myth that the earlier generation lived a life of thrift and sacrifice and younger people today are hedonists. Certainly when I was at uni and a young professional just after, people went out a lot - more than I see the graduate generation that work with us do. We were probably the boom years (2000s) of taking advantage of cheap holidays, in fact back then, it wasn't uncommon for people to do two 'gap years', one before university, then after uni. Even early-career after a couple of years working you would get people asking for a 'career break' to go travelling for a few months. This kind of stuff was going on, and people were still able to get on the ladder.

I'm not sure if the experience is totally different up north (where it's still more affordable to get on the housing ladder) but in London these avocado on toast generation just don't do the boozy nights out that we used to. They are a Netflix generation but they are probably spending less spending £8.99 a month and staying in watching endless box sets than my generation did going out regularly. Also one thing which amuses me at work is the older generation (who have houses) all seem to go to Pret A Manger and buy £7 worth of lunches a day, then tut at the price and say 'no wonder young people can't buy a house' and the graduates are all in a queue for the microwave having brought their own lunch from home to heat up.

The real thing that is stopping them being able to save for a deposit is the rents. Their salaries are being creamed off by landlords who see them as easy money. This should be recognised as the unfairness it is. When you get debates about Corbyn raising taxes on people over £80k etc, you immediately get a lot of people on or around that salary saying things like, I work damn hard for my money, what right does government have to take more of it away from me? But for 'generation rent', they are working hard and trying to chase their dream of escaping the drudgery of renting, moving every year when the landlord hikes their rent, getting fleeced with agent fees, and more and more of their wages are being taken away by landlords who see them as a cash cow. Even those who have managed to buy a house and are in those 'new builds', they might have the security of tenure but they have a similar situation with management companies fleecing them with service charges. These are their wages, which they are working hard for, and they are seeing increasing chunks creamed off by those who are in a privileged position in the property ladder. They see landlords and management companies in the same way that you see Corbyn wanting to raise taxes.

Lots of property owners have a story of thrift and sacrifice that led to them getting on the property ladder 'in their day', but the reality is the circumstances in which they bought a house - even up to my generation who graduated in the mid 2000s, was easier than it is today. The ratios of rent to take-home pay, and house prices to take-home pay were not as steep as they are now.

[OK...my generation faced those steep house prices to take-home pay ratios, but we benefited from access to generous mortgages which allowed you to get on the property ladder, and as long as you didn't lose your job during the crash, you benefited from long term super-low interest rates]

I do understand that being in London I am talking about a situation which is worse to that which people see in the north.

Re: Boris Johnson - spinless leader ? : Thu Dec 12, 2019 12:28 pm  

sally cinnamon wrote:

Yes but this is a stereotype that is just made up to support a point. All the younger generation today are wanting is a 'fair chance.'

It is a total myth that the earlier generation lived a life of thrift and sacrifice and younger people today are hedonists. Certainly when I was at uni and a young professional just after, people went out a lot - more than I see the graduate generation that work with us do. We were probably the boom years (2000s) of taking advantage of cheap holidays, in fact back then, it wasn't uncommon for people to do two 'gap years', one before university, then after uni. Even early-career after a couple of years working you would get people asking for a 'career break' to go travelling for a few months. This kind of stuff was going on, and people were still able to get on the ladder.

I'm not sure if the experience is totally different up north (where it's still more affordable to get on the housing ladder) but in London these avocado on toast generation just don't do the boozy nights out that we used to. They are a Netflix generation but they are probably spending less spending £8.99 a month and staying in watching endless box sets than my generation did going out regularly. Also one thing which amuses me at work is the older generation (who have houses) all seem to go to Pret A Manger and buy £7 worth of lunches a day, then tut at the price and say 'no wonder young people can't buy a house' and the graduates are all in a queue for the microwave having brought their own lunch from home to heat up.

The real thing that is stopping them being able to save for a deposit is the rents. Their salaries are being creamed off by landlords who see them as easy money. This should be recognised as the unfairness it is. When you get debates about Corbyn raising taxes on people over £80k etc, you immediately get a lot of people on or around that salary saying things like, I work damn hard for my money, what right does government have to take more of it away from me? But for 'generation rent', they are working hard and trying to chase their dream of escaping the drudgery of renting, moving every year when the landlord hikes their rent, getting fleeced with agent fees, and more and more of their wages are being taken away by landlords who see them as a cash cow. Even those who have managed to buy a house and are in those 'new builds', they might have the security of tenure but they have a similar situation with management companies fleecing them with service charges. These are their wages, which they are working hard for, and they are seeing increasing chunks creamed off by those who are in a privileged position in the property ladder. They see landlords and management companies in the same way that you see Corbyn wanting to raise taxes.

Lots of property owners have a story of thrift and sacrifice that led to them getting on the property ladder 'in their day', but the reality is the circumstances in which they bought a house - even up to my generation who graduated in the mid 2000s, was easier than it is today. The ratios of rent to take-home pay, and house prices to take-home pay were not as steep as they are now.

[OK...my generation faced those steep house prices to take-home pay ratios, but we benefited from access to generous mortgages which allowed you to get on the property ladder, and as long as you didn't lose your job during the crash, you benefited from long term super-low interest rates]

I do understand that being in London I am talking about a situation which is worse to that which people see in the north.

you have a seriously deluded view on life

Re: Boris Johnson - spinless leader ? : Thu Dec 12, 2019 12:43 pm  

IR80 wrote:

you have a seriously deluded view on life

Your school closed for polling today, is it?

Re: Boris Johnson - spinless leader ? : Thu Dec 12, 2019 1:29 pm  

sally cinnamon wrote:

Yes but this is a stereotype that is just made up to support a point. All the younger generation today are wanting is a 'fair chance.'

It is a total myth that the earlier generation lived a life of thrift and sacrifice and younger people today are hedonists. Certainly when I was at uni and a young professional just after, people went out a lot - more than I see the graduate generation that work with us do. We were probably the boom years (2000s) of taking advantage of cheap holidays, in fact back then, it wasn't uncommon for people to do two 'gap years', one before university, then after uni. Even early-career after a couple of years working you would get people asking for a 'career break' to go travelling for a few months. This kind of stuff was going on, and people were still able to get on the ladder.

I'm not sure if the experience is totally different up north (where it's still more affordable to get on the housing ladder) but in London these avocado on toast generation just don't do the boozy nights out that we used to. They are a Netflix generation but they are probably spending less spending £8.99 a month and staying in watching endless box sets than my generation did going out regularly. Also one thing which amuses me at work is the older generation (who have houses) all seem to go to Pret A Manger and buy £7 worth of lunches a day, then tut at the price and say 'no wonder young people can't buy a house' and the graduates are all in a queue for the microwave having brought their own lunch from home to heat up.

The real thing that is stopping them being able to save for a deposit is the rents. Their salaries are being creamed off by landlords who see them as easy money. This should be recognised as the unfairness it is. When you get debates about Corbyn raising taxes on people over £80k etc, you immediately get a lot of people on or around that salary saying things like, I work damn hard for my money, what right does government have to take more of it away from me? But for 'generation rent', they are working hard and trying to chase their dream of escaping the drudgery of renting, moving every year when the landlord hikes their rent, getting fleeced with agent fees, and more and more of their wages are being taken away by landlords who see them as a cash cow. Even those who have managed to buy a house and are in those 'new builds', they might have the security of tenure but they have a similar situation with management companies fleecing them with service charges. These are their wages, which they are working hard for, and they are seeing increasing chunks creamed off by those who are in a privileged position in the property ladder. They see landlords and management companies in the same way that you see Corbyn wanting to raise taxes.

Lots of property owners have a story of thrift and sacrifice that led to them getting on the property ladder 'in their day', but the reality is the circumstances in which they bought a house - even up to my generation who graduated in the mid 2000s, was easier than it is today. The ratios of rent to take-home pay, and house prices to take-home pay were not as steep as they are now.

[OK...my generation faced those steep house prices to take-home pay ratios, but we benefited from access to generous mortgages which allowed you to get on the property ladder, and as long as you didn't lose your job during the crash, you benefited from long term super-low interest rates]

I do understand that being in London I am talking about a situation which is worse to that which people see in the north.

A well considered thoughtful post.

Landlords invest in property and as such they need a return that justifies that investment. Rents have escalated as demand has grown - simple supply/demand proposition and this will continue whilst ever getting on the property ladder is so tricky.

Builders invest in new builds - limited mortgage availability - so they sell large chunks to investors who have access to funds.

Re: Boris Johnson - spinless leader ? : Thu Dec 12, 2019 1:34 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Landlords invest in property and as such they need a return that justifies that investment. Rents have escalated as demand has grown - simple supply/demand proposition and this will continue whilst ever getting on the property ladder is so tricky.

Builders invest in new builds - limited mortgage availability - so they sell large chunks to investors who have access to funds.

Tory policy in a nutshell.

If you've got cash on the hip, you can make a lot more out of the people who haven't.