Housing Supply

This is not an anti immigrant rant as I am one myself (from Ireland) but apparently around 2,000,000 immigrants have arrived in the UK since 2004 and they all have to live somewhere which even at the lower end of the market still has to have some knock on effect. A programme about Slough said people were living in Garden sheds. I don’t see it getting any better for a long time and I fear for my children who are just starting work.

Garden sheds burn well don’t they.

Shared ownership with a housing association, don’t even think about it, in our experience it was the worst thing we ever did.
I’m lucky, we bought our first house, a victorian terrace in a conservation area in 1976 for the princely sum of £7950, 10mins walk from the station in an Essex London commuter town, at the time we were probably earning nearly 10K between us, so work that one out.
After a series of renovating cottages and moving on, we ended up in a place valued at £275,000, that was in the late 80’s, what happens, divorce meant having to sell after Black Wednesday, we got 90K for it.
I had to rent, as I couldn’t afford anything in the village, eventually a housing association put up some semi’s, only for people with local connections. Was I offered one, no, not applicable. Fortunately, the parish council had to approve the applicants list, when they saw my name on there, they went mental, ‘Oh, son at local school, lived in village for 10 years, vice chairman of PTA, school cricket/football/swimming coach, local scout leader, member of village cricket team, fete organiser, etc etc etc.
When I eventually moved in, I found that the other occupiers had no connections with the village at all, one family actually came from Brazil!!!!
The 5 years I spent living there were a constant battle with poor workmanship, lack of interest and a general nightmare. When we came to sell it was even worse, we were forced to use their valuers who came up with silly figures and they took a year to sell the bloody place, of course, to someone outside the village.
We bought the local village police station, and, after struggling with massive debts for 5 years, we sold it for a good deal and moved to a nice little semi in Braintree for bog all mortgage.
How the hell my son is going to get on to the property market is beyond me, I can see him dissapearing into the sunset for foreign climes, university degree or not, he is bound to struggle, and who wants to live in a country with the constant threat of being blown up.
I give up thinking about it.

This is not an anti immigrant rant as I am one myself (from Ireland) but apparently around 2,000,000 immigrants have arrived in the UK since 2004 and they all have to live somewhere which even at the lower end of the market still has to have some knock on effect. A programme about Slough said people were living in Garden sheds. I don’t see it getting any better for a long time and I fear for my children who are just starting work.

Well housing it is a free market and all done on ability to pay. If someone can get a bigger mortgage than someone else, or has bigger assets stashed away, they will bid more to secure the deal. This a sadly continued but it is getting to the stage where that pool is getting ever smaller.

What happens when there is no one left who will pay more? Will businesses be the only entities who can afford property?

On that score too, these shared ownership schemes just seek to eke and stretch out out the affordability whilst the root problem is not solved.

The transfer of interest-rate setting to the BoE was a good move, however I still maintain they have not been given the correct goal to pursue. But neither I guess would they want to go too political and checking the economy. With RPI inflation still too high, the interest rate did not go up again this month and remains static at 5.75%.

There’s also another aspect. The social what we used to call council housing is also drying up. There is a family of five across the road having to share a two bed flat because that is all South Warwicks HA seems to have.

There seems to be a massive injustice one which I would expect a US Republican government to prevail over. So then you see I don’t think much of New Labour with supposedly socialist roots wrt housing.

Funnily enough, we were discussing this very recently….

About seven years ago I almost fainted when my friends in Lewisham paid around £250,000 for a flat near Greenwich. Even at London prices it seemed ridiculous !

Nowadays, there are new developments in Glasgow that go for those prices and beyond, and I’d like to know just who exactly is buying them and where the money is coming from ? The average UK wage is supposed to be around £22k or so, and on that salary you’re not going to get a mortgage for anythng like the average UK house price, which I believe is around £150k at the moment.

I earn more than the average, yet found myself moving out of Glasgow when I got single again, as I simply could not afford to live there, well not unless I wanted to stay in every night living on baked beans and toast whilst watching the interest rates rise.

At least however, I was already on the property ladder, albeit not exactly where I’d like to be on it. I have friends well into their 30’s who still cannot afford to leave home and start out on their own, because they simply cannot afford to buy a single thing out there.

A brand new ‘luxury’ flats development at the end of my road has been sitting virtually empty for three years, because of the crazy prices the developer thought he could command. At the moment he’s having to let the council rent part of it to use as homeless and immigrant shelter, just to make ends meet. Sometimes as I walk past, I wish I could be homeless too ! :rolleyes:

Tts got ridiculous.

We just bought our first home, it cost us nearly half a million quid for a 2 bed flat , its not even in central London.

it doesn,t get any easier once you,ve bought your house either . I took out a morgage 7 years ago to house myself , wife and and then 10 yr old son. I bought the best i could to fit the familly and allow it to grow but it required work. I now have 2 equity loans and 98% of my income to cover the bills. Without the wife working two jobs we would have to sell. We don,t do holidays and had our first night out together for 18 months tonight.Add to that my son has recently passed his driving test and car insurance is £1500.00 or more. It,s a familly friendly culture we have in this country!!!!

Affordable housing?

There are houses in nearby Andover descibed as ‘affordable’ with plans afoot to build several hundered more for first time buyers like my partner and myself.

We are both in full time employment but because we’ve had to rent for years we haven’t been able to build up a reasonable level of savings.

The maximum we can get a mortgage for is £90,000.

These ‘affordable’ houses start at £100,000.

Affordable for who?

School leavers with no savings?

University leavers with debt of £25,000+?

People like myself who lose 80% of their monthly wage renting a house and paying somebody elses mortgage?