That’s only going to get worse as the gap between wages and mortgage lending increases, along with the pressure of lack of affordable housing for young people.
The worst thing is, a large proportion of them are paying a mortgage, only it’s someone else’s. My generation got ****ed with the massive interest rates swiftly followed by the Tories boom and bust, which left millions (me included) in negative equity. But time was always going to sort that out, and it did, but home ownership when I first bought wasn’t really a ‘wish list’ item, if you were working you could get a very low deposit mortgage and crack on, I was 21 when I bought my first property, my kids think it’s bizarre. The average age for a first time buyer now, is 34.
I can remember buying my first property. I took a 110% mortgage so I could comfortably get the place done up, too. Kids of today will never have the opportunities we had to get on the property ladder.
Talking of things your kids just won’t believe, they still think I’m taking the piss about packs of dogs in the park. Back in the day when ‘taking the dog out’ involved opening the front door and off he ****ed for the day You’d be setting up the old jumpers for goal posts and there’d often be a pack of the ****ers just wandering about lol. They won’t have it, they think I’m making it up, funny as ****.
Yeah, you’re a bit younger than me, but lending people more than the house was worth was common place, I think they got up to 125% at the absolute height of the boom. Buy to let landlords who were releasing equity every 6 months thinking it’d never end, but it did. I knew a few who were paper millionaires thinking they’d made it, who promptly ended up bankrupt when the bubble popped.
Property portfolios are still seen as a perfectly valid investment. With some people / companies owning dozens of not hundreds of properties. And like you say, it’s our younger generation who are paying off these mortgages, with their rent often hugely inflated from the mortgage repayments. The situation down here, like a lot of tourist areas, is simply unsustainable. Loads of second homes, investment properties, air B&B etc. Prices are grotesquely inflated as a result as young people can’t afford to buy, let alone even rent as that too is vastly overpriced. Towns become full of tourists and second home owners in the summer and then become ghost towns in the winter. The situation is beginning to come home to roost. This summer (and Covid played it’s part) loads of hospitality businesses had to close because they simply couldn’t get the staff. St Ives is full of swanky restaurants charging £25 per dish, but nobody earning under £50k per year can afford to live there, so the students and youngsters on minimum wage simply weren’t there to wait tables and pour drinks for wealthy tourists wanting their posh grub.
I'm the same, stamp paid up ages ago, I'm already mortgage (and debt) free, kids grown up and left home. Small private pension which I will take as a lump sum. Not bad for a poor kid, that left school at 15 with no qualifications. If I look back and was asked what's the secret to achieving it, I'd say, never had time off sick (until late in life) and I never let people down, really as simple as that, and a bit of luck along the way.
Gonna open bottle of nice Shiraz now. Might yet finish it, but do have an early junior football game, followed immediately by a youth football game. That's Saturday's for me now, Chief two teams.