Now personally I’m towards the end of this scale, in that I have had far less than others being a mid-80’s child, but personally I can’t get THAT angry at others who have been luckier. Reading the interviews below just seems like poor excuses to me, and people who aren’t prepared to compromise - which is one of life’s biggest talents I think.
I feel sorry for people in average wages who can’t afford an average house, seems ironic to me.
Ah, but do they live in an average area?
To be honest I’ve never bought in to the concept that everyone has to get on the housing ladder and if you don’t then you are some kind of loser.
I blame Thatcher and her right to buy agenda for making renting seem a second class option (& the constant property porn on the telly box)
I’d rather rent than buy some of the rabbit hutches that councils allow developers to throw up these days for first time buyers and charge extortionate prices for.
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People who do well tend to understate or convince themselves of the unimportance of luck, because they’re obviously incentivised to do so.
People who do badly tend to understate or convince themselves of the overimportance of luck, because they’re obviously incentivised to do so.
No-one really has an objective point of view.
Nevertheless, overly philosophical though this might sound…we…erm… don’t have free will to the extent of which most people conceive of it. As in, were a situation repeated, one couldn’t do otherwise.
All of life is essentially luck and genetics (so, basically luck and more luck). You don’t choose your place of birth, you don’t choose your upbringing, you don’t choose the neurons which fire away in your brain, you don’t choose your intelligence level and you certainly don’t choose the economic environment in which you were born.
Even the most impressive rags-to-riches story is still contigent on being born with a brain with a high threshold for pain and high tolerance for hard work. These are all impressive qualities to have but again, one can’t choose them any more than one can choose to avoid being born with some kind of a mental handicap like depression or bipolar disorder.
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For an average person who was brought up in their area they simply see it as a home and an extension of their lives, take that choice away and its hard, an example I’ll give you is there are loads of crap areas in London but they have extraordinary prices driven by market forces the locals can not control, that is simply not fair nor realistic in the long term.
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UK average wage = £27,600
UK average house price = £214,000
2 people, 10% deposit, borrowing 4.5 x salary = £273,240
Should be able to really.
That average wage is being dragged up massively by people earning fortunes in London. One guy earning £100,000 and another earning £20,000 gives an average wage of £60,000 between them, but only one can afford an average house.
This isn’t even a particularly hyperbolic or exaggerated analogy. The average wage of your typical London tube carriage in the morning could realistically work out at a very comfortable ~£50k - but be comprised of, say, 15 people on £20-24k, maybe five execs on £60k and a big four partner on £350k
(15x 22 = 330
5 x 60 = 300
1 x 350 = 350
= 980
/20 = 49k average)
Of course, but it’s very difficult to do that without excluding the top and bottom 1% or so - are there stats on that (be interesting if there was).
For an average house the couple would have to earn a salary of £21,400 each. Not unrealistic as average wage has you earning £13,104 each.
Believe me Mrs C_S must be incredibly lucky then, given the massive drag-factor* I bring to the relationship (so she tells me)
*& that’s not putting on a frock by the way…
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What is the average price in London?
Can you borrow x4.5 on 10%? Saving whilst paying rent is difficult as well, luck has an awful lot to do with things, it needs to be balanced, for example where will your kids live?
Home ownership is far higher out of expensive places, its no coincidence.
Yes.
No idea, but I wouldn’t call London an average place. I would call Liverpool an average place, could you afford that that for a 3 bed house?
Of course, home ownership here isn’t really an issue, in the South East and some parts of the Country it is.
I think if you exclude London, then someone on the average wage can afford an average house in an average place.
Probably true to be fair. Trouble is everyone gets dragged into London because that’s where all the jobs/good clients/global exposure is/are.
I shit you not, I’d honestly rather live back in Southampton (although that may be because I’ve grown up in London and it therefore has no element of mystique for me personally).
Not evrywhere they can’t, Surrey? Parts of Kent, Essex, Bucks, Herts, Hants etc etc?
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So you’re excluding London from your point now?