For a property worth, say, £350-400K, salary say, £60K

Hypothetically

at 400K, you would probably be asked for 100K.

20% deposit will get you a decent rate, but 10% may scrape it – so just £40-80K to save, plus stamp duty, fees etc.

But they will probably only lend you 3.5 times £60K = £210K

That would leave you a sizeable gap to plug on a home of that value.

Best mortgage you will get on £60 000pa is less than 80% of the price tho

I’d be surprised if you got offered more than £240 000 mortgage

Thanks.

That is ££££ing ridiculous. The hypothetical case specified above works round the clock, has done for years and so earns wayyy above the national average. And has saved hard for years and generally done the “right” thing throughout financially. A ££££ing poster boy for the New Labour/Tory ethic.

If said hypothetical case can’t afford a half-decent house in London, even if he/she utterly exhausts his savings (which he/she would rather not do) – who can? Hypothetical case might as well go on the ££££ing dole. ££££ing baby boomers, c££ts.

Joining the Socialist Party and buying some ££££hole in Kensal Green from a dodgy Greek.

If said hypothetical case can’t afford a half-decent house in London, even if he/she utterly exhausts his savings (which he/she would rather not do) – who can?

🙁

How long have you lived in London? Do you have mates there would would also be willing to get on the property ladder?

On that kind of cash you would be better clubbing together with someone else.

You’re not going to get much on your own at £60k a year. That’s higher than the national average, but pretty low for somewhere nice in London.

I don’t have many mates/colleagues in London earning less than about £80k, and very few of them have houses where they would like, or at all.

Thanks.

That is f**king ridiculous. The hypothetical case specified above works round the clock, has done for years and so earns wayyy above the national average. And has saved hard for years and generally done the “right” thing throughout financially. A f**king poster boy for the New Labour/Tory ethic.

If said hypothetical case can’t afford a half-decent house in London, even if he/she utterly exhausts his savings (which he/she would rather not do) – who can? Hypothetical case might as well go on the f**king dole. F**king baby boomers, c**ts.

Joining the Socialist Party.

Of course, all those on average wage, or even less, dependent on job skills, are clearly lazy and don’t do more than 9-5. We’re clearly all retarded, as there are £80k jobs on trees, I just can’t find them. Some us can’t save, we spend every penny just “getting by”.

I suppose if you mean poster boy, you mean of the nulabour/tory “more for me, less for you” as we have significantly undertaxed the rich for nearly 20 years as they hold so much “elective power”. The political parties pander to those with some sort of “power”. Our tax rates are lower than most comparable places in Europe (which explains the crap transport in/out of the capital compared to say Amsterdam)

Shame a “half decent house in London” is over £500k. Well, learn fromt he rest of us, and live where you can afford, rather than keeping up aspirationally with your friends “Jemima and Tarquin” in their trendy Islington pad!

Sure you should go on the dole – of course anyone can live on £60 a week if they try hard, like turning the hot water off for days on their key meter. Not everyone on the dole is a 30 fags a day white lightening guzzling single mother eastern european dole scrounger. (copyright Daily Heil). Perhaps due to the aspriational “house buying” bubble created by our charming politicians over the last 30 years, our economy went phut due to people like you over extending themselves into housing. Thats why theres a million and a half (or 3 million if you use the counting policies of 20 years ago), and no jobs. Its not because everyone else just works less hard than you.

Sorry to sound insulting, but you do honestly come across as if not a “troll”, the most witless smug attention seeking self pitying idiot. Theres people here who put in a good hard shift for a third of what you earn, who live where you want to live through often no choice.

Sorry once again for the overly strong reaction, nothing personal, but I am again astonished how “ignorant” people in good jobs can be, whilst I talk to people far more “worthy” on a fraction of your income on a daily basis.

Anyway, ignore my bitter petty jealousies and just ponder on how marvelous you are for a few more minutes. That’ll sort you out. And if you join the Socialist party, I’ll cut my cock off and join the Womens Institute. Hows that for a deal?

just move to brentford like we did considerably less than 400K, not as nice as chiswick where we were before but good enough and i get a 45 min cycle into work every day, its good training

edit
i think juju may be overstating it a bit, even if he is speaking the truth
coveting a trendy post code is just a sign that youve been sucked into the thatcherite/greed is good city mentality,
it doesnt have to be like that

Jujuuk68 – good post. I’m hoping jhw is three sheets to the wind and a ‘bit emotional’, but I suspect not.

So prey tell me as a nurse earning £26 000 a year and my other half a wefare advisor for a charity for the terminally ill earning less how we could by a house in london? or for that matter almost any public servant.

Sell your flat in Edinburgh?

this isn’t hypothetical is it? maybe a nice little bedsit will suit your budget!

So prey tell me as a nurse earning £26 000 a year and my other half a wefare advisor for a charity for the terminally ill earning less how we could by a house in london? or for that matter almost any public servant

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-17022789.html

People pay more to live in London? They should get a discount.

Move to somewhere you can afford. Simple.

And IIRC the national average is £23k these days? So nearly just over 1/3 of your salary?

So prey tell me as a nurse earning £26 000 a year and my other half a wefare advisor for a charity for the terminally ill earning less how we could by a house in london? or for that matter almost any public servant.

You couldn’t. The days of most people aspiring to own property are coming to an end, if they haven’t already ended. Future generations will have to rely on inheriting property, or will rent for the rest of their lives.

Edit for clarity: I’m not sooth-saying; the average per-couple joint full-time income is about 45k /year. Even if the banks would lend them the money, the maximum a couple could reasonably expect to borrow in the current climate would be just about enough to buy a shithole where they would wake up murdered in their beds every morning. Single people or partners who work part time are even more ****.

LOL, at least you’d only be dead the first morning. Imagine having to wake up every morning to find you were alive and still in London 😀

all that violence and danger is worth it for the chance to live in the greatest city in the world !!

LOL @ LHS

Glad you LOL TJ – didn’t want to you to think I was being a ****!

😉

Shame a “half decent house in London” is over £500k. Well, learn fromt he rest of us, and live where you can afford, rather than keeping up aspirationally with your friends “Jemima and Tarquin” in their trendy Islington pad!

Seriously, put a cork in it. The hypothetical case in the initial post is fundamentally in the same position as that you describe: namely, cut out of the property market despite his/her best efforts due to fundamental social and economic inequalities, the Labour-Tory consensus and more generally this country’s neglect of the public sphere in favour of unadulterated capitalism for about the last thirty years. It’s just the numbers in the two case studies happen to be different (probably due to luck – assuming more dosh and the attendant hellish job is treated as an advantage).

My point is that if you utterly buy into the government’s pish “work hard! save! don’t pi$$ your degree up the wall – stay in the library! forget your twenties – stay in the office! forget a meaningful career – work in financial services!” AND have plenty of luck AND STILL cannot buy somewhere within an hour’s commute from work – something is fundamentally wrong with the system? If even corporate lawyers can’t afford to live in good parts of London – let alone nurses – wtf is going on? Surely City workers not being able to live near the City highlights the inherent flaws in capitalism far more powerfully than nurses.

You should properly be directing your venting at the lawyers/bankers I know who earn £100K plus bonus and live in houses in HOLLAND PARK BOUGHT BY THEIR PARENTS AT AGE 25-27 having had their rent covered through their twenties. I’m no different from you and am certainly no Tarquin so **** you, in a friendly sort of way. Though yeah I had it coming by putting [hypothetical] figures in my initial post.

£60k you say….. peasant!

AND STILL cannot buy somewhere within an hour’s commute from work

Within an hours commute of London is a VAST area.

Yes on £60k a year you are not going to be able to afford to buy a place in Richmond / Chiswick / Kensington / Mayfair, thats not the governments fault though, its called capitalism.

Seriously voting Labour, getting Ed Balls in, increase in public spending followed by inevitable IMF bailout and Libya-style revolution and finally toppling that ***king ridiculous Gherkin thing and spiking Osborne’s head on London Bridge seems like the best way forward for the country right now

fundamental social and economic inequalities

= Boo Hoo, people earn more than me and can afford a nicer house. Get a grip

Try looking south, i’m selling my house in Croydon. 5 mins walking distance from east Croydon station which is 15 mins from Victoria or 13 mins from London bridge; short walk over the bridge and you’re in the square mile in half an hour from leaving home.

2 bed, 2 bath semi with a garden in a nice area for £230k.

Don’t be a snob, look further afield than holland park, you’ll find that you can afford to live ‘within an hour’s commute’ on your hypothetical salary or a lot less.

Dave

It’s all stupid and it’s all our fault. We collectively bought into a belief on the importance of ownership and property. Houses cost this much because a) money supply through loans is still way looser than it was 40 years ago, b) people forget that not so long ago interest rates went pretty high, c) we are muppets who are willing to pay such prices. d) We are sheep who want to live in the same places.

My generation is nicely kitted up with property. My kids don’t stand a chance to get “on the ladder” unless we help them out.

Personally I’d love to see house prices fall some more, loan multiples reduce (and as money is less available – prices will fall further), and an end to this obscene fixation on house prices.

Interesting to look at the options

Everyone I speak to at the office just “assumes” trendy postcode as default. who cares.

Going to go start a binfire

Might as well put this in before the “I’m waiting for the house price crash” plebs pipe up.

If there is a house price crash it will only come as part of a wider-ranging economic catastrophe; buying property will be the least of your concerns when you’re queuing for bread and gruel at the local UN wagon. The economy will be totally ****ed and so will we all. We will experience either:

1: Massively high interest rates on lending designed to curb hyperinflation (which means you can’t afford to borrow any money – see that house that was 200k last year, and now is up at only 70k? Guess what? borrowing 70k over 20 years now costs £1200/month at 20% and you still can’t afford it.

or

2: Massive hyperinflation (which means the people who currently have mortgages still win; their debt becomes worthless and they can pay off their mortgage easily, and own their houses outright. Meanwhile that grotty bedsit you looked at now costs 100 trillion pounds)

I guess we’re all ****ed either way, at least we’re not roadies.

witless smug attention seeking self pitying idiot

I genuinely LOLed. Better than what that Northern student was calling us.

Might as well put this in before the “I’m waiting for the house price crash” plebs pipe up.

Sounds plausible and borne out by what’s been happening in the Eurozone for the last few months (particularly the last three weeks).

So buybuybuy at a fixed rate even if it kills me and commits me to a job I hate?

jhw just move out of that hellhole London to a small fishing village in Cornwall, West Wales or the Cotswolds if you don’t fancy the seaside. Oops, too late, all the property was snapped up by dreadful London ***kers years ago, driving property prices out of the reach of local people and ruining communities. It’s ok though, the country bumpkins all moved to the cities after their local economy was destroyed, to take up menial low-paying jobs and renting their living quarters from the same dreadful London ***kers who just ruined their hometowns 🙂

But don’t listen to me (or anyone else on STW for that matter) – if we were any good with money we wouldn’t spend thousands of pounds on bicycles for christ’s sake.

There’s a couple of things I think are missing from this discussion..

As mentioned, house prices are driven by supply and demand. For prices to drop, there needs to be an increase in supply (which with current planning regs looks unlikely, and is pretty much impossible in london) or a drop in demans. However, the latter of these doesn’t happen on its own. Dor demand to drop something would have to happen – for instance, large interest rate rises, stricter loan conditions. Trouble is whilst these things drop demand they also hamper your own ability to buy. The bottom line is that if, out of 100 people in an area, you can only afford the 50th best house, if prices drop, you’ll still only get the 50th best house

On the average wage thing – yes, double the average wage is somewhere around 45k, but is this way out of line? The average person in britain has never owned the average house-there has always been a renting class. So let’s say the house that should be attainable by the average family is 75% of the average house price, or 120k. Suddenly this fits within a 3x joint mortgauge, and this is before you figure in people inherit money (those expensive houses dead people own go somewhere), and you have time to pay off more than one mortgauge over your working life – at 40 years yiu’d pay off one 120k loan and be over halfway through another.

Basically, man up. I earn a good wage, and I can only *just* get a terrace house here in brighton, where wages are way lower than london. Still, we’re 50mins from victoria and the 400k you can afford would go a long way here

Houses are still way overvalued!

Banks and government created this predicament.

You can thank them for you being saddled with a large enduring debt.

Ripoff Britain!

Ripoff Britain!

Have you taken a look at property prices in Paris / Rome / New York / San Fran. Britain is not isolated in having preceived high property prices, which makes you think that perhaps your perception that propery being overvalued is actually false.

On a hypothetical 60k a year I reckon I’d be renting and saving a hypothetical £1500 a month – with occasional great holidays then in a few years time I’d have loads of cash to sit around and enjoy.

So buybuybuy at a fixed rate even if it kills me and commits me to a job I hate?

Well without wanting to point out the obvious, why don’t you move away from London to a place where prices are lower and get a job you might actually like or at least tolerate?

‘cos he wouldn’t have anything to moan about.

My point is that if you utterly buy into the government’s pish “work hard! save! don’t pi$$ your degree up the wall – stay in the library! forget your twenties – stay in the office! forget a meaningful career – work in financial services!” AND have plenty of luck AND STILL cannot buy somewhere within an hour’s commute from work – something is fundamentally wrong with the system?

What part of London do you work in?

Yes the system that you bought into, obeyed and supported is bollocks…and guess what? It’s your own fault

If you work south of the river move to Kent. Trains to nodnol take around an hour. As many of your dreadful compatriots already live here I’m sure you’d fit in just fine.