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You know, I was under the distinct impression the world was going through a tough time financially right now. Banks are failing, jobs are being cut, everything is going to the Dogs.

So why, WHY I am still subjected to those bloody property programmes. I was sick to death of seeing smug, self satisfied Middle Class arseholes fawning over their own genius at how much of a profit they generated from the sale of their house. Especially when it was 'a little side project, yah? One got one's bonus and we though, why not do our bit to artificially inflate the housing prices yah?'

Apparently, one couple's house has gone up £345,000 since they bought it 5 years ago. Well, bully for them. And what genius! What financial accumen! Buy it cheap, do it up, and in a (formerly) buoyant market flog it on. Cor! That was a masterstroke of investment. You know, the risk free one where the price going up was pretty much a definite?

It's as if they are taunting me and thousands in my situation. I'm now 28, and for a long arse time, I have accepted that the only thing that will get my fat arse on the property market, is the death of both my parents. How depressing is that? And what makes things worse, is the smug pricks who decide to become 'part time property developers' make things worse and worse. They either take a beauftiful family house and squeeze in as many poorly made, tiny shoebox 'flats' into it, or take a cheap on bedroom property (you know, the ones ideal for people starting out) 'do it up' and pass it on at a price so far beyond the first time buyers budget, that it's another year of hard saving and living with Mum and Dad before the whole process starts (and ends) again.

The sods are also putting up the Rental Market. I think it's something like 6% of the property value per annum in rental thats considered a good price. So, not only are these knobbers pricing me out the ownership market, their very actions also mean, short of moving in with a bunch of people, I stand no chance of getting my own place.

AND THE TELLY CONTINUES TO PROMOTE THIS! AAAAAAAARRGH! I think if I see one more smug arsehole on my screen extoling the virtues of 'investing in the property market' I am going to hunt them down, kill them, assumed their indentity, and take apart their selfish little property empire from within.

lol I just don't care like you do.

Ive been thinking the same thing for years MDG. What on earth happened to a property being a home? As soon as they became an 'investment' then housing became a tool for the well off to shaft the less well off.

Cheap fixer upper homes could be perfect for a young couple just starting out. It's heart breaking to see them grabbed as side projects by people with tons of money and who then sell them on at an inflated price to other people with tons of money.

Whats even worse is that any attempt to make cheap affordable housing is usually met with crys of horror from nimby's because it might lower their own house price! AAARRRRGGGGHHH! Look you selfish bastards, does it really matter if your house is only worth 4x what you paid for it instead of 6x?! Really?!

Currently I'm a single man who earns over the national average wage. Now surely logic dictates that the national average house price should be 3x the national average salary right? Yet a mortgage on 3x my salary wouldn't get me a gakky 1 bed flat in the crappiest part of town! Now I could have (a least a year ago anyway) gotten a mortgage at say 5-6x my salary but I refused based on the fact that such a debt would be crippling. I feel sorry for the many people who did do this who will find themselves up gak creek over the next few years. In the meantime I'm stuck renting but I hope to change that should houses continue to drop to more realistic levels. Quite frankly though I don't care how much the price goes up/down. I just want a place to live that I can call mine without crippling myself financially for the privilege. Is that really too much to ask in the 21st century western world?

Owning your own home is fast becoming a privilege of the rich.

Too right.

House prices need to drop further. Unfortunately, recent reductions have been offset by the crisis in mortgage lending, leaving first time buyers no better off.

Also, salary increases are likely to be low for some years to come.

Part of it comes down to the fact the laws and structure which encourage this are maintained by people who have inherited large amounts of land and property over many lifetimes, and who are obviously keen to see there personal empires stay stable. Reduced tax benefits for landlords would go a long way towards making a difference (and increase rents as they pass their expenses on to tenants).

Just increase Stamp Duty on people owning more than one home (and yes, this would have hit my Parents, who own their house in the Borders, and my Brother and I's flat in Edinburgh. Except I live in South East England still. Meh) and decrease it or scrap it for first time buyers.

I'm just so sick to death of these programmes encouraging it, without even touching on the negative side of things. Could it possibly be because the very people making these programmes are likely to be taking part in the same activity? People with reliable jobs in TV and the Media are generally paid way above the national average. Thus I would wager they are exploiting their position to boost their own little Empire.

Take my town, Tunbridge Wells. Along the Camden Road, something like 80% of property (and the shops. It's akin to a mini-carnaby street) are owned by one couple. Thankfully, they achieved this long before 'property development' became the hobby of choice amongst the middle classes. As such, they don't take the piss with rent, and it's about the only source of multiple bedroomed, affordable rental properties in the whole town.

Elsewhere, it's a nightmare. One of the former employees at my local GW rented a teeny tiny little bedsit, smaller than my room nearish the centre of town. His rent every month? Just shy of £400. For a crappy little bedsit. Stuff. That.

Ever since I elected to remain in the South East when my Mum and Dad moved back to Scotland, I've been living with my mate and his Mum, as I do not stand a chance of renting a place here and maintaining any kind of social life on the local average wage.

And I'm sick to the back teeth of it. This town has lovely houses, and some old Victorian and Edwardian tenaments. Tiny little two up two downs. But even these market for around £150,000. It's obscene!

Stamp duty only applies when you buy a property.

It is already too high and is partly responsible for the slowdown of selling because it becomes so expensive to move (I'm assuming you sell somewhere and buy somwhere else) that it is more financially sensible to stay where you are and extend.

What is needed is a long period of reduction of house prices accompanied by a steady increase in salaries for the less well off and not the well off, and a sensible lending policy by banks, to prevent buyers being able to bid huge multiples of their salary.

True enough.

I think Britain needs to play up it's Socialist side for a while, seeing as the Capitalist parts have had quite the kicking in the past few months.

What better time for the Government to fund an expanded building of Council Homes, or other cheap housing? Sod the Nimby's (for those unknowing, NIMBY is an acronym for 'Not In My Back Yard') Britain has a housing shortage, and a crisis where nobody is buying. So, why not aid the market by relieving the former. If they can be done cheap enough, it should aid the latter as well.

But no, they won't, will they? It's not in *their* interests is it?

Definitely time for a good old fashioned British Riot if you ask me!

Aye, I fully agree with much of whats been said here as well.

At 35yrs of age, its looking like unless I win the Lottery, or these books I'm writing actually sell for silly money, I'm never going to get out renting, never mind owning a property.

Whats really frustrating about that is I'm paying out in rent pretty much what I could be paying out in mortgage payments to own my home.

The only small mercy is at least my ground floor flat/home is on what was an old US airforce base, so for the £415 or whatever it is I pay a month, its a fair size.

Still damned annoying though.

I live in London and earn not much shy of £50k, and I still can't afford to buy. (Mind you, my single-30-year-old lifestyle doesn't help) Next year or the year after my career plans indicate I'll be on £60k+ and I still won't be able to buy. You need to be in a couple to be able to buy a home. I am lucky that I easily qualify for Keyworker schemes, but half of them don't actally help in truth.

Right now I pay my share of £1285 for a three-room flat, but one of those rooms is small and mine is a double, so I pay more. I am lucky to have found good flatmates. I don't fancy having to move.

The absolute Britishness of the thread title has scared off all the non-Brits I see. Here I thought this was something about the television industry trying to poison Mickey Mouse.

Fifty wrote:I live in London and earn not much shy of £50k, and I still can't afford to buy. (Mind you, my single-30-year-old lifestyle doesn't help) Next year or the year after my career plans indicate I'll be on £60k+ and I still won't be able to buy. You need to be in a couple to be able to buy a home. I am lucky that I easily qualify for Keyworker schemes, but half of them don't actally help in truth.

Right now I pay my share of £1285 for a three-room flat, but one of those rooms is small and mine is a double, so I pay more. I am lucky to have found good flatmates. I don't fancy having to move.

It's worse than that. You need to be a couple who are both earning well above average salaries.

The standard for mortgages used to be 3x a single salary or 2.5x combined salary. According to this page the average house price in London is over £340,000.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/uk_house_prices/counties/html/county37.stm

For a couple to afford that they both need to be earning over £60,000 per year, or one of them needs to be earning a bit over £100K. And what happens when the wife becomes pregnant?

Indeed. I think it’s a sad state of affairs and has become a real factor in the recent trend of people putting off parenthood until later in life.

Now I certainly don’t want to demonise working mothers and there is nothing inherently wrong with both parents working and I don’t believe for a second that kids will go feral if their parents aren't there 24/7. Certainly did me no harm to walk home and let myself in from school anyway. If anything I'd say it taught me independence. But there cost of housing has removed the 'choice' for there to be a stay at home parent. Both parents must work.

I think this is another side effect on uncontrolled lending. 35 years ago when my parents fist bought a house the cost was 3 x my Dads salary, my Mums wasn’t even taken into account. Now not only will banks take both salaries into account but, until recently, anyway will lend 5-6 times the combined salary. I cant help but feel that if we returned to this (via legislation if necessary) then house prices would drop into line within a few years.

What chance do we have when the average home is far out of reach of the average working person?

No banks are currently offering 5-6 times combined salary. It was that kind of irresponsible lending that helped create the current crisis. Those days will not return for a generation, IMO.

In fact they have swung arguably too far the other way, lending no more than 2.5X salary and requiring a high deposit too.

I earn above national average. I've recently had a paycut but luckily I'm still on top.

I live in (almost) rural England, where there is an abundance of green. It's lovely.

Problem is, it's INSANE trying to buy a property here.

If London is ~£350'000 then comparitively that's cheap.

According to an online "average", my town, Berkhamsted, is apparently affordable town. This is not so.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION^141&maxBedrooms=2

£400'000 for a two-bed flat? Mmmmm!!

Here's the tosser who started it all...

I dunno, he was at the more benign end of Home Improvement. Rather than being aimed squarely at upping the value of your property, Changing Rooms was about doing things up on the cheap and cheerful, and making your room decoration into an art statement.

you know what they should do to curtail all those shows inspiring people to buy houses and then resell them out of the price range of most people.

do a special on all the people that tried that, failed, and are now stuck living in a trailer park

They've got the same thing here in the US. I used to joke that the best evidence that there was a property bubble was that there were three shows on HGTV and other stations about either house flipping or moving up to a nicer house.

I don't think you need to worry about the TV being what is raising the price of both property and rent. just because 6% of "value" is what they historically rented for doesn't mean they can magically just get it. here in Los Angeles one of the big pieces of evidence for a housing bubble was that house prices had ridiculously outpaced rents - they had become completely detached in a way that had never happened before (or at least in 100+ years of records).

At least in the US the chickens have come home to roost and in most speculative markets people are being brutalized and losing their shirts on their houses. If that is not the case in the UK well, then, maybe house prices really were too low for a long time...but I doubt it. Just don't worry about it. Owning property isn't a panacea anyway, and in high-value areas most people tend to rent (in LA for example it's always been 33% own, 66% rent as opposed to nationally 64/36).

Here in Australia house prices are also stupidly high, especially in Sydney.

We do have the first home buyer's scheme though, which is supposed to encourage people to enter the property market. The idea is that if you are a genuine first home buyer (no residental property ever in your name, property value under $750,000, and are going to be living in the property for at least six months of the next year - a qualification I feel is still a bit lax) you can get a $7000 grant. The Rudd government has offered a limited-time stimulus boost to the scheme. (an extra $7000 for existing homes, and $14000 for new builds, making a total potential grant of $21000). My state government also gives, to quote their website, "generous exemptions or concessions" on transfer duty for first home buyers.

Tbh, though, it doesn't seem to be having the desired effect, because most of us who are young and renting still can't afford to buy anything that is near where we work. I could EASILY buy a place in the back of beyond, probably with acres of land, for less than a studio apartment in the city - but the problem there is finding work. (Well, and convincing my husband to leave the city. He'd probably leave me first).

My wife found a place in Newcastle (oz) for 3x her annual salary and we have almost paid it off after 11 years (keep needing to redraw against funds in excess for critical things.). It's appreciated to 2x that price since, which is still less than 1/3 of what the "average" property in parts of Sydney are.

Property prices are insane. I could never afford to get a house (or even a small flat) on what I was making, and renting was not an option (unless I wantted to share a cupboard).

Haha my tv has an off button!

I don't have a tv, but I love watching the desperate seller next door lower his prices every month.

Grand Designs is both interesting and absurd. The projects can be really interesting and there has been some nice buildings made, but then you here the costs involved. These projects cost £500k + to complete, usually whilst the owners carry on paying a mortgage on another property.

I wonder how many of it's viewers come close to being able to think about doing such projects.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:You know, I was under the distinct impression the world was going through a tough time financially right now. Banks are failing, jobs are being cut, everything is going to the Dogs.

So why, WHY I am still subjected to those bloody property programmes. I was sick to death of seeing smug, self satisfied Middle Class arseholes fawning over their own genius at how much of a profit they generated from the sale of their house. Especially when it was 'a little side project, yah? One got one's bonus and we though, why not do our bit to artificially inflate the housing prices yah?'

ok, I've been thinking about this for the last week - I know, possibly too much, but this is a topic that riles me - and I reckon the thing that has really screwed up house prices in Sydney isn't TV shows creating unrealistic expectations (although that sure hasn't helped) but the increased trend to selling property at auction. I would estimate that 75% of houses in Sydney are sold at auction now, which I think is a stupid way to make such a major purchase. People get caught up in the bidding and for the vendor the whole point becomes to get as much as possible, not what the house is worth.

What is the situation like in the UK or the US, anyone? Are auctions of property the norm?

I don't mind the programs like grand designs and remember that they could've been made just when the financial climate began going dowm the gakker.

Where I live people are building hundreds of new 'low cost housing'
Most of it costs at least £200,000 and they want to build more in the village where I live! We have no public services, no jobs, no shops and no regular bus services. WTF?!!!

Theyre even trying to sell a one story four room 5mx5m house with no land or even parking for £130,000.

When we bought our home here in 1997 it cost 70,000 for an acre and an old school so we could just buy it outright (bit delapidated).

We were desparate to get rid of our house four bedroom house in Harrow sold it for £90,000 or near abouts
Now worth three quarters of a million.....

EDIT: At the time of moving we were a double income no kids couple getting paid well as BBC engineers so lucky to be above the usual bracket

Don't Worry for every House Vampire (Like my mom, sisters, and brother) there are ahundred who still forclosed houses from struggling families, get in over thier heads, and crash and burn. T.V has a bad habit of showing the best/worst of things. As for the us, People are fighting back, by trashing thier houses before the bankers come to auction them off. they strip off all the wire, flood the house, let dos and cats poop, take off all the doors and bust every window. They sometimes leave a sign that says, Flip this! and a drawing of a middle finger.

We do have auction buying of houses, but we have an extremely convoluted normal system which seems to be the norm.

And I hate to say it, but I find myself with extremely limited sympathy from those people who bought into the property market in the past couple of years, who having borrowed right up to the hilt to buy even the smallest, pokiest little hole, now find things extremely difficult. Forgive me for saying so, but when it has been crystal clear just how overinflated house prices were (and still are for the most part) why get into the market? It's a ludicrous situation, and had more people thought about their purchase rather than be hypnotised by the market into buying, the bubble would have burst sooner, and perhaps (given the problems with Sub Prime lending being a major contributor to the sorry state of the world) this inevitable recession might not have been so bad?

But no, the Banks saw a quick buck, the Property Agents saw a quick buck, and those poor mooks were so bought in.