And boomers wonder why millennials are bitter towards them..

[moon man]

Well orchard was my drunken translation of 6 apple trees and we did have the 100k in cash that was made in the boom time we are discussing ,but we literally sold up sleped the car and looked at pretty much every low price house in Devon and Cornwall ,we were nowhere near average price territory.
Theres not many houses here but next door was a pile of rubble ,this looked tired and dated and a jungle for a garden it had also been on the market for ages so I would call it foresite and vision ,could see the potential.
Theres no reason why a young couple on average to low wages. Couldn't have scraped a 100k mortgage.
This is the area my eyes are on next but it's getting a bit silly https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-95073341.html

Also ,how the hell do you get the image address in android ,laptop has bit the dust and the tablet is baffling me

 

[200sols]

Its not a trick to buy a really undervalued property, it is just blind luck and something you would not be able to repeat.

 

[moon man]

Well done it twice, it's research and a willingness to move area if its a potential hot-spot and see potential in properties , not so easy if you have kids in school but we waited untill uni, they vowed like us never to return to West Yorkshire
I am no

 

[dowie]

Its not a trick to buy a really undervalued property, it is just blind luck and something you would not be able to repeat.

I'm not sure it's necessarily luck (overall) if they're actively seeking one... sure that they find any given individual property perhaps has a luck component but that they find a property that is undervalued and in a state of needing some work on it etc.. isn't really lucky unless those things are super rare. Auctions exist, bank foreclosures exist etc.. might find more of the latter if we do get a big economic hit after this winter.

Alos just seeking value - prices can be slow to move/adapt in property... we're potentially entering a period where increasing numbers of people will be working remotely - moving away from London say previously might have involved a strong desire to remain close to a train station with a fast train into London, these days perhaps it doesn't matter so much. Some areas will stagnatie or take a hit, others could be undervalued for some time while people adjust - there is obvious demand in the obvious areas from people moving from London at the moment (though lots of these might well be people who'd already been considering a move in the next year or two and decided to bring that forwards thanks to Covid19) the less obvious areas might still be slower to catch up and could present value.

Certainly when I bought in London I sought value - I ended up with a former BTL flat that the landlord wanted a quick sale on (due to a death - his wife had been managing the property and he didn't have anything to do with it) - I put in an offer below asking and emphasised that I was a first time buyer, deposit ready, mortgage approved and can move as quickly as the solicitors can do the paperwork... it was accepted... within months the property was easily worth a significant 5 figure sum more than I'd paid... years later I've "earned" a nice six figure sum from the rise in value... which of course can now be used as a rather fat deposit on a house outside London. (granted I might end up taking a bit of a hit on this thanks to Covid but given how much it has risen I'll still be well ahead I think).

There are of course downsides as someone else mentioned - if you lose your job or have some other significant life setback etc.. you still have that mortgage you're liable for, no just cancelling the contract in a month or two and moving home with parents for a bit etc.. It can take time to sell and is still (IMO) needlessly time consuming - process has much room for improvement (especially when the same checks get performed and lots of the form filling is just mundane and routine. You're tied to that property.

One think I should have done in hindsight (and did think of this after the brexit vote) was to buy some storage space. There have been two occasions now where I've thought that it would have been useful to sell my property and invest elsewhere - prior to brexit and at the start of this year. I decided it would be too much faff but really, if I'd owned a lock up etc.. (or just rented some self storage) then that could have been an interesting play. Probably not something you'd want to do with a family home you plan to stay in long term mind but for a generic enough apartment (granted it is a nice apartment) then meh - other apartments are available to be bought again after, at the same development too... perhaps I could have upgraded to a penthouse or perhaps I could have used it as an excuse to buy outside of London.

Anyway - for the moaners, consider a move to China?

https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202009/24/WS5f6bef01a31024ad0ba7b625.html

Supported by subsidies from the provincial government, farmers can get new homes by spending 15,000 yuan ($2,205) for 36 square meters per person. For example, Li, his wife and one of their grandchildren paid 45,000 yuan for a house of 108 square meters.

 

[Lopéz]

I enjoy making my money honestly in a job where I can genuinely say I provide both a service and add value.

right now I'm an admin bod. IT admin but it's still just configuring a bit of crap here and pushing a button there.
I'm not even good at it.

These two posts directly contradict one another.

 

[Jez]

Hands up who remembers FoxEyes (rather embarrassing in hindsight, I would think that even he’d agree) “how do I earn £50k” thread, which ended up with lots of genuine advice but ultimately in him doing absolutely nothing other than rolling around in his self pity and bitterness. (Or at least that’s how I perceive nearly all of his posts, they are always a moan rather than containing any action).

These two posts directly contradict one another.

Standard from fox eye

 

[builder22]

I'm not so sure - why are we taking an average? There's no top on the market (but there is a bottom) so I'm not sure average is a good measure.

This a good way to look at it, someone quoted the average FTB house price as 230 odd k earlier in the thread which is just daft if that’s the minimum you’d accept as a FTB

 

[Jez]

Well done it twice, it's research and a willingness to move area if its a potential hot-spot and see potential in properties , not so easy if you have kids in school but we waited untill uni, they vowed like us never to return to West Yorkshire
I am no

Totally with you, it’s not luck, it is persistence and a willing to put some hard work in. I’ve done the same and never paid anything close to a proper market value for a house. So many people are not willing to take on the wrecks, just look at how popular new builds are (which without fail, at least in Oxfordshire, carry a huge premium).

 

[Freakbro]

Hands up who remembers FoxEyes (rather embarrassing in hindsight, I would think that even he’d agree) “how do I earn £50k” thread, which ended up with lots of genuine advice but ultimately in him doing absolutely nothing other than rolling around in his self pity and bitterness. (Or at least that’s how I perceive nearly all of his posts, they are always a moan rather than containing any action).



Standard from fox eye

Didn't he just want to be a Cornish surfing beach bum (nothing wrong in that, but it isn't going to earn you £50k!), or am I confusing him with someone else?

 

[kitch9]

This issue is the very act of having a roof over your head is going up far, far faster than income. And your comment shows just how out of touch a lot of people are.

You can buy a 5 bed detached house with a massive garden for £300k in Yorkshire, your comment shows how detached from reality your average Londoner is.

 

[StriderX]

You can buy a 5 bed detached house with a massive garden for £300k in Yorkshire, your comment shows how detached from reality your average Londoner is.

Most of the decent jobs are in London though...

 

[Tom_ed1987]

Most of the decent jobs are in London though...

They were, until around late March 2020. Now they're wherever you'd like to be

 

[dowie]

They were, until around late March 2020. Now they're wherever you'd like to be

^^^ exactly this...

Was an option if you were smart about it previously too - I know a few people wangled it at places I've worked at before - both in tech and finance. One guy set up a small trading office in a very random UK location, simply because he wanted to live close to where he grew up instead of at our main office in London, he even recruited a some graduate trainees there - became a bit farcical I think as IIRC he later decided to move back to London and so the company was then left with this random office for a couple of junior guys essentially working remotely! In tech I know colleagues who worked remotely from France and Dubai and one guy who loved surfing and moved to Cornwall. In most of those cases they'd already established themselves within the firm(s) in the latter case the guy agreed it upon being hired conditional on working in London initially - still had to come to London every so often though.

I mean some of those cases were quite a few years ago, like in the 00s, these days it's so common to be able to work remotely - don't even have to be a techie to do it - I know a solicitor (in house) who managed it pre-pandemic and a HR manager. Now we're in a pandemic and likely post pandemic it's everywhere - if you're remotely useful to an employer and not some easily replaceable person or new trainee/liability then just negotiate it, should be easier than ever to achieve. Some employers might not be able to offer it for other practical reasons (security, confidentiality etc..) beyond that though it's often just some subjective preference/attitude that requires people in the office and these days the argument against that has become so much easier.

 

[Fusion]

Most of the decent jobs are in London though...

This is not true. Of course there's a disparity between London and the rest of the UK in opportunities and potential pay, but to say there aren't plenty of well paid jobs outside the capital is silly. You also don't need to be earning multiples of the average wage to have a decent standard of living. If you work in manufacturing engineering like myself, pay in the SE/SW is no better than it is here in the midlands, yet the housing is more expensive down south.

 

[Mr Badger]

I'm really not missing the point, most others are. You can't just multiply the house and wages to come to a conclusion. The interest rates and deposit requirements were also different historically.

Now you can get a 4x to 5x salary mortgage. In the 80s this was around 2x. That's all because the interest rates effect on affordability.

There were loads of other effects too. No comparison sites. Cartel-like rate rigging from building societies, no fixed rates, massive arrangement fees etc etc.

You seem to be claiming that in the 1980s it was only possible to get a mortgage of 2 x your salary. I am sceptical as to whether that is correct as people have certainly told me that mortgages of 4 x individual salary or 3 x joint salary were normal.

The other point about high interest rates and not being in an extended period of wage stagnation and high private rents is that it was easier for people to save up a deposit, or for some even enough cash to buy outright. I once worked with a guy that had done this. He wasn't on a high salary (one of those people that was happy to keep doing the same office job and wasn't interested in progressing his career or getting into management) but by saving hard for x years (think he said it was 8) he had been able to buy a house outright that seems to be worth about £400,000 now (just looked it up).

 

[StriderX]

This is not true. Of course there's a disparity between London and the rest of the UK in opportunities and potential pay, but to say there aren't plenty of well paid jobs outside the capital is silly. You also don't need to be earning multiples of the average wage to have a decent standard of living. If you work in manufacturing engineering like myself, pay in the SE/SW is no better than it is here in the midlands, yet the housing is more expensive down south.

Engineering only accounts for 3 million jobs out of around 32 million (ONS) and it's currently in a state of stagnation/reduction for various reasons, not just in the UK either as globally it is following the same trend.

If everyone could just pick up a high-paying job in the middle of Wales or Northumbria, they'd probably be doing that. Unfortunately reality defy's what people want, especially when it harms certain parasitic, rent-seeking vested interests (Asset equity investors, banks, foreign speculators etc) who continue to capture our legislature to protect themselves unironically from a functional capitalist economy.

Obviously, mostly a moan, but the fact is that we're a service and knowledge economy, that isn't changing any time soon, if ever. So yes, there are jobs elsewhere that pay decently with a much lower cost of living, however only so many people can take them before all that's left is working in three shifts at Tesco and delivering someones pizza.

 

[FoxEye]

These two posts directly contradict one another.

Well they don't, really. I do useful work in my current job even if there's plenty of scope to improve. I could be a lot more efficient and a lot more competent but that doesn't mean the work I am able to do isn't useful.

An eBay scaler isn't doing useful work. A BTL landlord taking over the low-end market and forcing people into rental servitude isn't doing useful work for anyone else but himself + his dependents.

So no, I don't really see a contradiction there. You don't need to be in the top 50% in your occupation to be useful to the company that hired you. I'm fairly sure/hopeful that I'm not in the bottom 10% anyhow Although even if I was, I'm still doing *some* useful work.

 

[FoxEye]

Totally with you, it’s not luck, it is persistence and a willing to put some hard work in. I’ve done the same and never paid anything close to a proper market value for a house. So many people are not willing to take on the wrecks, just look at how popular new builds are (which without fail, at least in Oxfordshire, carry a huge premium).

It's hardly an option that everyone, or even "most" people can take advantage of.

If one of the keys to getting on the housing market is, "Find an undervalued property," how many people do you think will be able to do that, realistically?

All the advice of people seems to be, "Be exceptional. Work exceptionally hard. Be exceptionally lucky. Become exceptionally proficient at something."

That's advice that - by definition - only a few people can ever realise.

And the underlying implication is, mediocre people, people on low incomes, people who don't dedicate themselves to earning money or whatever - these people shouldn't expect to own their own home. Is that really what we want to stand for as a society?

Didn't he just want to be a Cornish surfing beach bum (nothing wrong in that, but it isn't going to earn you £50k!), or am I confusing him with someone else?

Not me I'm afraid.

 

[Woden]

You can buy a 5 bed detached house with a massive garden for £300k in Yorkshire, your comment shows how detached from reality your average Londoner is.

I live in the North West. But nice try

 

[moon man]

Ive always been a low paid worker (apart from a spell doing cad waterjetting) letting my home make the money has been my only route out of a crappy area in West Yorkshire and to a better lifestyle in Cornwall ,we had a 100k budget in either Devon or Cornwall so finding an undervalued property was a necessity ,garden has changed since this pic but this was an overgrown wild mess (top half of 2nd bottom garden) it's not as though we don't put any effort into the properties