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Not a homeowner and over 40? You might as well be drinking White Lightning while lying in a ditch for all the respect you would get at a middle-class, middle-aged dinner party.
Once a nation of shopkeepers, we must surely now be the nation of homeowners. Actually, it is an even bigger obsession than that. If British secularists were to come up with a new set of seven sacraments for their God-free state, then buying a home would be the highest act of all. Kirstie Allsopp could lead the services.
At least, this seems to be the world of the baby-boomers. For those of us under 30 and still a long way off claiming the keys to our first flat, any enthusiasm for property porn is limited. We are not celebrating the return to rising prices, but mourning.
Now at least we've won one of the baby-boomers over: shadow universities and skills secretary David Willetts in his new book, The Pinch: How the Baby-boomers Took Their Children's Future — And Why They Should Give It Back. Perhaps it took his second brain to see what the rest of his generation has missed: how damaging high house prices are to the young. Many boomers made their fortunes from property, but we — their children — can't afford these mad prices that they inflated.
But as Willetts points out, this is a problem for the original spoilt generation too: “If it is far harder for the young to get started on the housing ladder, they are more dependent on their parents for longer.”
Ah yes, the boomerang kids. Whom a host of fiftysomething columnists pledged to boot out of home “for their own good”. What these “don't darken my doorway” parents fail to see is that they are the main architects of their children's plight.
Disappointingly for us, the apocalyptic warnings of mega house price falls have so far proved wrong. A few months ago, when I reported Goldman Sachs's prediction that prices would fall another 10 per cent this year, it was with a smug smile. And yet last Friday's figures from Nationwide showed house prices rose by 1.2 per cent last month. By the end of this month, housing analysts say we could be back to double-digit annual growth.
It might be wishful thinking on my part but I don't see this resurgence lasting, particularly with a post-General Election squeeze coming. Even with a further fall, however, prices will remain out of the reach of much of my generation.
But the worst thing the baby-boomers did to us on the housing front wasn't the years they spent driving up prices, it was infecting us with their obsession. At a dinner party last year, median age of guests 25, the conversation turned to the dreaded subject. My best friend — who lives in rental-favouring France — found this hysterical. She is right: we could have broken free from the shackles of seeing success as having a picket fence wrapped round it. Instead, we twentysomethings are likewise embracing this view, even while we can't afford it. Surely, if the global downturn has taught us anything, it is that owning a home is a financial risk, not a sure-fire investment.
But in the long run, the only way is up for prices. A growing population, a rising number of broken families and a shortage of new homes mean that demand should outstrip supply. By then though, I may have joined Kirstie's cult.
Reader views (16)
Ca Metcalfe: given that I work in Oxfordshire and my parents live in Glasgow, how exactly should I commute 800 miles every day? Would you recommend a helicopter or a private jet? I can't quite decide! I like the new Bell Ranger 206B3, but feel that a LearJet might be better value for money. Or maybe you could recognise that life in the 21st century is somewhat different to that of the 1960's.
- Alex Trevelyan, Abingdon, UK, 02/02/2010 18:25
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I am well into my 30's now, i have always worked, paid taxes, and have never claimed any kind of welfare, but can i afford to buy a property, can i stuff.
I am very close getting to the point where i am going to lose all hope.
If the present Governments carry on the way they are going, then many people like me will just end up throwing the towel in and doing what it takes to get affordable housing, i.e losing my job and getting the girlfriend pregnant and then plead for help.
- Charlie, Ely, 02/02/2010 16:30
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"Surely, if the global downturn has taught us anything, it is that owning a home is a financial risk, not a sure-fire investment."
It's taught me and everyone else I know that property is gauranteed by our baby boomer government.
It will take until Rosamund Urwin's generation get into power, governmental and within the media, before this has a hope of changing.
- Michael Mcmillian, Midhurst, Sussex, 02/02/2010 12:26
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Young people could afford to buy a house if they used the same methods as their parents did sucessfully.
Get engaged, that is make a committment to marriage. While engaged you live with your parents and save, save ,save. No outings, put the money you would have spent clubing, boozing and gorging into the Building Society. Holidays likewise. No hen and stag weekends to Prague and Riga and fortnights by the Med. I only had one holiday between 1974 and 1977 - I stayed with a friend and we caught the bus twice to Clacton.
No fancy clothes, just enough servicable outfits to make a good impression at work.
And you won't need a car unless you really can't get to work by public transport.
Two people committed to each other and making the sacrifices that were second nature to my generation should be able to buy something adequate after a few years.
- Ca Metcalfe, Essex, 02/02/2010 09:59
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Conservative/Labour responses to the above crisis is to talk about 'affordable housing'. I nearly choked when my friend told me how much here 'affordable housing' was costing her. I suppose if you live in London and have a £50k+ salary it might sound affordable, but try the sticks on an income of around £13k - it looks different from here.
- Sam, Cornwall, UK, 02/02/2010 09:04
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Please, please, please could someone explain this to Gordon and David - they think we all want over-inflated house prices! You have to be a complete moron to think its a good thing - unless you are a landlord who bought 80+ properties prior 2004, or a childless couple - both groups unlikely to give a stuff about anyone else.
- Water Dragon, Cornwall, UK, 02/02/2010 08:48
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It's the biggest debt for equity swap ever!
The over sixties (boomers retied with pensions)have the vast majority of the equity whilst the under forty fives have all the debt (huge mortgages)!
30 somthing's need to keep taking on £200k+ mortgages to buy a flat. 40 somthings need to take on an extra £80k debt (on top of ther £200k+ mort) to trade up from the semi to the detached to gain the extra bed their growing family need, to keep our Grand parents rich!
It's a massive pyramid and in 2007 tha base started to crumble.
A neigbour (mid 50's)said recently, it's good to see house prices going up again (his house £500k at peak 2007 down say 15% in mid 2009. The irony is he has grown offspring one left uni 5 years ago unable to buy, one in a 2 bed flat with another child on the way strugling to trade up to a house and one in the process of divorcing and possibly coming back home with 2 school aged kids.
The last thing they need is property inflation.
Is the Ave propery being 5 or 6 (where I live 10) x average earnings, sustainable? Only under the artificial circumstances we currently have. Interest rates (base and libor and with them mortgage rates will increase over the next few years (as will massive cuts in spending and rises in taxes).
This government has simply put-off (and made worse) the days of reconing. You can't buck the market!
- Greg, Bournemouth, 02/02/2010 07:27
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It may be that recent statistics of ever rising house prices are skewed by extremely low volumes and transactions more concentrated at the higher end and in the South East of the country. The picture seems a little different elsewhere, with first time buyers nowhere in sight, the bottom of the market is barely holding up in most places and continuously drifting lower in the rest. Should the public sector job cuts begin in earnest this year, the situation can only improve/deteriorate depending on your point of view. My view is that housing costs will have to drop one way or another to help the workforce remain globally competetive.
- Roger S., Yateley, Hampshire, UK., 02/02/2010 03:07
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If property prices are going to go up, why is every listed housebuilding company and also why are commercial property companies such as Enterprise Inns and Punch Taverns trading at under book value?
We have done a Japan.
- Stevenl, England, 02/02/2010 03:00
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Ahhh House Price Inflation. The biggest inter-generation heist in history, and sanctioned by the government to boot. Who'd have thought that, even though we are continually told inflation is BAD, there is a special type of inflation that for some reason is GOOD.
We scratched our heads wondering why the government seemed so keen to allow, and indeed foster, this particular variant of inflation, given the damage it would do economically and socially. But it wasn't until the expenses scandal that it all became clear... Parliament is one big coven of property speculators, all of them eager to strike it rich before the pyramid comes crashing down.
- Roy, London, UK, 01/02/2010 22:31
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When the boomers die off there will be no one to buy up all the houses due to the falling population. In the long term they will be worth very little. People banking on their house for a pension will be disappointed.
- Chris, Montpellier - France, 01/02/2010 21:54
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So called boomers are a very small majority of the current population. The UK did not have this boom, unlike the US which had post war prosperity. Our boom in population is now 39 years old or therabouts. House prices are determined by bank lending which has become an insane greedy bonus driven cess pit ever since they were deregulated by the Thatcher government back in the 80's. Added to this is the mania that is perpetuated by the media in all its forms who consistantly praise house price inflation as a beneficial thing. Both need to be reversed. This has nothing to do with generational warfare which of course is being used as a scapegoat for the governments and banks greed and failures.
- Steve, London UK, 01/02/2010 21:40
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Finally, someone in the mainstream press that actually 'gets it'. Now why not also explain how our taxes are being used to 'prop up the banks balance sheets' by keeping house prices artificially inflated so that they don't need to book a loss.
- Jim, london, 01/02/2010 21:26
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I lived in Japan for 2 years after I graduated. I came back to this country in 2008 as the recession really took hold. I am horrified about what this country has become. How green the grass is on the other side of the pond. Needless to say, I too will soon rejoin Kirstie's cult.
Farewell blighty, and good luck finding other mugs to spend their lives paying inflated mortgages on deflated wages.
- Dave, Bournemouth, 01/02/2010 21:11
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"But in the long run, the only way is up for prices." Be careful about this. In Japan their house price boom peaked in 1990 and prices have been falling gradually ever since. Central Tokyo prices are now about 35% of the peak - that is a fall of about 65%. Why are we different from the Japanese ?
- Roderick Bentham, London, 01/02/2010 16:43
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The next generation of taxpayers will be full of joy at the prospect of paying rent, enduring a lower standard of living, paying higher taxes to pay off the National debt incurred to prop up those same house prices, THEY themselves cannot afford, and of course, through their taxes paying the non-means tested benefits, state pensions and home care of those who DO own but expect to leave the (unearned) inflated property "value" to their ungrateful offspring!
Housing Apartheid doesn’t bode well for the future harmony of society, does it?
- Darius, London, 01/02/2010 15:39
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