With the average home now costing eight times the average salary, it’s hardly surprising that less than one third of 25-to-34-year-olds now own their own property.
We know it wasn’t ever thus. Previous generations didn’t have gyms, third-wave coffee shops or Ryanair. They smoked cheap cigarettes to stay slim, drank instant coffee and took one foreign holiday a year, if they were lucky.
House prices were also three or four times wages, while rents averaged about a quarter of take-home pay.
Kirstie Allsopp seems to have factored in the lifestyle factors without due consideration of the economic ones during the controversial interview in which she said she was “enraged” when people say they can’t afford to buy and went on to explain how she bought her first home aged 21 (walking to work and taking a packed lunch, in case you haven’t read the interview, plus some unspecified but presumably crucial “help”).
Even if her words were truncated, twisted or taken out of context, pointing the finger of blame at a generation facing annual house-price rises higher than their average salary is oblivious at best.
Criticising individuals rather than systems just makes it easier to ignore the serious structural issues with housing in the UK, from insecure private rentals and spiralling costs to ineffective taxation and NIMBYism.
Homeownership is a massive achievement for younger people and it also offers a far better chance of a secure home and healthy finances than private renting. But let’s not pretend it’s easy or simple for all but the very richest among us.
Our regular first-time buyer interviews show the focus and determination so many people use to buy in the capital, as well as the importance of government schemes such as Help to Buy and shared ownership. It can be done.
But there are still thousands of people making all the ‘right’ choices who nonetheless keep seeing house prices rise out of reach. At some point there must be a limit to the sacrifices we require people to make, unless we truly believe that home ownership is the ultimate meaning of life.
So here’s my gift to all you thwarted buyers: savour that frothy coffee and the budget minibreak without letting the Allsopps of the world make you feel guilty. Life is short, don’t put it on hold indefinitely to buy a house.
