Your point falls apart then though - plenty of people have bought houses over various generations that stretched them beyond what was financially sensible and put them to the pin of their collar.
I don’t know anyone who ever bought a house and thought they had got a bargain. Every person I know who has a house pushed themselves to the max to buy it. But of course with hindsight some purchases look like bargains and you get the old you should have bought two of them crack.
The generation that bought houses in the 80s and 90s didn’t do so to put one over on the next generation. They did so to put a roof over their heads.
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Completely agreed.
It really doesn’t. You can compare the cost of housing to the average wage by decade. It’s pretty easy to see when it was affordable and when it wasn’t. It’s a simple objective fact and I can’t see why people can’t acknowledge it.
That’s a false metric because it doesn’t take into account interest rates and their impact on repayments.
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No, it isn’t. Payments were affordable or not.
Are you also failing to take into account relative tax rates?
Are you failing to take into account the simple stats on whether people were able to buy a house versus are not able to buy a house?
It’s actually a really simple and straightforward contrast: affordable housing attainable for most people versus affordable housing not attainable for most people.
I really don’t get why people can’t acknowledge the simple fact.
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I think you’re ignoring a range of factors such as interest rates, mortgage lengths, no of wage earners per home, access to finance etc
Almost by definition house prices, as a scarce good, will be at the margin of what’s affordable.
As @Fagan_ODowd has pointed out people will push themselves beyond an “affordable” limit to secure the house, in competition with their peers, and thus set the prices
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I really amn’t. It’s a really simple contrast: could afford to buy a house versus can’t afford to buy a house.
All the rest is whataboutery.
I really don’t understand why people can’t acknowledge that generation gap. Why is that?
Well clearly people can afford to buy houses - they’re buying them all the time
I’m not saying it’s easy now but the notion it was easy back in the day seems far fetched to me and certainly your notion that people were “lucky” then is pushing it.
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They are selling houses by the new time out in Adamstown.
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People are digging in and arguing against what is a commonly acknowledged fact that houses as a percentage of peoples incomes are more expensive than ever. It is more difficult for someone on an average wage to buy a house today than it was in the past. They’re probably arguing cos you’ve a preachy holier than thou style.
You also have to acknowledge that there is an element of truth in what fellas are saying in terms of people wanting an awful lot of material things, far more than in the past, and then giving out about house affordability.
Both points of view are somewhat right.
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Generation you call lucky and could afford to buy a house generally
- had one car if that per household
- did not holiday abroad and often a holiday was to their parents home once a year
- did not stay in hotels
- did not drink take away coffee
- did not eat out in restaurants
- did not go to music concerts regularly
- did not go to the cinema or theatre very much
- did not order takeaways regularly
- did not have a gym membership
- did not have multiple tv, phone and streaming services
paid 15 per cent and more interest rates - bought a house where they could afford one and not where they expected to be entitled to afford one
Cut all that out of a modern life and a person’s chances of affording a house would be increased to a large extent.
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They also bought houses that were built to a much lower standard to those on the market today.
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We bought our house because we thought it was a bargain. Irrelevant what it’s worth now because we’re going to stay in it. There was obviously work to do with it and still is but we chose to buy it because there was value. The reason we didn’t buy pre-crash was because there was no value and would have put us under financial pressure. We had the option to rent and took it. Today’s would-be buyers are pretty fucked because there’s no value in rental or purchase.
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@glasagusban in 2017:
Landlords are scum and the housing market is broken.
Landlord @glasagusban in 2020:
HAP scheme is paying for my breast augmentation surgery.
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Builders finish. Alot of turnkey now which obviously has a cost implication.
House buyers now definitely have much higher expectations, not necessarily a bad thing but again comes at a cost.
The rental issue is an odd one, if a landlord pays €300k for a property he’s going to need €25-€30k a year on that property to make it a proper investment. I’d imagine a mortgage on that property would be alot cheaper to service.
Thousands and thousands of families couldn’t afford to buy a house and lived in council accomodation. Which was a great alternative. But not everyone could afford a house
That would be a 10% gross rental yield which would be quite high but again depends on location. If it is city centre near grand canal dock investors would have lower rental yields in expectation of 100% occupancy and capital appreciation over time. If it is in mullingar investors would require a higher rental yield for exact opposite reasons. In the city centre locations I would think rental yields should not be exceeding 6-7%.
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