My parents bought their first house in the 1950’s, they were
in their early 20’s. Interestingly, looking at some research by the Post Office
from a few years ago, in the 1960’s the average age people bought their first
house was 23. By the early 1970s, it had reached 27, rising to 28 in the early 1980’s.
This year alone, 1,020 people in Harlow will turn 28 and 1.004
in 2017 .. and dare I say 878 in 2018 .. year in year out the conveyor belt
carries on .. where are the Harlow youngsters going to live?
Ask a Harlow ‘twenty something’ and they will say they do
not expect to buy until they are in their mid thirties - seven years later than
the 1980’s. Some people even say they will never be able to buy a property and
the newspapers have labelled them ‘Generation Rent’ as they are people born in
the 1980s who have no hope of getting on the property ladder. One of the major
problems facing young Harlow people is the large deposit needed to get a mortgage
.. or is it?
The average price paid for an apartment in Harlow over the
last 12 months has been £152,900 meaning our first time buyer would need to
save £7,645 as a deposit (as 95% mortgages have been available to first time
buyers since 2010) plus a couple of thousand for solicitors and survey costs. A
lot of money, but people don’t think anything today of spending a couple of thousand
pounds to go on holiday; the latest iPhone upgrade or the latest 4K HD
television. That amount could soon be saved if these ‘luxuries’ were withheld
over a couple of years but attitudes have changed.
Official figures, from the Office for National Statistics,
show the average male in Harlow with a full-time job earns £509.80 per week
whilst the average female salary is £479.10 a week, meaning, even if one of
them worked part time, they would still comfortably be able to get a mortgage
for an apartment.
I was reading a report/survey commissioned by Paragon
Mortgages from the autumn of last year. The thing that struck me was that when
tenants were asked about their long term housing plans, some 35% of
participating tenants intend to remain within the rental sector and 24%
intended to buy a house in the future, with the proportion of respondents
citing the “unaffordability” of housing as the reason for renting privately
increasing from 69% to 74%.