On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 14:58:54 -0000, Yellow
wrote:

On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 14:23:33 +0000, Mark
wrote:

On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 13:47:26 -0000, Yellow
wrote:

On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 10:32:33 +0000, Fredxxx wrote:

On 18/11/2017 02:02, Rod Speed wrote:
This means that on average people needed 4.5 times their salary
in the
late 1970s to buy a home while today, they need 7.3 times.

What puzzles me though is that they do manage it though, to pay that
amount, and if they couldn't afford those prices they would surely fall.

Unfortunately for the average is there are enough rich people to pay
the excessive costs, otherwise the prices would fall and ordinary
people would be able to afford to buy.

What is a "rich person" in your opinion?

That's a good question. Someone with considerably more money than the
average person. There is such a divide between people with lots of
money and people without.

I ask because if all these rich people are snapping up all the averagely
priced homes, then there must be a heck of a lot of them, so why does
that not make the average income a higher value?

Because companies can get away without giving generous pay rises. And
the average price for homes is rising. As I said before there are
"sufficent" numbers of wealthy people to push up the price of housing,
otherwise it wouldn't be happening.


When I bought my first home, a tiny flat that needed a complete
refurbish, I put down a 20% deposit but still struggled like hell to
afford to pay the mortgage and the bills, especially when interest rates
went through the roof when my unavoidable outgoings were greater than my
income for a few months.

A lot of us had exactly the same issues. I had to let out the spare
room in my first house in order to afford the rising mortgage
payments.

I do not know in what way, but something clearly does not stack up when
a simple comparison of average wages and average house prices is used to
decide whether or not homes in general are affordable.

It's down to the rich buying houses as an investment IMHO.

You are referring to buy-to-let?

That's part of it but people do buy houses purely as an investment and
do not let them out, but keep them empty.

--
If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around to hear him, is he still wrong?