Wow. What a day today has been. In the space of a few hours I was featured in The Mirror, The Express and The Daily Star, leaving me sat at my desk shaking with a combination of both excitement and nerves.
After months of saving money, blogging loads, and generally living the life of a recluse, it was exciting to see my name in the press and on social media. What wasn’t quite so nice though, was the comments. Oh the dreaded comments! I knew they wouldn’t be great, I mean they never are, but I could not have imagined just how bad they would be.
In the last few hours I’ve been called ‘selfish’, ‘a sponger’, ‘lazy’, ‘spoilt’, and numerous other nasty names just because I’ve moved in with my parents to save up for a deposit on a house. Living with my parents at the age of 24 isn’t really the end of the world to tell you the truth. I know loads of 20-somethings who live with their parents and they’ve probably spent a few minutes of their day scratching their heads at why I’m in the press and they’re not.
Also, I didn’t just turn up on my parents’ doorstep by the way, or threaten them at gunpoint to let me move back in with them. They actually don’t mind having me, and would rather me move in with them for a bit so that I can save up for a deposit on a house using my own money.
You see, the sad truth is that in today’s pretty depressing property market, unless you “run off to mummy and daddy” as so many people on Facebook worded it, the reality is that you are going to really struggle to get on the property ladder. In fact, two thirds of first time buyers rely on Mum and Dad in some way, AND, on average, first time buyers are getting more than £17,000 for a deposit from their parents!
My parents, bless them, want me to get a home of my own just as much as I do, and they decided that the best way for them to help me to do that would be to let me move in with them. That way I can try and save up for a deposit on my own, with the money I earn through my job and selling my old things, without them having to dip into their pensions. In a way, this is allowing me to get a foot onto the property ladder without completely relying on the Bank of Mum and Dad. I mean, technically, I’m using my own money to buy the house. Not theirs.
Though to be fair to my dad, while he may not be dipping into his pension, he is kindly dipping into his record collection and letting me sell some of that. Top bloke.
Properties are so expensive now that unless you want to spend 10+ years saving up, in order to buy one you need to do one of the following:
- To land a job with a really amazing salary. I’m talking really amazing. And even higher than really amazing if you have kids
- Buy with someone else, but even then, you each need to be earning a decent amount
- Win the lottery
- Ask your parents to help you buy a house (you know, with all that money they have saved up. *sarcasm*)
- Wait for a relative to keel over and die and leave you everything they had
- Move in with your parents for a while to slash living costs and save up using your own money
I could do the last one. Lucky me!
I know not everyone can do this, and this is why the UK property market is so annoying! We shouldn’t have to rely on our parents in order to become a home owner, and those who cannot rely on their parents shouldn’t be left behind. It’s simply not fair. If you work hard, you should be able to buy a property yourself if you want to. I’m sure there will be some readers who think that this is the crazy talk of some self-entitled millennial, but this isn’t self-entitlement speaking. This is just how it should be.
I know there’s the Help to Buy scheme that allows people to buy a property with just a 5% deposit, but even that’s a struggle for the vast majority of people.
Like most people, if I was to save up for a deposit while paying rent, bills, etc, I’d be saving up for years and years and years (though moving home certainly isn’t the only thing I’ve done to save). According to research, the age of the average first time buyer is 37. That’s ridiculous!
Something needs to change so that more of us can become home owners if we want to, and without the help of our parents! According to housing charity, Shelter, we need to build a whopping 250,000 more homes each year in order to tackle the housing crisis that we’re in the midst of. We haven’t come close to this figure in decades, meaning that in fact, we’re really far behind and could do with building even more than 250,000!
Unless more houses are built, property prices will continue to rise, home ownership will not improve, people will continue to move in with their parents if they can, and those that can’t will remain angry and frustrated at the shoddy state of the UK property market.
Photo credits: Flickr
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