sg31 wrote:I bought my first house in 1975, it was a 2 bed detached …. I was fortunate that house prices in Sheffield were very low, it was possible in 1975 to buy a terraced house for £4500. 5 years before that my parents bought a good 4 bed detached in a modest area for the same money.
My then gf and I bought our first house in 1974, a grotty two bed terraced in Birmingham which needed total restoration - no heating, dodgy electrics, outside toilet. It cost five times what I was earning as a new teacher, but fortunately there were two of us, so we managed it. It was barely habitable, but it was what we had to accept if we were to get onto the housing ladder.
Fast forward 44 years, and the same type of house in the same road can be bought for
six times a new teacher's salary (spot the difference), but with central heating, double glazing, everything fully fitted, and a proper bathroom as well.
I hate to sound all Monty-Python-four-Yorkshiremen, but I don't think most millennials would have been prepared to even consider the squalid wreck that we started out with. No car, no proper holidays, definitely no eating out for the first four years. Mind you, we at least had the rudimentary building skills to fix the place up. I seem to know so many young'uns who can't handle a screwdriver.
That said, I'll echo didds's lament about house prices. In my village, not so very far away from Mr d, £250K gets you a single storey cottage with one bedroom and a boxroom. The only reason we were able to afford Bungee Towers was....
….that the big old pile was in a semi-uninhabitable state at the time, with rotted floors, a hole in the roof and four collapsed ceilings. Right, we said, pass the hammer and saw and we'll get it sorted out. And in three years we did. Old habits die hard.
BJ