London house prices rocket 10% in just one month

[d000hg]

Excellent news, our first house may be back up to the £65k we paid for it in 2005 at this rate.

[OwlHoot]

Foreign investment & help to buy driving up prices and sparking the inevitable panic from people who don't want to get left behind.

It's not good, it really isn't.

WHS - Can't say for sure, but where I am in South Kensington most purchases I've heard about seem to be by dodgy foreigner types.

I suppose the Government considers this a form of "inward investment", and thus a Good Thing, but at what a price for indigenous British people?

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Foreign investment & help to buy driving up prices and sparking the inevitable panic from people who don't want to get left behind.

It's not good, it really isn't.

Price crash is required to correct the market. I seriously can't understand why anybody would want to live in London if they haven't owned a property there for a long time. Some of my friends in London are complaining about how awful the situation is, to the extent that they are calling estate agents for viewings of properties that have just come on, only to find they are already sold.

Get out while you can.

[sasguru]

I'm not a big player with BTL anymore having only one (albeit paid off) flat in Balham.
But that's good enough to maintain a foot in prime(ish) London. Nice.

[Hardgraft]

Indeed, I'm 30 and don't see how it's possible for someone of my age or younger to save for a deposit on an average property 'worth' £550,000 even with significant help from parents etc.

Hence aiming to become a contractor...

[russell]

Might be some nice bargains after the correction, good time to buy.

[Martin@AS Financial]

Foreign investment & help to buy driving up prices and sparking the inevitable panic from people who don't want to get left behind.

It's not good, it really isn't.

Foreign investment has always been a big part of the London property market. However, help to buy within London needs to be stopped immediatley as it will not benefit anyone in the long run.

[d000hg]

Price crash is required to correct the market.

Didn't we already have a price crash, or are you talking London only?

[scooterscot]

Eleanor part 1

Even outside the M25, we've got house prices rising faster than we could save

It's scary, it must be horrible for those in their twenties

Funny you mention that, I read this 20 something article yesterday.


Sigh - The text that you have entered is too long (11240 characters). Please shorten it to 10000 characters long.


Why Eleanor Catton

Why Eleanor Catton’s Booker win makes this 28-year-old feel sick


For twentysomethings like me, promotion, a home and a family are an impossible dream. The success of others just rubs it in

“Oh, God. She’s 28. She won the Man Booker Prize at 28. Another twentysomething superstar. I am 28. I need to stop wasting my time and brain cells on Made in Chelsea and write a book. I need to come up with an idea for a book. I need to finish the book I’m reading.

These were the thoughts that ran through my mind as I got ready for work on Wednesday last week, and I was not alone. As I called out to fellow twentysomethings on Twitter, my generation’s intercom, and asked who else’s heart sank on hearing the news of Eleanor Catton’s success with her 832-page novel The Luminaries, the television rights to which have already been sold (sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit), responses were as follows: “Made me die a little inside”; “It was hard even to get out of bed this morning”; “I’m 29 tomorrow, feel broken”; “OHGODWHATHAVEIEVERDONE?”

This may all sound very bitter and, as a woman, particularly unsisterly. I would feel cheered that a young female voice is being celebrated, I really would —  if I wasn’t so bloody panicked. All the time. I feel permanently tense ABOUT EVERYTHING. My lack of funds, lack of career progression, my uncertain future and how am I going to pay for it without compromising my goals, dreams or, while we’re here, my feminist principles. Did twentysomethings always feel this way or has my generation got it worse than most?  We are, after all, the cohort that were raised in an ego-inflating boom, a self-entitled culture that led us to believe we could have whatever we set our minds to. We then graduated into a complete and utter bust with a havoc-wreaking financial crisis and a freak show of a property market raining all over our expected parades. Disappointment abounds.

It is not news that many of us are struggling to find jobs while paying off student debts and forking out for rising rents whilst being priced out of the property market and that we can’t afford pensions or children yadayadayada #screwed. Yet another government report published last week cheered us with the revelation that a grandmother in her eighties can expect to enjoy higher living standards than someone in their twenties — even a graduate in a full-time job. Brilliant. Plus, by 28, a lot of us are only just coming to after being smacked in the face with a frying pan labelled “reality” — “Wait. I’m not actually that special or talented. I am not necessarily destined for success just by being little ol’ me.” Then another twentysomething wunderkind gets anointed and the panic sets in. Our buttocks and our fists are permanently clenched.

For many of us the fear of failure increases as the big three-zero looms. We are supposed to have our tulip together by the time we are 30. If you don’t own a property, there should be the prospect of one. If you don’t own a baby, there should be the prospect of one. If you’re not the boss, you should be in a senior role. I’m an assistant with 22p in my savings account (this is not an exaggeration. It genuinely only contains 22 pence. I think I must have left this measly sum in there to play some sort of sick joke on myself).

So many of my friends are constantly worried they are lagging behind. Carly, 28, who earns a decent wage in management consultancy, rants, “I am flat-sharing for the foreseeable future, the most expensive possession I own is a Kenwood mixer, I can’t seem to hold down a relationship for longer than a year, I have a moth infestation and I still call my parents crying every time I have a problem. Is everything really going to fall into place in 2 years?”

This year there has been a bombardment of experts urging, “Quick, quick. Succeed now before it’s too late.” Meg Jay, a clinical psychologist, gave a TED talk in February entitled “30 is not the new 20”, which discredits the notion that your twenties don’t count and that serious life can be put off until 30. She throws in some statistics to make you shudder, including that 80 per cent of life’s most defining moments take place by age 35, the first ten years of your career has an exponential impact on how much you’ll earn and the brain has its second and last growth spurt in your twenties. Oh, and more than half of Americans are with their future partner by 30. As a friend says, “I think it’s supposed to be inspiring and make you ‘seize the day’, but I didn’t find it enjoyable to watch. It says if you are going to make anything of your life then you have to start right now.”

Mark Zuckerberg has a lot to answer for. By inventing Facebook at 19, he thrust the potential of our generation into the limelight just by fiddling around with some code in his dorm room. My generation are meant to be the app-creating, viral-spreading (as in videos, not STDs), all-knowing purveyors of the future — but most of us aren’t. Plus, we can thank Zuckerberg and his cronies for the portal of inadequacy that is social media. Not once I have ever seen a Facebook status that reads “Just got dumped. Sad face emoticon” and I never will. No one admits to a dismal reality on there. I am just as guilty. I’ve applied a few sepia filters to palm trees in my time. If you can’t beat them, Instagram the hell out of them.

The new thing about being in your late twenties is that creeping fear that you might already be past it. When I saw the headlines about the “youngest ever winner” of the Man Booker I actually expected her to be younger than 28. You can thank Lena Dunham’s 26-year-old Golden Globe-winning sass for that. I cannot afford dry cleaning and I still consider boiling ready-made ravioli for three minutes to be cooking. I am far from an adult. Yet I feel like I am running out of time to make my mark.

Helen, 27, works in publishing on a zero-hours contract: no perks, no guarantees — a job that can be cancelled at a moment’s notice. She says: “Meeting up with old schoolfriends or colleagues feels like a long, subtly masked inquisition into what has been achieved since we last saw each other. Every time they ask me if I have a staff job — even though I have said this WILL NEVER HAPPEN — and every time I have to say no, a piece of me dies.”

This isn’t just a problem for us creative types — the ones who foolishly followed their dreams to become writers and artists or go into that fluffy world of media (FYI, we were fully aware we weren’t going to be millionaires, we just thought we could make a living out of it. Silly us). Joanna, 28, a lawyer two years-qualified at a respectable London firm, feels stretched trying to maintain a lifestyle she has become accustomed to because of her privileged upbringing. “How is it that I have a decent job that pays comparatively very nicely, but it is a struggle to do things that I don’t consider to be too extravagant — holidays, socialising, saving for a flat? It seems wrong to be still taking from my parents at this point in my life for such things, especially when I am earning decent money. But how else do I do it?”

Even if you were one of the lucky ones to get a legal training contract out of university, there is no guaranteed job at the end of your slog as a trainee in your mid-twenties as law firms have their budgets slashed. Nothing is guaranteed any more. Lisa, 28, was made redundant recently after qualifying and is now retraining. She received a good redundancy package and her husband earns well, but she frets about what the future holds. “I have to successfully complete my course, get a new job, then work there long enough to qualify for maternity pay before thinking about getting pregnant. I cannot help but feel anxious about it all.”

Georgie, 28, works as an analyst in a well-known international bank and earns what many would consider to be a good wage. Even she cannot afford to put down a deposit on a property, but her biggest worry is career progression. “We all talk about this MD in our office, now 40, who got made MD at 28 almost in hushed, reverent tones, as though it were a fable of a time long ago. No one gets made MD at 28 anymore. Promotions are much harder to come by because they just do not have the same money any more. They can easily work us as hard as they want because they know there are 100 other people champing at the bit for our jobs.”

Amanda, 28, works in a high-pressured sales office and is inevitably affected by it. “I congratulated our £1.million-pound biller here the other day. His response was, ‘Yeah, now I need to top it next year’. Everyone is like that here. You never feel you have done enough.” Is this just the culture of greed? Perhaps, but Amanda doesn’t want a new handbag or a car. She is at her desk by 7am every morning, has saved every penny and bought her own property. She’s got a real grown-up living room, which she now sits in worrying about how hard she has to work so as not to lag behind her peers before she has babies and how she will afford the best education for her unconceived children. She suffers from migraines.

[OwlHoot]

Indeed, I'm 30 and don't see how it's possible for someone of my age or younger to save for a deposit on an average property 'worth' £550,000 even with significant help from parents etc.

Hence aiming to become a contractor...

Contractor rates have been stagnant for the last 15 years, while inflation has at least doubled the cost of living.

So whatever a few Walter Mitty types on here pretend, being an IT contractor is no panacea (although it's slightly better than being a permie).