New analysis claims to reveal some of the so-called sacrifices younger buyers are now making to get on the property ladder.
Online mortgage broker Trussle has surveyed more than 2,000 borrowers, asking them what compromises they made to buy their first home.
One in five (16%) millennials – those aged 18 to 34 – had to move back in with their parents, compared to just 5% of Generation X (age 35 to 54), while a further one in five (17%) had to take a second job.
Millennials were more than twice as likely to put off getting into a romantic relationship, three times more likely to delay getting married and 3.5 times as likely to sell their car, compared with the generation before them.
When asked about their top three life goals, millennials are focused on travelling the world (27%), having children (24%), and finding the perfect job (24%), while buying a home only ranked fifth (21%). In comparison, buying a first home was the biggest life goal for both Generation X (36%) and Baby Boomers (42%).
Ishaan Malhi, founder of Trussle, said: “The housing landscape has changed drastically since Generation X were buying their first homes. House prices have risen almost twice as fast as wages over the past forty years and young people are being forced to put their lives on hold in a bid to join the property ladder.
“It shows just how unaffordable it currently is for first-time buyers and there needs to be serious commitment to innovation to make home ownership more affordable and accessible to young people once again.”
| Sacrifices made | 18-34 | 35-54 | 55+ |
| I missed out on holidays | 19% | 24% | 24% |
| I moved away from friends and family | 17% | 10% | 8% |
| I took a second job | 17% | 9% | 7% |
| I bought with a friend when I would have preferred to buy a property alone | 17% | 3% | 0% |
| I sacrificed a short commute for a longer one | 17% | 9% | 5% |
| I changed to a new job with a higher salary to save more money | 17% | 6% | 4% |
| I moved back in with my parents to save money | 16% | 5% | 1% |
| I lived with my parents until I bought my first home (excluding university years) | 16% | 11% | 9% |
| I bought with a partner when I would have preferred to buy a property alone | 16% | 5% | 2% |
| I quit my gym membership | 16% | 7% | 1% |
| I bought with a sibling when I would have preferred to buy a property alone | 15% | 5% | 0% |
| I delayed having children | 15% | 7% | 5% |
| I delayed getting married | 15% | 5% | 3% |
| I gave up being self employed | 15% | 3% | 0% |
| I moved out of a city and bought in the suburbs | 15% | 8% | 5% |
| I sold my car | 14% | 4% | 2% |
| I put off getting into a romantic relationship | 13% | 5% | 1% |
Difficulty in obtaining a mortgage would have featured very highly for Boomers. Normally you would have to be a saver with a specific Building Society for sometime Interest rates tended to be high .They were very slow handing them out and often had to sit in a queue .The only way to jump the queue was to use a mortgage broker who happened to be friendly with the local Building Society Manager You definitely couldn’t pick your own valuer
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They seem to forget the mortgage famine of the late 1970’s & early 1980’s. Mortgage interest rates at 15.25% to 15.5%. So much rubbish written nowadays and believed by those who WANT to believe it. So much fake news such as the second world war didn’t happen and man did not land on the moon. Publish enough rubbish and people start to believe it.
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I do not believe any of these figures. Total nonsense.
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Many of the older generation lived on baked beans for weeks to save for a dep for a house, no holidays , no designer clothes , no eating out. But we now have the likes of Generation rent Dan Craw saying “its so unfair” we cant get a house and lists many reasons but not one about life style changes and we want it now culture.
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Couldn’t agree more. I had to make lots of sacrifices to buy my first house but compared to what my parents had to do I had it very easy. These snowflakes want everything gifted to them on a plate.
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Me too! I gave up most of those things to afford to buy shoes when I was in my early 20’s!
And I don’t believe the last statistic in any way shape or form. I’ve got daughters in their 20’s and there is no power on earth that would deter them from pursuing a romantic relationship once their eye’s been caught!
The only way that statistic is right is if you’re paying for your romantic relationships. 🙂
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Lol, you guys sound like angry old men this morning.
Your time is different to the time we live in now, and different from the time your parents lived in.
It’s not about “snowflakes” wanting everything handed to them on a plate – that is a deliberately reductionist stance.
How about a total lack of supply, buy-to-let landlords soaking up the properties to sale, higher living costs and disproportionate house prices?
If you honestly expect a young person to sacrifice treating themselves to a takeaway on a Friday, buying a new jumper for winter or even getting a ******* girlfriend, then all you are doing is supporting the argument.
Because that’s no way to live (especially when you’re in your 20s).
This isn’t about young people rubbing a magic lamp and getting a house, it is about an entirely corrupted and unsustainable housing market forcing people to make unreasonable sacrifices in order to get on the property ladder (which by the way, you older folks were lucky to get on).
We need to talk about getting on the property ladder Vs quality of life.
Is it worth it?
Is it even attainable for most?
We don’t have post-war social housing to go around anymore. Until supply goes up, I think saving for a house is a bit of a fool’s game – especially when it forces you to alter your life so much.
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You ignore the massive amount of housing units that BTL has added to usable stock. Not that you’re alone in that. Every anti-landlord poster does the same.
Life is about choices. If they choose to have a takeaway on a Friday it is their choice but they can’t spend the money twice. It could have gone towards a deposit.
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I’m not anti-landlord. But I am pro-homeowner.
It’s not a “one way or the other” argument.
Yes, money cannot be spent twice (in fact, it is one of my life mantras) – but we can’t reasonably expect the odd luxury to be such a huge point of contention when saving up a deposit.
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Then you contradict yourself. I had very few luxuries when I saved for a house. And if I think back further to when I first joined the Forces I saved like a demon so that I could buy a car. I had a strict spending limit (I won’t even say how low it is because it seems laughable now). If I did happen to overspend one day it came off the next day’s allowance.
Nobody is saying that owning a home is wrong, that would be absurd. Read Mrs B’s comment below. She was prepared to make sacrifices and if others want to own a house they should do the same. Trouble is that most aren’t that motivated and we’re breeding every generation to be worse. Send some of these moaners to really deprived countries and show them what it’s really like to be in need.
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JMK, I disagree. You state “I had very few luxuries”, which of course implies that from time to time you did in fact treat yourself, and too right, why shouldn’t you?
You talk about a spending limit and how low it was which would seem laughable; of course it would, due to inflation and what money is now worth it is not in any way comparable. The world is now a different place, and in the same way that you experienced a certain time and set of circumstances and challenges, so now do younger people.
This attitude of “we had it tough too so sod ’em” is not productive in any way when there are (and to be fair probably were in your day) challenges in the housing market which create a barrier to home ownership.
Instead of adopting a hostile stance where you refer to people as ‘snowflakes’ and ‘moaners’, why not listen, consider and approach their concerns with a more open mind; I bet you had similar concerns when you were looking to purchase a property. Irrespective of the above, the fact remains that house prices have risen hugely out of proportion when compared with wage increases, so there is a considerably higher deficit between earnings and the price of home ownership.
As mrtickle says, whilst no one has a god given right to own their own home, it is preposterous to expect people to have zero quality of life in order to achieve this goal. The housing market is broken; name calling and blaming is not the answer; a pragmatic look at, and addressing of, the issues by all generations is what’s needed.
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I have listened to many of them but when I ask about their lifestyle they demonstrate that they’re not serious about saving. It’s their choice, they can spend their money how they like. But like Mrs B13 demonstrates, you can have a house if you make sacrifices. Many aren’t prepared to do such.
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And I do agree with that; sacrifices are necessary unless you are fortunate enough to be very well off.
I do think that where the market is currently at, there is a perception that all younger people are doing is moaning, whereas in reality I suspect that every generation has done exactly the same in their time and some consideration all round would be productive to address the issues.
Personally, I find the attitude that one encounters from time to time quoting things such as “I never had a mobile phone and I survived” very infuriating as it is solely highlights the change in zeitgeist; whilst a state of the art phone is not essential I think that, whether right or wrong, having a mobile phone of some sort is now an essential; I myself have one in place of a landline.
The reason I highlight this particular argument is to illustrate that times change and I think many of the generation who see younger people as moaners/snowflakes simply can’t accept the changes which they didn’t have to deal with.
In any case, we agree that if home ownership is a priority for someone, regardless of age, they have to assess their income/outcome carefully and budget for it.
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Completely agree with the above. My wife and I each had two jobs, took no holidays, saved every penny that we could and persuaded father in law to act as guarantor – we got there and so will this generation if they want less and try hard.
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But they are being brainwashed by the likes of generation rent that they can have everything on a plate.
Look at CPS report and Onwards they want to give FTB the deposits to buy the rented home even reckon people on benefits might be able to.
How about putting the Great back in Britain and taking a can do approach . Where is the pride in this country now?
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This is a kind of ‘minority report.’ It looks at what a small minority of all these groups felt they did in order to save for/buy a house. So the headline grabbing ‘I delayed getting married’ (15%) and ‘I delayed having children’ (15%), means that 85% of the group did not delay these, compared often to 95% of the older group. It doesn’t look that gripping when you invert the statistics to the way around that they should be. Highly biased analysis of statistics again. Also, some of the statements are stupid – ‘I put off getting into a romantic relationship’, for example. How do we know the person just didn’t meet the right person? And ‘I gave up being self employed’ – where’s the big sacrifice there? You don’t have the right to be, for example, an artist and also somehow get given a salary that doesn’t come with that. Also the one about getting a more highly paid job – that’s not a sacrifice – just one of those decisions we all make – maybe going higher up the ladder when really we’d prefer a cushier number.
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This says it all
When asked about their top three life goals, millennials are focused on travelling the world (27%), having children (24%), and finding the perfect job (24%), while buying a home only ranked fifth (21%). In comparison, buying a first home was the biggest life goal for both Generation X (36%) and Baby Boomers (42%).
The shift in home ownership has changed lifestyle is more important.
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Yes, I forgot to say that! What the report really says is that buying a house isn’t that important to them – that it is low on their list of priorities. That should be the headline – not that their ability to buy is frustrated by some sacrifices no other person ever faced, which is nonsense.
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This topic makes my blood boil when people say they can’t afford to get onto the property ladder. I myself fall into the ‘millennial’ category, albeit towards the older part of the bracket and me and my now husband bought our first house when we were 24 years old after years of hard saving. We had to make compromises, but we’ve always been brought up knowing we had to save for something if we want it, rather than living beyond our means. Yes, we had to curb the eating out to maybe once or twice a month and had less takeaways, but it was worth it. People shouldn’t expect that they can afford to still have holidays, eat out etc? Or am I on my own with this opinion?
On another note, these figures are very general and put all ‘millennials’ into the same box with regards to their life goals. For example, a friend of mine doesn’t own a house and her goals have been to travel and see the world, however mine and my husband’s first goal was to buy a house, then to save for our wedding and now it’s to go on holidays. Everyone is different, people want different things and I guess people will try their hardest to get onto the property ladder if they want it that much. I know one thing for sure, it’s definitely not going to be handed to them on a plate!
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Strewth I wish they’d put you on TV so you can tell this to a wider audience.
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Not every baby boomer owns their own home, not every millennial doesn’t own their own home. It is not a generational thing it is down to everyone’s own individual circumstance and awareness of what is needed to own a property.
Millennials get on with it, malennials moan about it!
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Very true!
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I fear the generational split has been encouraged by the likes of politicians targeting their specific groups; setting young against old and vice versa. Often forgotten is the interest rates and whilst prices are high, borrowing is at an all time low and the relationship between these factors to a large degree dictate where market prices are. What would our millennials think of paying 15% plus mortgage interest? People refer back to prices in relation to earnings but that means nothing if interest rates are not introduced into the calculation. At the time of the baby boomers there were problems then as competition to purchase was far greater as there was, to all intents and purposes, no rental market accessible to the majority ( only a small amount of council houses – no housing associations). Most younger people (below 30) lived with their parents because it was not possible to rent due to the 1977 Rent Act (which labour are convincing our young people is a good idea to return to). At the end of the day it comes down to making choices – but please do not whinge if you make a poor choice. I am now comfortable because by choice I saved, I invested to achieve that which I now benefit from. Many of my contemporaries made different choices and will not have such a comfortable future. All I can say is it is a market that sets prices. There has always been and will always be the haves and the have nots; often based on the life choices people have made but inevitably some luck affects every-ones lives. It does rub when people say you are lucky because you can afford this or that – fact is I made life choices, worked really hard and took some risks and those choices over the long term proved to be good choices. So all I will say is make your choices and see where you are in 40 years time and listen for the then “new generation” making the same points as our lovely millenials make now. The untrustworthy news, social media just makes the noises sound louder and the problems look bigger. In the UK we are lucky we live in a country where everyone has the opportunity to achieve what they want. So get on with it and make your own choices and don’t blame others if your choices are wrong.
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