cresta57

Ahhh, I did fail to mention that wages are equal to the price of property here as well £7.50p/h is average for tradesmen.
Sean

bored_bean

Hmmm. Well Jersey, £150,000 will get you a 1 bedroom flat (purpose built but nothing special). 2 bedrooms £200,000 and £10,000 for a parking space(uncovered). I realised that I was going to leave when the house I grew up in (4 bedroom farm on 1/2 an acre) was sold for £600,000. Now where does your average bloke get that sort of money? At least with most places you can live in a cheap area and commute, but not when you're on an island

Herman

These things always go through cycles on mainland UK. Not so sure about Jersey though - I guess with the crowded roads and crumbling infrastructure in the UK people with fat wallets are escaping to places like Jersey?
I think we all face the same problem re places we grew up. Somehow my single mum, who worked as a secretary, struggled to afford a 3 bed detached house in a reasonable area (a village outside Bristol). I noticed on the internet that my childhood home is on the market for 240,000 pounds. I am an accountant with a good job and yet my wife and I would both have to work on the salaries paid in that area to afford the house my low paid mother could afford all those years ago. And yet her generation cluck and say that houses are affordable as ever, its just that we apparently are not prepared to make the sacrifices they made in their day to afford a home. Does anyone else agree with my mum or do you agree with me (i.e. they had it much easier and have no idea of the challenges our generation face)?

PS. Eastern Europe is my tip for good value. Next month we are viewing a block of land just over an hour outside Prague in the south of the Czech Republic. Its 12.5 hectares (31 acres), with 2 hectares of pine forest and 10.5 hectares of open land, it has a private acceess road, planning permission for domestic buildings on 3 acres, all the utilities connections, its nestled in stunning countryside with views to the Sumava forest on the German border, the nearest sizable town is 10 minutes drive. And the price? 20,000 pounds or nearest offer.

midnight02

i agree. when we moved to canada citing (amongst many reasons) that we couldn't aford to buy a decent home in the UK on our salaries, my mother-in-law said the same.

She is a teacher who was until she retired last year was earning about 20K a year. She has just sold her house for 320K (its in the midlands, it needs a lot of work and the area is not so hot) and is looking to buy a smaller house in a nicer area but is finding it difficult on this budget.

Now on 20K a year she would get a mortgage today of about 80K if she were lucky? What exactly would she buy for that?!

My husband I both professionals on good salaries could only get a reasonable house that was in a horrible town. It was 2 hours commute to work in London on the train. The train fare cost me 300 pounds a month - I caught the train at 7am and got home at about 8pm on a good day. The mortgage payments for this place that we hated sucked up all our disposable income and we couldn't afford to do anything (we also were trying to clear debt from our university days). Weekends would be spent doing all the household chores and shopping that you didn't have the time to do during the week. I was then made redundant and we were trying to meet the payments with just one salary - it was a nightmare!

Don't get me wrong I love the Uk but who would want to live like this? I think it is particularly bad for those of us trying to get a first foot on the house ladder in the UK. Some are lucky they inherit money or their parents help them out but most professionals are already laden down with debt from getting a degree and of course this amount is deducted from the amount you are allowed to borrow. Starting salaries for a lot of graduate jobs can be quite low as well (if you can get one!).

pommie bastard

Having looked on the Internet at homes in the UK I see no problem depends on where you want to live , my terrace home in Joondalup is priced at $325K a bargin not .


.HOMEBUYERS in WA snapped up $1.5 billion in property last month, pushing up prices and exacerbating the shortage of homes for sale.

There were only 8258 properties left on the market in Perth at the end of March, the lowest number since the June 1994 quarter.

The Real Estate Institute of WA's latest homebuyer confidence index reported that 86.4 per cent of properties which came on to the market in March sold in the month.

Perth homebuyers bought $1.2 billion worth of property, while the rest of WA put $300 million into the real estate market.