The difference is, to be able to live in a "nice" area in the uk, with a decent sized house, requires you to earn £100K a year.....

Disagree. We lived in the Cotswolds before coming here and didn't earn anything like that amount.

Oh there is good and bad everywhere but we are living in a "nice" suburb that is sandwiched between two run down areas that are full of third generation kids who's parents have never worked, they themselves are excluded from schools and there seems to be no where for them to go, so many of the young girls now have babies and they are no more than 13/14. Sadly it is these elements of our society that are ruining for the rest. Where we are we live in a nice estate, we work damn long hours, our kids are taught respect for each other and for adults yet outside our own front door all the values that we hold close and dear is being eroded away by a bunch of nomads that think it is fine to drink, scream, swear, kick in the cars, chuck beer cans all over the place, fling eggs at the house, pull up trees, smash plant pots, etc etc. It is a minority, but unfortunately the minority have ruined our small part of society for the majority who live here and who work hard and want the best. Unfortunately it seems that we are being penalised and targeted by them because we care for and respect our property and surroundings.


Thank you so much.

We aren't in Moss Side, we are in a "nice" area, the councellor that came to see us yesterday said there is a growing problem in the area because so many of these youths are now excluded from school and have asbo's but what is happening is that they are just being shifted around the area, moving the problem back and forth, we had a few quiet months but then they have been evicted again and ended up back close to this area where they were evicted earlier in the year. There is no way to deal with them and that is the problem.

We live in a "nice" area - not the nicest, we moved about a mile away because we could get more house for our money (what a mistake that was) and whilst we don't earn £100K a year, we have our own businesses and work very hard and very long hours for what we have and we are proud of that, it is our lifestyle choice.

Yea, but you probably bought when property was cheap.... it's not anymore (for now at least)...

I disagree too.......we live in a "nice" area without the yobs, 4 bed house and have never earnt that amount!

Is the house worth less than £300K then?

No, it's probably worth about £400k in the current market, had it valued at £460k last year.

And before you say it, we don't need to earn £100k a year to afford it (know you were about to!), as we bought it for £275k 4 years ago and only had a mortgage on about 40% of that.

Plus there are plenty of yob free areas that are far, far cheaper than around here, we only live here because it's where we grew up and all our family are still here which was important to us when we started our own family.

If your point is that only expensive areas are yob free, I respectfully disagree. We have friends all over the country and they also live in nice, lout and crime free areas, and a lot of them are much, much cheaper than where we live.

We could only afford a 3-bed semi in a reasonable area and I had a decent professional IT job. Here, the house we are renting is the same value (£120K), except it's detached, has probably 3x the usable space of our house back in the UK and a pool....

It wasn't lout ridden by any means, but I did used to see groups of youths hanging around drinking cider etc....

Just out of interest, whereabouts was that?

Fair enough but hope you understand why I had to comment after your statement that anybody wanting a decent sized house in a decent area had to earn £100k a year - when we managed it on a third of that income!!

An ordinary market town in the midlands...

Yea you managed it, but you wouldn't get the house you have now if you was to start from scratch today.... Not without that £100K salary.... That was my point....

I'm with you G77. We are in part ownership on our house 50% of £150K (three years ago). It is the smallest 3 bedroom house you can imagine with shared parking. I earn around £33K a year and pretty much that's the best you can do around here for that sort of money.

With 10% deposit, you'd have to earning £45K a year on a standard 3x annual income multiplier for a mortgage to buy the full house.

Prices did go up to around 165-170K on this street for the same type of thing, but have since dipped to somewhere around what we bought it for. We are now looking to sell, hopefully the fact that it is a part-ownership scheme should help attract some buyers in.

I'm not moving to acquire a mansion, but a bit more space/garden etc for the family would be a nice bonus.

I do understand your point but how many people expect to be able to jump straight into owning a 4 bed detached house in a fairly expensive area of the country as a first home?!? We could only afford it because we'd worked our way up the property ladder, buying a repossessed property that needed completely gutting and renovating it, then buying an ex-council property on an estate and doing that up, etc, etc. All of our deposit on this place was from previous properties and we scrimped and saved like everybody else. Surely that's how most people expect to do it? I'm sure if you'd stayed in the UK you would be in a bigger better house here too, just the way of things, you move up the ladder and your salary increases over time too.

I couldn't move to Vancouver (where we're heading) and buy what I wanted there either - without a much bigger salary, no credit history and no deposit to put down. So yes, I wouldn't have my current home here if I was 'starting from scratch' today, but then I wouldn't have anything similar in Canada either.

Well done you. Very righteous.

The property ladder in a normal sense doesn't exist though does it? It is an invention of the estate agent's imagination.

Unless you have done what you have done here (i.e. added value via some kind of development) there is no such thing. If the market rises it makes everything else you are buying more expensive. So if you are upgrading, you still need to find the extra cash from somewhere no matter what.

I know I've said this before but have to say it again, not all kids in the UK are bad and there are still some areas where kids are pleasant and law abiding!!

It's to be hoped this is true or anarchy would reign. We have some "yob" type culture in some of Canada's major cities but it doesn't seem to have reached the proportions occurring in the UK. In Toronto there are serious problems with young gangs where handguns are the weapons of choice. Most of the gun usage is between the gangs but there have been incidents where totally innocent bystanders have been injured or killed and for the most part the gangs are confined to certain defined areas, mostly low-income public housing. In most of the country liquor/beer sales are made in government outlets so seeing drunken louts, as per the UK, almost never happens. I would say that for the most part Canada is a safe place to live but there are still certain areas where it's advisable not to go. I have never personally known anyone who was afraid to go outside their own home.