Two numbers I would like to see

[andrewducker]

1) Average age of first-time home buyers as a graph covering the last 50 years.
2) Average monthly mortgage repayment over a similar time period - adjusted for inflation.  Because this would adjust (somewhat) for house prices going up while interest rates are low.

Between them these would tell us something about the affordability of housing over a long period.

Comments

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Most middle class families owned their own homes in the seventies. There was another chunk of people, like my family, who lived in rented council housing - under the Thatcher administration the top end of the council renting group was bumped up into ownership. Personally I think the long term effects were very bad.

Another issue, by the way, from those days was that building societies were much more cautious about allocating mortgages - for example we were advised to set up building society accounts as teenagers, because long term account holders were more likely to get mortgages when they needed them in their twenties. The mortgages were more affordable, but harder to gain.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Most middle class families owned their own homes in the seventies. There was another chunk of people, like my family, who lived in rented council housing - under the Thatcher administration the top end of the council renting group was bumped up into ownership. Personally I think the long term effects were very bad.

I think the second half of this statement is certainly true, but how sure are you about the first half, and how are you defining middle class - band B or band C1? I'd be surprised to find hear that a majority of social class band C1 owned property in the seventies. This nice wee essay seems to have pulled out some info suggesting that I'm right in this assumption, particularly given that economic differences between individuals are more polarised now than they were then.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

In the 1970s middle class people - by which I mean managerial, skilled white collar workers and professionals - typically lived in mortgaged private accommodation. A young secretary or receptionist wouldn't have a mortgage, though, and this represents a certain proportion of those classed as C1. My father was a clerical worker, in a junior role because he is disabled, with 4 children and we didn't have a mortgage. Our neighbours were skilled manual workers, such as bus drivers, railwaymen, machine operators. There was a relatively good supply of clean safe cheap public housing for this intermediate class of upper working/ lower middle.

I think the biggest change under Thatcher was to remove the possibility of living a quiet respectable life like that on a fairly low income.