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

[erindubitably.livejournal.com]

Might this article be relevant to your interests?

(Doesn't answer all your questions, but has a bit of info and might have links to more answers)

[marrog.livejournal.com]

http://www.ifaonline.co.uk/ifaonline/news/1349455/average-buyer-age-reaches-34

I think though that by going back 50 years you would skew your figures unrealistically, since the very idea of owning your own home (for the non-aristos) is a comparatively new thing, and my undestanding is very much that pre 1979 in the cities in particular people just didn't bother to own their own homes - renting throughout one's whole life was normal.

[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.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

I don't think house prices are going up. There's not enough house sales for the data to be meaningful.

[pete stevens (from livejournal.com)]

I was a first time buyer in 2001. I am a first time buyer again this year.

This is because first time buyer means someone buying a house who doesn't have a house to sell as part of a transaction. Should you sell your house and move into a rented house, then buy a house you become a first time buyer, you get a better price on the sale because there's no chain, and a better price on the purchase because there is no chain there either.