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

[marrog.livejournal.com]

http://www.compareandsave.com/news/Average-age-of-first-time-buyers-to-increase/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3324876/Top-up-fees-will-raise-average-age-of-first-time-buyers-to-40.html
http://www.yourmortgage.co.uk/showPage.html?page=3625183

An interesting (in parts) messageboard thread here which has a list up to 2005 (although read around it) and a lot of links:
http://www.economicsuk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=49&start=0

[andrewducker]

I generally don't trust that kind of articles/press releases - because they're of the format "If trends carry on as they have done for the last three years, then by the year 2030 we'll all be living to 3000 and have TVs that are five miles on a side!" - you need longer term trends than they're talking about, and the economy is generally cyclic.

The stats, on the other hand, are fantastic - see latest post, which confirms that the trend from 2005 onwards makes mortgages much more expensive. Sadly, I couldn't find stats for older than that yet. Still digging though!