Housing blues

I'm very concerned that young people are finding it so hard to buy a home because of the stratospheric property prices, and many still live with their parents because they can't afford to either buy or rent.

I've been lucky enough to end up owning a large detached house, but if I'd had less luck I could have been struggling to find somewhere to live in my old age and making do with a run-down flat in some seedy neighbourhood.

In my twenties I was living in a run-down flat in London and wondering how on earth I could afford somewhere more desirable. I was saving money but although I had about enough for the deposit on a flat, a mortgage was quite unaffordable.

I was lucky enough to run into Jenny and between the two of us we were able to buy a tiny flat. As a result of rapidly rising property prices we were able to sell up at a profit and move into a bigger flat.

When we moved to Belfast in 2000 we sold our London flat for an even larger profit and were able to buy a house here for cash, as local house prices are much lower than in London.

Then with a large windfall from my mother we were able to buy our present house, where we've lived for almost 15 years.

But I'm always aware of the many thousands of youngsters who aren't as lucky as us and are desperate for a decent home of their own. The politicians seem unable to control the endlessly rising rents and house prices and just let them get higher. Now only the seriously wealthy can afford a sizeable house in the big cities.

Home sweet home? Only if you're lucky enough to have one.

Bricks and mortar

Given the current housing crisis, dating youngsters are said to be paying more attention to the housing situation of their dates. Which may seem rather unromantic, but it's something that looms large nowadays.

Unless your only concern is whether you love each other, how compatible you are, and how likely you are to stay together, and you absolutely refuse to think about such practical issues as bricks and mortar, then housing is bound to come up sooner or later.

Does your date own a flat or house? Are they planning to? Do they have enough funds to do so? Or are they easily affording a hefty flat rental?

Such considerations weren't so pressing when I was young and dating. If you gave the matter any thought at all, you assumed your date was happily housed somewhere and able to afford whatever it cost.

I hardly gave a moment's thought to housing when I was dating, and neither did my parents, even though parents generally were often very curious about a prospective mate's financial status and future prospects.

When I met Jenny we were both working in bookshops. Although our salaries were low, we assumed we wouldn't have any trouble renting and subsequently buying a flat or house. At that time this was such a reasonable assumption that we barely discussed it. Since then of course both rents and property prices have sky-rocketed and salaries have declined.

So it's not surprising that the practicalities of where you and your loved one might live, and whether you can possibly afford it, often comes up.

Not very romantic but hard to avoid.

Housing sharks

In the midst of economic turmoil, the sharks are still circling, waiting to get their teeth into vulnerable people desperate for a lifeline.

The latest group to be stung is hard-up householders threatened with repossession. Smooth operators are offering to buy their houses and rent them back.

Sounds ideal, doesn't it? Except that all sorts of traps are lurking in the small print.

You might be paid only 50% of the house's real value. The agreement might only last a year. The rent might be as much as the mortgage - and might go up. You might be charged an 'arrangement fee'. And you might still be repossessed by the new owners.

There are now 2000 sale-to-rent schemes in the UK, and they're totally unregulated. The government is looking at the problem but they've yet to do anything concrete. Why?

One couple, Jane and Richard Hudson of Basildon, Essex, have lost their home of 13 years and they and their five children are now squeezed into cramped emergency housing.

Jane says of the company that conned them "They've robbed me, they've robbed my kids and they've knocked my confidence."

How predictable that there's always someone ready to take advantage of a catastrophe and milk those who're floundering. These people have the morals of an alleycat.

And the lesson? If some silver-tongued charmer offers you the perfect answer to your problems, ask a shed-load of awkward questions and go through the contract with a fine tooth-comb. Or you could rue the day.

NB: That's not the Hudsons in the pic, btw.

Mud huts to mortgages

Don't you think the whole business of finding a home has gone backwards rather than forwards? At one time all you had to do was build yourself a house and you lived in it and owned it and that was that. Now most of us can only get a house by paying someone huge amounts of money - and we may not own it either.

Gone are the days of the humble mud hut or tepee. Now houses are so elaborate most people simply don't have the skills to build one. So we have to rely on someone else to do it and they charge us monstrous sums for the privilege.

Instead of just relaxing and enjoying our home, we have to spend years sweating and toiling to pay the rent or the mortgage. Is this really the height of civilisation? Or is it more like some modern form of slavery in which we are permanently in hock to someone else?

I know that in return for all this cash we may have very comfortable, very well-furnished homes with all mod cons - a far cry from a rudimentary shack with no running water or toilet or electricity. But hasn't something gone seriously wrong here, that a bit of domestic comfort has such a high price attached to it?

Of course homes might be a lot cheaper if it wasn't for the property price phenomenon - house prices going up and up seemingly without end because there are never enough to go round and because it's so prestigious to own your own home.

If it wasn't for that, house prices might even be affordable, instead of costing umpteen times the average wage. As it is, we're now stretching ourselves to our financial limits and beyond, with thousands of homes being repossessed every year.

The housing situation has gone from odd to completely insane and there seems to be little we can do about it. Home Sweet Home? These days, more like Home Sweet Ball and Chain.