I need about 25-30k for a 10% for a house I’d like.
This is sometimes as low as 100k in other areas of the UK.
My search area is limited because of my boyfriends job and his specialist skills not being a widely available job. Or I’d love to move veryyyy far away. It’s easier to say to relocate than do.
This.
Whilst I didn’t have the 2 jobs that @Ordog had, I cut back on everything and saved hard for 2 years. Lived in an area that I could have easily bought a house for 80k in, but saved more to buy a flat in Edinburgh.
I bought my first house (still in it) 3.5 years ago, I put a 5% (£10,000) deposit down, with Help to Buy giving 20% also. I’m coming up to the point where it’s advised you pay off the HtB and houses in my area seem to have gone up 12-20% in price.
Help to Buy (if available on a house you’re looking at) is a great way to get into a house with a more affordable mortgage.
But the saving of the deposit, moving costs etc, all required sacrifice - I missed a road trip in America with my friends because of it 
I’ve just sold my one bedroom flat for that price 
Terrible disparity when you think about it!
Realistically that house in London? 2-3 million?
London is nearly impossible for an average person to save for
I’d completely disagree with you. Wanting a first-time buyer house in a Northern City is certainly not demanding something extravagant; have a look at the value for properties in Zone 1 and 2 of London if you want to deal with expectation management! 
Not at all. The reality is that housing has become more unaffordable over the last 40 years, and to tell a generation “work harder for less” isn’t a socially or morally acceptable message in a developed Western nation.
The counter to that would be - if you work in Zone 1 or Zone 2 of London, you’re likely on a higher salary than those in a northern city - whether that is proportional or not is a different question but you can’t deny that London has a higher salary bracket due to the increased cost of living.
For example in my industry the pay can double almost treble for the same experience in London as compared to a northern city.
While that is completely true, the cost of housing is far greater than the northern cities, so even if I’m on a salary that’s over double what I’d make outside of London, housing is even more out of reach.
As for the higher salaries in London, I think that’s more due to competition than anything as London has x3 the job density of any other city in the UK, rather than a stipend for the cost of living, but an entirely moot point when a 1 bed apartment is £450,000 
Either way, a starter house in a northern city shouldn’t be seen as unaffordable. If it is, that just highlights the scale of the housing crisis.
No completely, its much more nuanced than “London jobs have 3x salary” but its not just the housing crisis - its at least in my view the fact that what you get paid vs how house prices increase aren’t aligned - houses continue to increase whilst wages barely move along with inflation, this creates a large disparity.
For me, being 22 saving for that 10% is a real effort, I had to move away from home to start my career so having to pay rent, bills, tax etc cuts into the portion of money I can actually put away. I’m looking at needing anywhere from £18,000 to £20,000 for a 10% its no small feat.
And that’s at house prices right now - let alone by the time I have that 10%!
Exactly you don’t or you do it temporarily(I will be doing it four years). At the moment for example I’m on stipend that is just above minimum and working on a PhD project that my supervisor said “was the type of topic for a team of 20+” because I know that this will massively increase my employability and salary when I finish. I understand that it will be stressful and require sacrifice. At the end of the day if you’re unhappy with your salary, look at what salary you could get and what you need to do to achieve this. This could be getting more experience or maybe going back to into education either formal or otherwise.
Personally, half the reason I work so hard is so that I can get to the position where I can pay people the salary that they deserve. I don’t believe that nurses should be on such low salaries at such high stress levels but that opens up a whole new can of worms(private vs State).
Unfortunately it is if your share holders tell you that they want their money to make more. Uber and the gig economy in general is the worse way of making money. If the start tanking or people were to actually bycott it. Companies wouldn’t think it was acceptable but because they get rewarded they do it.
I don’t think anyone is to blame though, it’s just how times have changed and therefore mindsets have too.
I could walk into a dealership today and get a £50,000 car and not worry about paying for it until a later date. No saving or sacrifice needed which was previously unheard of. If you didn’t have the money to pay for it you couldn’t have it - it was as simple as that. Everything is now on credit, buy now pay later, interest free loans etc and people must have it right now.
This is why I said managing expectations is critical. I think people certainly expect a lot more these days - just look at the people complaining about not being allowed an overdraft or loan through Monzo for a start. There isn’t much that is out of your reach if you spread the payments so people have come to expect to own whatever they want with minimal effort.
Yes inflation and jobs and lots of other factors come into consideration but the fundamentals are still the same as they were when I bought 6 years ago. We also live in a world where we’re fortunate to have plenty of options and freedom to go and do whatever we want. I’d certainly love to live in a city and get paid 8 times what I do now but sadly I can’t afford it. Just like I’d have loved a decent house for my first one instead of worrying about security and my safety as I walked the streets at night.
If you can’t afford to buy in the city then you have to shop within your means. There is no stopping you reassessing your city goal once you’ve built up some equity of more savings but I think it is wrong to expect the government to pay for you. I’ve seen some decent terraced ones for £30k and someone posted a really nice house in their area earlier in the topic too - so there are available and affordable houses just not where you’re wanting them to be.
If for whatever reason you can’t afford to buy, don’t want to move or whatever, that is by your choice(s) so sadly you need to accept the consequences. Your option then is to rent which is way cheaper because you’re not liable for unexpected bills or maintenance.
TL;DR
I think house buying is a luxury, not a right. Work hard (sometimes 2 jobs, masses of overtime etc) and sacrifice is what it takes, if you don’t want to do that… rent 
I think we just have similar attitudes to work etc. 
You missed my point so let me clarify: having to work harder and yet receive less than previous generations is not acceptable in a country that is not economically declining. Short term sacrifice for long term benefits is not a new concept, nor will it ever date, but it shouldn’t be a requirement for something that was easily accessible for previous generations, housing being the perfect example of this.
The gig economy is relatively new; the problem with housing prices can be traced to the 70’s, and really came into play in the late 90’s.
Yeah I agree with that point completely. But so much of that comes down to why people justify paying CEOs and management multi-million pay packages.
The massive flaw with your thinking is that 30 years ago you could buy a house while doing a relatively menial job. Nowadays, after spending tens of thousands on higher education and earning a salary that is, when inflation is accounted for, numerous times higher than the jobs of the 80’s, housing has become unaffordable.
You can’t call something a luxury when it was considered affordable to millions of people only 30 years ago in a country that apparently is economically growing. Just because something has become unaffordable doesn’t mean it’s also become a luxury.
I’m not sure what a CEO’s earnings have to do with the housing crisis? If a CEO gets paid £20 million, and has added, say, 15% to the companies stock value, adding tens of millions to the companies value:
a) why is the CEO not entitled to that pay?
b) why is it a problem as the CEO will be taxed through the eyeballs and will be one of the highest tax payers in the country…
Again, not sure how housing has anything to do with a CEO’s pay packet, and why said pay is a problem? 
Everytime I go shopping now I’m going to say:
“30 years ago it didn’t cost this much, I want it cheaper”
I wonder how far I’ll get
First stop, the Porsche dealership 
If you’re going to be obtuse, not very far.
In the first paragraph I mentioned adjustment for inflation. Maybe you should do a little digging into the numbers and you’ll see how you’re witty comments are tragically far removed from reality.