A question for 'mature' home owners

soma said:

What was the inflation rate..? Interest Rates are meaningless without an inflation context. Plus the size of the loans most definitely matter (we are in the age of the jumbo mortgage as you know), I seriously doubt anyone in the 70s or 80s lost much sleep over a 0.25% increase ,whereas it's a cause of concern for alot of recent buyers these days because of the mammoth amounts being compounded over 35-40 years instead of 15-20 years.

Click to expand...

I bought first house in 1978 for 19,600 and was only allowed to borrow 15k. One month later a friend bought three doors down from me at 23k! We rushed to buy because of escalating house prices. Interest rates went through the roof with the result that repayments were approx 600 while main earner made 650 a month. Both had to work..believe me we lost a lot of sleep!

Flower Girl said:

I don't get the obsession of young people or newly weds having to have a family home from day one...what's that all about?.

Click to expand...

Growing up in late 80s & 90s no-one bothered about buying a house when in their 20s (unless they were getting married). That was because the price was the same from one year to the next (until circa 95) so people could take their time, do their thing, rent & house-share & have a laugh, safe in the knowledge that when they decide that they want to buy a house, it'll be at a similar price.
Now people are totally focused on property because of the huge pressure to buy now because prices have kept increasing for past 11 years.
But if prices had been rising by 10% a year back then, I'm sure everyone would have been just as obsessed as young people now.

I really think that a huge number of young people (20s and early 30s) are funding their lifestyle purely on credit (credit cards, credit union loans to pay off the credit cards, remortgaging the house etc etc).
That's not so bad when you are a young couple enjoying life, but I'm afraid all the debt will come back to haunt people. What happens when kids come along? Then the choice is do both parents continue to work and pay out €1000 a month in childcare? In a lot of cases that's on top of a mortgage that could be somewhere between €1500 and €2000 a month. When child number two comes along childcare can be anywhere from €1500 to €2000 a month. Your outgoings then are between €3000-€4000 a month before you even buy a loaf of bread. I know from experience about that situation as we are in our early thirties, two kids and a large mortgage and not a whole lot left at the end of the month. I look at the spending that is going on in Ireland at the moment and am truely astonished. Where is it all coming from???

I blame the parents ...

SemperFi said:

I blame the parents ...

Click to expand...

that's alright......we're used to it!