Priced out of a home

THE cost of buying your own home is a disgrace (Mail). Only young people who earn an income well above average or have wealthy parents have any chance of realising the dream of home ownership.

A teacher colleague bought their first home, a terrace house in Tufnell Park, North London, in the early Seventies for £46,000 and sold it a few years ago for more than £1 million.

In days gone by the rule was that you could get a mortgage of up to three and a half times your salary. But given that the average income is now £27,600, how many houses are priced at £96,600?

This and previous governments should have had the guts to limit how much profit house developers could make so that new-builds would be a fair price. What went wrong? Sheer greed.

RON TAYLOR, March, Cambs. I CAN’T agree with the frequently stated opinion that young people are priced out of the housing market.

When I bought my first house in 1974, I had saved a 25 per cent deposit over six years and struggled to find a mortgage.

It cost ten times my salary of £1,000, and cars cost roughly a year’s salary — the same equation as today.

It was tough then, as it is now. Of course, we did not have mobile phone contracts, digital TVs, gym memberships and expensive foreign holidays to worry about.

JOHN PROCKTOR, Stevenage, herts.