Home truths

WHateVeR other factors are involved, today’s young people face difficulties buying a home because salaries have failed to keep up with the rise in house prices (Letters).

In 1974, the average house price was £9,927 and salaries were £3,000, so a home cost three times your salary.

By 2005, average house prices were £186,500, while average earnings were only £18,949, meaning house prices were ten times salary levels.

By 2015, the average house price was £288,000 and average earnings were £22,500: one 12th of the house price. this is why, coupled with the difficulty in saving enough for a decent deposit due to high rents in the private sector, it is so difficult to buy a home.

I’ve thought for many years that the rich/poor divide in future would be between children who inherited from their family or got a helping hand from them on to the property ladder, and those who didn’t.

I experienced 15 per cent mortgage interest rates in the nineties, but was lucky enough to have rented a terrace house (no bathroom, outside toilet) for £3 a week in 1968 and then bought a four-bedroom detached house in 1973 for £10,300. MAUREEN BROWN, Sutton Coldfield, W. Mids.