House prices plummeted during the Thatcher recession which made it easy for people to buy. 1992 was a good year for that. Earlier on in her reign they had sky rocketed! I can remember houses that had been worth, say, £100,000 soaring to £250,000. Just a few years later the owners had negative equity. That didn't matter if they weren't in any hurry to move, they could sit it out and wait for the price to rise but a lot of houses in that price range were not very big and for someone wanting a family house, it wasn't good news. Then there were the repossessions - houses were put up for auction and bought for peanuts. It was terribly unfair, so many left with nothing.
I bought my first house (with my husband), where we lived for a few years, in 1985 and it cost £55,000. Eight years before that the previous owners had bought it for £12,000! In no time at all the value had increased dramatically, a few more years and it had decreased.
It took a while for house prices to rise under Blair but everyone expects their home to go up in value, not down.
The recession, caps on pay rises, causes hardship for young people. Anyone who wants to live in London or surrounding area will have to find an enormous deposit and not many can save up £60,000+. There are other areas where housing is expensive. However not everyone wants to live in or near a city and there are areas where everything is cheaper. It's all about compromise but nothing lasts forever.
(I bothered to search for this post because it's been bugging me when I remembered I said I bought first house in 1986. It was October 1985, we (fiance and I) moved in early January 1986. Me being pedantic. )
