Dracoro

On MANY threads, pslewis is talking crap about the average wage so here's a link.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=285

£422 a week which is £21,944 a year is the average earnings.

It's £541pw, £28,132pa in London btw.

lightning101

So how do so many people afford £350,000 -500,000 houses

Reality

They bought them off Maggie Thatcher for £10,000 20 odd years ago.

sti-04!!

Is that all

Dracoro

equity and large mortgages. This is the value of the houses, not the amount they originally paid for them. You need to know what the mortgage on those properties are to get a truer picture.

lightning101

I'm talking about people in their early thirties with 2 kids, and X5 jeep and a mercedes opentop and a £400,000 house. There are thousands of these people suddenly appearing, along with new housing to match.

scoobfan

I think those figures are old.

The national average (Not London) is higher than that

Rob

Dracoro

They're for 2004. Recent enough as you'll get a 2005 hasn't finished yet!

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

The average wage in Swindon atm is £27,500

scoobfan

The economical tax year runs from April to April, so the figures are old.

Rob

Dracoro

The new figs, I guess, will be published in October given that those ones above were. So they are the latest figures from the national stats whichever way you put it.

rossyboy

iTrader: (8)

Even if the figures are a year old, the average wage increase is only about 3.1% so it isnt going to make much difference

davegtt

Average wage for my area is about £18k at a guess, and theres not many jobs going in the paper offering that money

Ive only just hit the national average then

rossyboy

iTrader: (8)

Its about time we had some realism around here. You always hear on here about the people who have paid off their mortgages, live in £400k houses, have second homes and flash new cars. People should take off their blinkers and realise that just isnt a reality for the majority.

I am surprised its not a bit higher though, I expected about £25k.

Reality

And with the recent influx of Poles etc I'm sure the Average wage will be heading South !

scoobfan

Depends on how much you earn !

Rob

rossyboy

iTrader: (8)

I know what you mean, but I was talking 3.1% of the average wage

scoobfan

Fairy muff !

Rob

weapon69

oh dear When i used to work, i got nearly 13k LESS than the National Average. Never work for M+S

MikeCardiff

iTrader: (2)

Reason all those people got stupid mortgages, is that the stupid mortgage companies were stupid enough to offer 'self certifying mortgages'

For those that dont know, they work something like this :

Mortgage Bloke 'with self certification, you just tell us how much you earn, and we wont bother checking'

Buyer 'cool, ummm... how much would I need to earn to buy this house then ?'

MB - 'a joint income of £100K will be required'

B- 'thats handy, I earn £50K and so does my wife'

MB - 'Bingo ! sign on the dotted line then' ( runs off to pocket huge commission ).

Luckily the government stepped in and told them they couldnt do this anymore.

Brit_in_Japan

It's worth noting there's a difference between average and median wages.

Median wages, as discussed in the link, are the wages of the 50th percentile worker. So there are equal numbers of people paid above the median and below the median.

Average is total wages divided by total number of workers. There are over 100,000 millionaires in the UK, the average is skewed upwards, above the median value. Lies, damn lies and statistics.....

fast bloke

Oh really?

fast bloke

We bought our house for 80k with a 50k mortgage in 1997 on a salary of less than 20k. Added to the mortgage to build 2 extra bedrooms in 2002. Now have 100k mortgage in 350k house. If I wanted to buy the house now I would need a mortgage of 320k and salary of 80+.

Luan Pra bang

Self certs usually require a 25-35 percent deposit thats why banks don't mind as they will always get their money back.

fatherpierre

How do people manage on 22k per year?

Kin ell, spend that on beer and petrol!

Simon C

And I'm struggling to get on the property ladder and I earn 30 - 40k, why the hell should I get married or have a partner just so I can have a house.

^OPM^

i have not had massively well paid jobs since i left school-became an apprentice armature winder if anyone knows what that is.. but i worked a lot of overtime when i was young-and yes all the old folks there in there 40's and 50's used to say why you working 60 hour weeks for at your age-u should be out getting drunk etc-i used to reply -because i dont intend to still be working when im ur age!- and now im 35 my house in a nice area ( only a 3 bed semi tho but im single and live alone so big enough) was paid of over a year ago-and i could still spend 20 grand 4 year ago on a brand new scooby-and i now at 35 have a very healthy portfolio of shares, a very healthy bank balance and could now at 35 go into semi retirement but plan to work till 40 then retire-all this on not much more then average wages so it can be done easily-roll on 40 i say.

Tiggs

I self cert. my own loan with an income (unprovable as didnt have 1yrs of accounts as it was a new business) of £100k pa guess and a 10% deposit few months back - no prob.

FlightMan

Friend of mine and his missus are buying self - cert. No proof of income, AFAIK no deposit, and its about 50k over what they can afford.

Crazy.

scoob_babe

So many people don't have a clue about their outgoings it's untrue
I have all transactions on Quicken and even I was surprised to see what all the outgoings were every month when totalled up - I was trying to see where we could cut down when I got made redundant - even though we've never been overdrawn