I’ve cancelled my Netflix subscription – now where should I buy a house?

I have cancelled my Netflix subscription, I make my coffee at home, I don’t eat avocado on toast and I’ve deleted the Deliveroo app off my phone. If the Boomer mentality that has been floating around for the last few years is to be believed, I should be able to buy a house any day now. 

The reality, however, is very different. A housing crisis coupled with a cost of living crisis, inflation and post-pandemic uncertainty has made getting on the property ladder harder than ever.

This week, an article in the Times ruffled feathers for suggesting yet again that young people’s spending habits are the key thing prohibiting them from being able to buy a house. “Baby boomers say struggling young should cut Netflix,” reads the headline. 

According to the article, in 1995 two-thirds of people aged 25 to 34 on average incomes owned their own homes; in 2022, this has dropped to a quarter. In the early 90s — before a single Gen-Z was born — the average house price was £55,437. It has since skyrocketed to £275,743; an almost 400 per cent increase in just over 25 years. 

Despite this, conversations about buying houses are often centred around Millenials’ and Gen-Zs’ perceived overconsumption of luxuries. We might have spent our youth living through a pandemic, several economic crises and the looming threat of climate change, but no matter what the world looks like, the conversation always loops back to us kids just never being quite puritan enough. Is the idea of an accessible housing system where people can both enjoy their life, go on holiday once a summer, occasionally eat out and afford to buy a house really that utopian?

This strange obsession with millennials’ coffee and avocado habits misses another major factor in homeownership. It’s estimated that 56 per cent of all first-time buyers under the age of 35 have financial help from their parents to buy a property. Admonishing one person for throwing away their chance at getting a mortgage because they enjoy a takeaway once a week when many of their peers are simply getting a deposit straight from their parent’s bank account is both unfair and cruel. Parental wealth is a larger factor than paying £10.99 a month for a Netflix account.

Beyond the clickbait headlines, the King’s College London study that the piece was based on paints a far more complex picture. Professor Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at KCL, clarifies that “the suggestion that the huge challenges young people face in buying their own home can be solved by skipping fancy coffees and Netflix entirely misses the point, but it’s still believed by half the public.” 

Interestingly, the answers collected in the study were far more consistent across all generations than the headlines would have you think; 48 per cent of Millennials (those born between 1980 and 1995), for example, believe that “young people are too careless with their money when trying to save, just below the 52 per cent of baby boomers with the same view”. 

In some ways, they might be right. Gen-Z, in particular, is mostly under 25, childless, and often receiving a salary for the first time in their lives. Couple this with a lack of financial education in schools and it would be surprising if anyone thought young people were good with money; it is a skill you learn with experience and more than a couple of risky dips into the overdraft. Plus, there’s inflation which currently makes overspending essentially unavoidable. 

Spending habits and inflation in the housing market both have a part to play in young people’s struggle for homeownership. But there’s one other key factor here, too. The truth is, for many young people, we are spending too much to be able to buy a house. Not on brunches and Netflix subscriptions, but on outrageous rents. It’s hard to build up any kind of savings when over half your paycheck goes on rent and bills every month and without a leg up from your parents or the lottery, a mortgage often seems like a distant fantasy. 

The housing crisis won’t be fixed by twenty-somethings stopping contributing to the economy; it’s time boomers saw the big picture.