63% of Scottish grads can’t afford to buy a home
Following on from my posting about the IMF warning about overheated house prices in the UK, I see that the Scottish Widows Bank commisioned a survey by YouGov and found that 63% of recent university graduates can not afford to buy a home. The situation isn’t much better for those who have been working for a number of years. Among those who left university 6 years ago, 20% fear they will never be able to afford their own place. The problem is the high property prices, combined with debts built up while studying – around £13 000 per student in Scotland, and even more in England.
And today another independent economic consultancy published a forecast that UK house prices will drop by 20%. Which given the massive rises over the last 2-3 years, seems to me to be a very moderate fall, although even this means that some 400 000 households will end up having paid more for their home than it is subsequently worth.