HTML tags: Rosie’s boyfriend Carl is kind and generous – an “amazing person”. He earns more than she does, and often pays for her to come with him on work trips, or lends cash when she needs it. “He’s the kind of person who would pick up the bill in a heartbeat,” she says. Their relationship is happy – he loves her for her. But she knows, deep down, that he also loves her for her flat.
Rosie’s parents are middle class, and bought her a flat years ago when prices were lower, renting it out to pay off the mortgage. Carl’s family, meanwhile, isn’t well off, and he wouldn’t have been in a position to buy on his own – his income isn’t enough to get a mortgage and he has no savings. Both now live in the flat with a housemate.
Rosie, 31, can’t be absolutely certain the flat is a major part of her appeal, but she can tell Carl, 34, is irritated by her “irresponsible” attitude to money and her poorly paid choice of career. “Contrasted with that, the flat is a tick against my name – it makes him think I’m a safe bet, that I’m not going to be dead weight.” Then there’s the fact that Carl moved in quickly, “probably before I was ready. And I do note that all of his previous girlfriends have owned property that he lived in.”
A new, money-shaped shadow is looming over millennials’ dating lives and relationships, and it’s affecting even those, like Carl, who aren’t otherwise grasping or status-obsessed. Welcome to dating in the age of the housing crisis.
Exploding mortgage rates, average house prices at almost 10 times the average salary and rents at an all-time high: the crisis is leaving its mark on every stage of millennial relationships. It’s there on dates, with the need to find someone to buy with (or just split the rent with) as ever-present as glasses of bad wine. It’s pressing fast forward on the relationship itself: a 2022 SpareRoom survey found that nearly a quarter of respondents would consider moving in with a partner earlier than planned to save money. It’s trapping an estimated one in 10 people in relationships they aren’t happy in because they can’t afford to move out. And it hangs around even after the breakup, forcing some exes to live together for years on end.
In an even more dystopian twist, economist Peter Kenway has predicted that, as more than three-quarters of the UK’s privately held housing wealth now sits with the over-50s, we could soon see a “Jane Austen-style marriage market, as millennials without an inheritance try to partner up with millennials who stand to inherit a house”. Far-fetched? Perhaps. But then again, house prices relative to earnings haven’t been this high since the 19th century. And now, as then, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that there is a second path to inherited wealth: your choice of partner.
For Rosie, Carl’s attitude isn’t a deal breaker – not even close. It’s just a product of the bizarre wealth imbalances that the housing market is creating among young people. “To buy a house or to own a flat without family support when you’re earning a normal wage is completely impossible,” she says. “You just do what you have to do to survive.”
By their early 30s, more than half of those born in the 50s, 60s and 70s had bought property. But since then, we’ve seen a massive generational shift – even adjusted for inflation, the average UK house price has more than doubled since the 1970s. If an average house is now 10 times the average salary, and lenders will loan you up to five times your income, that means one thing: if you’re to manage to buy at all, you’ll likely need two names on that mortgage application. Andrew Montlake, managing director of mortgage broker Coreco, tells me that for years now, the norm has been for people to buy in a pair – whether that’s as a couple, or with a friend or family member. “It’s been that much harder for single people to buy.”
The ratio of salaries to house prices hasn’t been this extreme since the mid-19th century, which means that, without an inheritance or a very high income, your relationship status and your housing situation are going to be inextricably intertwined. Housing journalist Vicky Spratt says this is creating “immense” pressure on that first stage of relationships: finding a partner. “It takes an enormous amount of – I don’t even know what the adjective would be, because I’m not sure it is courage – to reject these ideas, because the sad fact is you’ll have a much more comfortable life with two incomes rather than one. The only people I know who are relaxed about it are people who have been gifted deposits or have inheritance,” she says. “I would go so far as to say it’s creating a sort of hysteria.”
The pressure’s like a weed in the back of your mind, the conversation already on the horizon. ‘Are you saving for a deposit?’
When Sam, 28, goes on dates, the last thing he wants to do is think about housing – “I don’t want to get into a relationship just because it’s some kind of life-investment vehicle. That’s horrible.” And yet, despite his best intentions, “the pressure’s like a weed in the back of your mind, even though I’ve been trying to fight it”. He’s in the early stages of dating someone new, and “you can tell the conversation is already on the horizon. ‘Are you saving for a deposit? Are you looking to buy?’”
He has good reason to fight the urge: he saw how the pressure to buy a house affected his last relationship and he’s loth to let it damage another. He’d been with his girlfriend for nine years and they were both earning £40k-£50k a year, which in London – where the average house price hovers around the half a million mark – meant that if they wanted to own, they had to save as much as they possibly could. “Our relationship was so built around these goals for the future that we’d stopped going out much, or doing date nights or anything like that – if I brought it up, she’d say we needed to prioritise saving. But it meant I felt undervalued in the here and now,” he says.
Susanna Abse, a couples therapist and author of Tell Me the Truth About Love, says the sheer cost of buying property these days has made it “as big a commitment moment in a relationship as marriage”. So while the housing crisis may speed up some couples’ decision to rent together, the process of buying could put untenable pressure on a relationship, as Sam experienced. “It stirs up further anxieties for couples deciding whether to throw their lot in together,” Abse says.
After the breakup, Sam had to pay about £2,000 to break their tenancy agreement, and more on a new rental deposit and furniture. His savings were “eviscerated”. “You have this realisation that you’re no longer part of a two-person team,” he says now. “You’re on your own, and nothing’s affordable.” The change in his housing situation “doesn’t have the same weight as the breakup, but it did compound the grief of the relationship ending. You’re in a flatshare, and it feels as if you’ve moved backwards in your life by 10 years. I had therapy after the breakup, and my therapist had to say to me a couple of times, ‘You have to forgive yourself for this housing stuff. It’s out of your control.’”
Coupledom has always, to an extent, represented security and stability, but the housing crisis has pushed that to the extreme, making it difficult to take decisions about staying or leaving a relationship uncoloured by financial realities. When I mention to friends the prospect of a “Jane Austen-style, housing-based marriage market”, they laugh, then grow more thoughtful. “I mean, whenever we have an argument, I think, ‘Would I want to have to sell up and find somewhere to live?’ The answer’s no,” says one. Another puts it bluntly: “My rent would double if we broke up.” A third laughs: “I’m never breaking up with him – we…”
Denial of responsibility! VigourTimes is an automatic aggregator of Global media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.
