It’s stunning how many people seem to forget that there are other countries on the planet that use dollars and weren’t involved in Vietnam. No, I’m not making an assumption. The person who posted this is Canadian.
Y’all really need to take a step back and reflect a little bit.
My flat cost £43k in the early 90s, nearly three times my annual income at the time, and all my savings went on the deposit. I had previously lived in a shared house, the only way I could afford to save anything.
More nostalgia… Looking for a 1br flat to rent in 1980s Wellington (NZ) was a trip. Demand far, far outstripped supply. Among the gems offered to me for top rental (can’t remember how much, but it was crazily high), was a place that stank of damp and had rat-holes chewed in the bathroom wall - which was just soggy softboard against a dirt bank. There were three couples viewing at the same time. Another place I was told was fresh to the market, no-one else had seen it yet. The stove had been dismantled and the toilet was piled high with human shit. When I shouted at the agent she said, You don’t want it then?" and hung up.
I eventually lucked in with a “granny flat” whose owners, an adorable elderly Polish couple, lived upstairs.
When my parents bought in the UK in the early 80s, the average family house was £20k. But mortgage rates at the time were ~20%, meaning you had to pay £4k per year just to cover the interest alone, and the average salary was below £6k.
Yes, interest came back down after a few years, but a lot of people learned about Negative Equity during those years.
You should do an AMA on life back then
Way to make me feel like a bloody dinosaur!! 😂
I dont know how things are in new zealand these days but in a medium city in canada a house or condo costs at least 10 times the average annual income and closer to 20-25 times a minimum wage income. So things may not have been as easy for you as the post makes it seem but they’re a hell of a lot harder for a lot of people now.
Dang so it sounds like new Zealand has had a bit of a time with housing for a while then huh? I’ve heard a lot about it recently but just assumed it was a relatively new probably (post 2000-ish)
Wellington has had a heated property market longer than most places - it’s hilly for a start, so can’t just sprawl like Auckland, and it’s the capital, so a lot of well-heeled bureaucrats who don’t want to commute from the hinterlands. I don’t live there any more, so I don’t know what the rental market is like now.
Yes we’ve been through multiple housing crises although it’s gotten truly ridiculous in the last couple decades.
The crowning achievement of the first labour government when they were elected in 1935 was to create a massive state house building programme due to the huge shortages and miserable state of the stock at the time. This continued until the 1980s when we went full neoliberal, privatised everything and sold off most of the state houses and private landlords and speculation now dominate.
Anything built between early 1990s and 2004ish is prone to leaks due to the deregulated building code at the time and is basically trash.
Wellington is a particularly bad case, and has always had a worse housing situation than the rest of the country (although Auckland is more expensive). Hilly topography has meant lack of space to build and lots of damp hovels that get little sun. Add in character/heritage protection that made it effectively illegal to alter or demolish the draughty and falling apart 1920s wooden villas that make up most of inner Wellington and there you go.
ahhh, didnt realize you were from the UK dont know enough to speak on it. i rescind anything i might have said
No worries - life is always a struggle for some, no matter where in the world you are.
That’s the general problem for everyone who is not from US here on Lemmy: Everybody from US assumes that everybody knows we are talking about US. I would never say that “the ideal life is being born in 1947” and I was wondering why anyone would say that. That’s right after World War 2. Must have been a crazy time.
Yeah, I was hoping I’d see less of that moving away from Reddit to a non-US site, but eh, what can you do.