I recently needed to consult The Spectator for 1966. As always, I got distracted by a story other than the one I was looking for.
There had been a press hoo-ha over the fact that the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea had recently granted a mortgage in the princely sum of £20,000 to one Nigel Lawson. Yes, that one, Chancellor of the Exchequer, father of Nigella, but then recently appointed editor of the magazine.
As a contribution to the discussion the Building Societies Association pointed out that they were doing a very good job. In 1965 their members had lent about £1billion to about 1/2 million homebuyers. Average £2,000!
Yes, I know. I too can remember when you could do a show in the West End, dine at the finest restaurant, decent bottle of wine, taxi home & still have change from half-a-crown.
But 1966 was the year I graduated & the comparison I find most intriguing is with salaries. It had just become possible for a good honours graduate to earn a starting salary of £1,030 a year as a teacher- the magic 1k ceiling had been smashed. So the average mortgage was just 2x that salary
Of course few new graduates could aspire to that. For one thing no building society would grant you a mortgage unless you had demonstrated financial stability by saving with them for some time, & you would also need a hefty deposit of 25%
Dont know how house prices compare with starting salaries for teachers now, & I sympathise with those who cant get on the property ladder. But I have never myself thought that high levels of owner occupation are a Good Thing. Not so much a property owning democracy, more the mark of a peasant society, each family tied to its own little piece of land, with a mortgage the equivalent of the rapacious landowner who owns the real power
