The chair of NatWest has claimed it is not “that difficult” to get on the property ladder, despite the number of first-time buyers with a mortgage falling to the lowest level in a decade.
“I don’t think it is that difficult at the moment,” Sir Howard Davies told the BBC.
Pressed about this assertion, he added: “You have to save, and that is the way it always used to be.”
His comments to Radio 4’s Today programme follow a report published earlier this week by Yorkshire Building Society, which found that the number of first-time buyers who bought a home with a mortgage fell to the lowest level in a decade in 2023.
According to Company Checker, Sir Howard Davies is worth an estimated $5 Million USD in the last financial year, which included residuals made through his previous academic publications.
The Economic Research Institute has also claimed that Sir Howard Davies receive an annual salary of £763,000 in total compensation as Non-Executive Director and Chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, with Natwest a subsidiary of the overall company structure
Yeah his opinion on normal people trying to first time buy a house is irrelevant. Entirely out of touch from the real world
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Or even £300,000 😉
People are obviously eating too much avocado on toast.
I mean… He’s right in the sense that you have to save and it’s always been like that. But in all other senses he’s a fucking moron.
“Just walk in with a big briefcase full of cash and sign some papers, what’s so complicated?”
I guess, personally, I just feel like a lot of these incredibly rich and obviously out of touch old men are just totally irrelevant to normal daily life for most people. It’s pointless to publish news like this, because it’s just obviously meant to rile people up in some vague way and I guess somehow that generates money for the Guardian?
I just don’t understand why we have to hear about what these irrelevant, hopefully soon-departed losers think. Who cares?
Because these are the people who rule over us. With all the information in the world at their fingertips, they remain willfully ignorant. Apparently unable to recall what they pay their cleaners or work out what annual salary the minimum wage equates to.
How much, we asked our group, would it take to put someone in the top 10% of earners? They put the figure at £162,000. In fact, in 2007 it was around £39,825, the point at which the top tax band began. Our group found it hard to believe that nine-tenths of the UK’s 32m taxpayers earned less than that. As for the poverty threshold, our lawyers and bankers fixed it at £22,000. But that sum was just under median earnings, which meant they regarded ordinary wages as poverty pay.
Mistakes such as these should disqualify the wealthy from pontificating about taxation or redistribution. And yet City views carry great weight with ministers and politicians of all parties.
Neither the Guardian nor Polly Toynbee are agitating for revolution, of course. They cling to the belief that information will solve everything. They’re liberals, it’s what they do.
But they’re right, we should be angry. And the abject ignorance of the very wealthy should be highlighted at every opportunity. These are not credible people and their lack of credibility matters.
Well yes, but also no.
The homes on the market are all being sold, and the people that buy them can afford them. The price of houses is exactly what the market can bear.
There’s just not enough homes for all the people that can’t afford the current ones. And he can’t see those because they’re not his customers.
Of course it’s not difficult. Just have money. Easy!
He’s up for verbal kicking!
Not just verbal.
I don’t understand how anyone is expected to be able to buy a home on the wages that are now commonplace.
I work in a highly skilled technical job and I don’t earn enough money to buy a house, I can afford the mortgage repayments but I can’t figure out a way that I would be expected to come up with the required deposit. The only reason I do have a house is because the deposit was paid for by my parents. But that’s not an option for a lot of people.
So basically unless you’re lucky or have rich family members I don’t understand what you’re expected to do. Everyone else on the street is like 80 and bought the houses decades ago.
I just don’t understand what poor people are always complaining about.
– Rich person
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The chair of NatWest has claimed it is not “that difficult” to get on the property ladder, despite the number of first-time buyers with a mortgage falling to the lowest level in a decade.
His comments to Radio 4’s Today programme follow a report published earlier this week by Yorkshire Building Society, which found that the number of first-time buyers who bought a home with a mortgage fell to the lowest level in a decade in 2023.
On Friday, the lender Halifax recorded the third monthly rise in house prices in a row in December, with the typical home costing £287,105.
“Telling first-time buyers it’s not that difficult to get on the ladder is quite simply a slap in the face to people struggling to make ends meet, never mind save for a deposit on a mortgage.”
“Interest rates have increased but house prices have yet to correct, meaning we still need to save for a huge deposit, but also would need a high income to afford monthly mortgage repayments.”
Last year, he weathered calls for his resignation after initially backing Alison Rose in the row over a media leak pertaining to the closure of the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage’s accounts with the NatWest subsidiary Coutts.
The original article contains 514 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 60%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Well, to be fair, the house price to income ratio today is the lowest since 2009. So buying today is much easier than any time before since the last 14 years.
