Dear LPG,  

I suppose that I am pretty average for my age.  I have done all the average things as I travelled through life and enjoyed all those important family occasions that result from getting past each one.  I do enjoy a good family get-together, and while the birthday and Christmas parties always result in an excuse, I have a fondness when I remember the milestone ones, the ones that my particular faction of the family have provoked.   I remember the weddings of my siblings and my own with a lot of fondness.  I am proud to be able to have been the mother of the bride or groom three times and, this means that there have been the usual family milestone events to attend.  I can boast three weddings, nine christenings (or other ‘baby head wetting’ events) but there have also been a few memorable housewarmings. 

It was these that got me thinking recently when I came across a bit of related information one day not so long ago.  Some government statistics I found online recently inform that the age of the average UK first-time house buyer is rising.   The truth is that it is getting harder and harder to be a young first-time house buyer these days.  I do not doubt that many readers will have grandchildren trying their best to get on the first rung of that particular ladder.   

It is ironic that when we pensioners were in our early twenties, we also thought the whole house owner thing a big undertaking, but it was one that was a bit more attainable. While the internet and AI is not 100% accurate, the internet offered some statistics which show how, over the past 50 years, the average age of a first-time house buyer has risen.  The figures show that our little ones now need to be about 32 years old, on average about 10 years older than the first-time home buyer of 50 years ago, before they can take that first walk over their own threshold and become sovereign of their own bit of terra firma.   No doubt the fact that they get married or partnered up much later, compounded with the cost of acquiring your own front door key, has a lot to do with it. 

The other interesting statistic I found was about how often we move.  When my other half and I moved into our first house, I saw it as the place that I would always be, while each of my children have moved a couple of times since their first house purchase.  They all live miles away now and I have more than once been shown around one of their homes and introduced to a room which, in their minds, would eventually become the granny-flat. 

That thought worries me somewhat, because I see my home as my independence and have always assumed that it will be my address until I pop my clogs.   Perhaps the thought of moving out bothers me so much because I have been living there for over 40 years and it’s the one place where I can do what I want.  There is also the history that those walls and I share.  Just being there often brings back memories of my children when they were much younger and of the many other things that happened there. 

I suspect that the younger people of today will not connect with their homes in the same way because many of their memories will have occurred in rooms and houses that they are more likely to have sold on by the time they have the time to reminisce. 

I still live quite locally to the house that my parents used to live in when I was young, and when I go past it there is that nostalgic feeling that will never go away.  If I am being driven, it is a fleeting memory but sometimes I have occasion to walk past and, while the colour of the front door has changed, looking at the path, fence and hedge has a more lingering effect on me.   

Times change though, and perhaps, when they get older, our younger generations will not have the same difficulty that I know I will if they ever get to a point where they have to say goodbye to their bricks and mortar.  

KF, Lee