​​Is it too late to save the UK housing market and will the bubble burst?

There was a lot going on for young people in that seaside town in summer and we were determined to be a part of it.

The sun always seemed to be out at `the Port’; in cafes it was posh to ask for coffee rather than tea over which we would decide which entertainment establishment would give us the most fun for the evening.

Life then seemed so uncomplicated. Maybe had we known then how difficult and even dangerous it would become in the UK in general we would have emigrated. I had family members and friends who did just that. I was too much of a home-bird (my late mother’s description of me) for that and anyway I wanted to be a journalist, not in some land I didn’t know but in a place I believed had big potential.

The IRA were kicking up around Nrn Irn then but sure hadn’t they always been there in the background? Of more concern to people was the likelihood of being able to get a newly built council house. They were few and far between but hope reigned and slowly the dream was realised for many families.

A headline in the News Letter last week stood out: Over 700 homes for city’s Titanic Quarter. In the same week was another in an English newspaper: Britain needs to build an extra 250,000 houses just for migrants. It’s hard to believe that 606,000 migrants came to the UK last year. It just goes to prove that everyone wants, even needs, a front door of their own.

All of this is happening in an era of crippling bills for gas and electricity, high unemployment and an NHS which teeters on the brink. Private health insurance is rapidly becoming a necessity. Meanwhile politicians advise us to live within our means with Education Secretary Gillian Keegan urging the people `to show restraint’. I suppose someone living on a politician’s pay will find that easy enough.

And then I wonder how today’s young see all this. Walk any beach of a morning when the tide’s out and you will see what the night-time visitors have left behind – used vapes, empty alcohol bottles, clothes of all descriptions, half eaten carry-outs, shoes even barbeque equipment. Have we lost the art of thrift or is all this down to a younger generation which imagines thrift is only for old people.

What happens when they grow older, set up home with someone, or maybe marry with a view to buying a home? How different the housing market is now. I knew nothing about mortgages whilst

skipping freely around Portrush with friends all those years ago. In those early working years it was 30 shillings a week rent or a spartan flat, about one third of what I earned.

But life never stands still and soon I was married, living in a newly built home with a mortgage which Himself paid. Life never seemed to slow down then. Houses got more expensive by the year and mortgages almost prohibitive.

So is it any different now? Ben Marlow, writing in the Daily Telegraph this week says `it’s too late to save the UK’s housing market. Many people will be left in negative equity and the property price bubble will burst’. He suggest it’s the strongest hint yet from the Bank of England of a further interest rate rise and further rises cannot be ruled out’.

Life doesn’t change much after all.