Tuesday, 12 April 2011

With no apparent trace of irony...

From The Telegraph:

Inflation forces parents to increase rental prices for adult children: A quarter of parents who have adult children living at home have raised the amount they charge them in rent due to the rise in the cost of living.

According to the survey by MyVoucherCodes.co.uk*, more than 60pc of parents charge their adult children rent, with more a third of those only just starting to ask for payment because they needed further support following the recession and rising inflation.

Mark Pearson, chairman of MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, said: "Some children live with their parents well into their 20s, or even 30s. It's fair that these parents** should take money for the home they provide once their youngsters reach 18 or get a job. Charging rent or taking money for food prepares them for what they will face later on in life, when they have to run their own home."


See also: Price of gas to rise, say men who set the price of gas.

* The survey itself may or may not be a load of rubbish, that does not detract from the overall hilarity.

** The very same parents who have indirectly prevented their own children from being able to afford to move out by deliberately and maliciously pushing up the price of houses and rents.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Having maliciously pushed up the cost of housing, I am now having to subsidised said children who can no longer afford the mortgage.

D'oh

Lola said...

It's fair that these parents As I am getting very boring about - it's not 'fair', it's 'equitable'.

john b said...

The particular genius here is that, by allowing Home-Owner-Ism to ensure that relatively normal houses in the southeast now attract IHT, The Powers That Be have created an enormous constituency of people opposed to IHT - i.e. middleclass kids depending on their parents' inheritance to ever have anything.

Historically, IHT applied to the kind of Very Very Rich People who themselves inherited vast estates or made gazillions in business. Ensuring that ordinary middle-class people align themselves to the "no, inherited wealth shouldn't be taxed, because it's the only thing keeping us from the workhouse in our old age" line is a great way of aligning incentives with the elites' interest.

I'm actually in awe of that one.

Anonymous said...

Homey here. Two things that I find curious 1. PARENTS charge THEIR children to live in THEIR home, more incredulous than curious.
2. Can one be "indirectly responsible" for anything, for instance am I, because I use banks, indirectly responsible for the Global financial crash? If so , I'm awfully sorry.
Am I indirectly responsible for the immigration problem (if there is one) because my son-in-law is a second generation Arab? If so, once again, I'm awfully sorry.
Only joking and I wish you would use that phrase more often, well your posts make me laugh.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Anon, one of the Achilles' Heels of Home-Owner-Ism is that your kids can't afford to get married and have grand kids for you.

L, that seems equitable enough.

JB, all you need is a few basic lies:
1. Council Tax pays for local services.
2. Rising house prices = rising wealth
3. The UK is an overcrowded country
4. If we lose another square inch of the Hallowed Green Belt we will all starve to death

and from there on in, HO-ist propaganda more or less writes itself.

Homey, in normal circumstances, I see no harm in adult children chipping in, but the idea that parents can protect themselves from cost of living increases by passing on said increases to their children is vicious.

And yes, the baby boomers and older are completely and utterly to blame for high house prices (see lies 1. to 4. above). And I suppose that includes me, despite I have never signed a NIMBY petition or wailed about Council Tax etc.

Bayard said...

"more than 60pc of parents charge their adult children rent",

I would think it reasonable to charge a child rent if said child was taking up a room I would otherwise be letting out to a lodger, I would think it also reasonable to ask them to pay the additional Council Tax I would have to pay if otherwise I would get a discount and I think it reasonable to ask for a contribution to fuel costs, but otherwise no. Mind you I think that figure may be a load of crap.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, the 60% might well be rubbish (it could be much more or much less, we don't know) but bear in mind, most of these Homeys would rather curl up dead than take in a lodger, so notional cost is nothing.

Yes, agree on share council tax if appropriate + extra fuel costs, food, i.e. cut a long story short and charge about half of market rents (I happily paid below market rent to an aunt whose flat I was living in).

It was the thought of parents hiking rents to protect themselves from inflation at expense of their children - and the fact that the Torygraph saw this as quite normal - which sickened me.

Bayard said...

Well, they could be conflating rent with housekeeping, which would not be surprising, because to say "Parents charge live-at-home children more for food, fuel etc. because food, fuel etc is costing them more" would be a non-story.

Derek said...

One other reason to charge rent to offspring over the age of 18, is to encourage them to move out. Of course some youngsters will do this without encouragement because they want the independence or because they have to. Others find life too cushy at home and need the push.

Now I'm not saying that we should be forcing our kids out into the world penniless and starving. But if they have a source of income, part of their education shoukd definitely be the experience of fending for themselves. And if that means charging them a market level rent in order to persuade them to leave then so be it.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, fair point, I based my post on "Taking the article at face value".

D, that would be a fair point in a sane world, but the reason why young people stay at home much longer than ten or twenty years ago is because of high rents and insane house prices, which the self-same parents have done their best to cause.