to think the reason house prices are kept dangerously high as MPs are usually landlords

[sazhamer]

I think one of the most damaging thing in the UK is that the average house is 9 times the average wage.

It seems like every mp owns many of them so have vested interests to keep them proped up.

Aibu to think they are doing this on purpose?

an essay on the pros and cons of rent control - in American, but would still apply to the UK.

steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/chap18p1.html

BTW who sold all the council houses? And who bought them?

I think essay is good but it does not mention housing benefit.
Which comes out of our taxs( or the government borrows it) and goes into the pockets of private landlords .
If we had rent control we would not need to pay out so much housing benefit .thus making becoming a land lord not such a good investment and therefore a lot more home for sale affordable prices .
I think we have a right to become homeowners but no right to become landlords.

Yep. The housing market is completely rigged. We have interest rates at a 300 year low, Help to Buy, Funding for Lending, massive amounts of QE, housing benefit subsidy to landlords, tax advantages for landlords that owner occupiers can't get etc. No free market here. It is hideously manipulated to keep supply tight and house prices high because the whole economy is now based on high house prices and getting more and more people into debt to keep the banks solvent.

Wasn't BTL the main driver of UK economic 'growth' a few years ago? I.e. that the paper gains of landlords sitting on appreciating properties was the only money being made in the UK.

That's quite grim - that the way to get wealthy is not manufacturing or creativity or invention or enterprise - but buying up houses and hanging on to them.

YANBU. One home is enough. Shouldn't be an investment but a roof over your head.

Ha ha ha ha ha!!!

I don't believe the market is rigged.
It's the usual, and very simple, market issue of supply and demand.

The population is growing faster than housing can be delivered, and there are practical reasons why sufficient housing will never be built.

Insufficient provision of anything will always result in increased prices.

That's not to say of course that governments, banks etc don't exert some influence on the market. But the underlying issue is clear.

One home is enough. Shouldn't be an investment but a roof over your head.

this

Most of the landlords in my home city are Asian, and none are MP's, so I do not agree with you at all.