to think we need to leave the EU or start concreting over the countryside

[InnTheJungle]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32816454

300,000 more Eastern Europeans than last year. Every prospect of that continuing.

Where are they going to live? We aren't building any more housing.

A small flat in butt-of-jokes Peckham is over half a million quid now. www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-34291575.html

Baby boomer NIMBYs object to any building in the countryside.

Pouring more and more people into the same number of houses - it's a massive fuck-up.

Given that I don't see the NIMBYs dying any time soon, it's time to leave the EU, surely?

I certainly don't want the countryside built on - the property developers love the countryside to build expensive 5 bed executive houses that go for a fortune, these sites are easy and cheap to develop, these companies pay no regard to the communities that they are seeking to build on, a village my parents live in took 6 hundred years to grow, the property developers are seeking to build the same again all around the village - such a dramatic change is knocking down a row of semis on your housing estate in suburbia and putting 5 massive tower blocks of flats - right next door to you.

And they aren't building cheap - there'll be 700 houses going for £400k each - tidy profit.

Immigration is a different argument - they aren't trying to build houses to house immigrants - they don't provide the profit.

museum I said earlier in the thread that we needed some level of immigration to support our ageing population, no reference to keeping anyone out. We need more housing is my point. Where can you buy a house for less than 50k? Genuinely interested, they start at pretty much 200k round here and I'm not in the SE.

yes quite maddening, it isn't high end housing that's needed.

Yes, though with housing it depends on regional demographics and typical housing profile of the residents as to the actual housing impact. It may not be one-for-one alike with non-immigrants, or euth emigrants.

There isn't much research on this and what is there is mixed in its findings.

There's a House of Lords report that says that the majority of recent immigrants live in private rentals, and private rents were relatively unaffected as some crowded into existing properties, and others rent poor quality places 'shunned' by locals. (NB - the report is 7 years old).

The report did say that there would be a long term impact of net migration on house prices - around 13% higher over 20 years than with zero net migration.

however a Cambridge Uni report (more recent) looked at a more regional/local level found that immigration could actually reduce house prices.

It's interesting stuff.

I can find nearly 200 houses for £50k or less within 15 miles of Manchester.

I can't be arsed to address the OPs post but thought I'd explain how it happens in switzerland.

You, as an EU citizen, have the right to go there and reside in Switzerland for 90 days without exercising any treaty rights. After that you need to have found work/started a course/prove you're self sufficient. They issue permits, with limits and constraints. IIRC for the first two years your permit is tied to your employer (and they have to sponsor you to get it), for the rest of the 5 year B permit you can work elsewhere. After that you can apply for a C permit that has a longer duration. Citizenship is very very very expensive.

If you're a student you only get an L permit which doesn't allow you to work much and you usually have to sign some papers that say you won't try and stay beyond your course. I.e. Find work/steal jobs from the swiss.

Where are they going to live? We aren't building any more housing.

did God tell us to have insane planning restrictions and not build more housing?

Immigration has exposed how shitty our housing system is. long before this wave of immigrants a huge portion of the population needed help meeting rent.

Here's a good article about the housing crisis and causes in the UK

nimbyism, planning permission, not enough building... makes sense. it's not the immigration, it's the fact that we can't adjust.

And why should we change our way of life ?

do you want a pension?

Jassy the lower prices though presumably would be in areas with high levels of HMOs.

Also immigrants don't want to live in shared houses forever, this is a short term point (although obviously some will go back longer term) Like everyone else they have a family and therefore need a family home sometime in the future.

Tobysmum, the Cambridge report is interesting and worth a read. Here's a link.

It's an impact seen related to low-paid immigrants, according to the report. That said, other reports disagree with this one.

I would say:
It relates to data from 1990-2009, most of this time frame was pre housing crisis

It basically says that areas with high levels of immigrants living leads to higher earning people moving out. Immigration causes low wages to fall, so this will reduce the amount of money available to pay in rent. OK I can accept that but prices will presumably go up in the areas that the higher earners move to so it doesnt lead to falls overall.

There are assumptions about the elasticity of supply of housing. The big issue that we have at the present time is that the supply is pretty inelastic. So it doesn't grow with demand, even more so at the bottom of the market because there is less profit to be made.

I think there are 2 issue with housing 1. in crowded areas people are hell bent on keeping terraces and semis which are often badly converted into 2 flats or more by landlords out of a quick quid, rather than decent, non "luxury" flats built.

1. Property that get built, in particular in London but also most big cities, is being used to park money and rarely occupied. There's countless stories of entire blocks being advertised in Asia only. Bojo is loving it and trying to bring even more foreign money in

If the Institute of Directors is warning against leaving the EU, and the directors lead industry, that ought to tell us something!

Tobys - all I said was that is was an interesting read/food for thought in terms of challenging assumptions - as is the HoL report which has significantly different findings.