If Labour get in, will house prices fall?

[DontCheetoTheCheetah]

Well will they?

House prices rose under Brown and Blair and they did nothing to control rents etc., in fact tax credits fuelled house cost inflation. Why would you think Starmer would be any different?

No, it’s about supply and demand, not who is in power.

Huh? How did you get that? Everyone has said no they won’t!

This.
The right to buy also decimated council housing.

As a previous LL I can categorically state that I would sooner Air bnb my home than long term let. We never put our rent up in 4 years, it didn’t stop the tenant from not paying and eventually trashing the place.

The lack of rentals will only change if long term investment is made and if in the short term LL’s are supported not vilified.
Trying to force second home owners to let by penalising them rather than making it an attractive proposition will not work. They’ll just sell up.

Well, I have no idea. My crystal ball is broken 🙄

I was in my very early twenties in 1989 when the last massive crash happened and 20% was wiped off regular house prices.

But there are always winners in slumps as well as losers.

Labour will not bring in rent controls.

I think people thinking Labour as going to make some socialist utopia are going to be sadly disappointed. There was some quote about how Conservatives stab you in the front but Labour stab you in the back, sums it up for me.

It would be a good thing if second home owners sell up.

You need to look who's in charge at the Bank of England not who's in Government. If they cut interest rates chances are house prices will go up as mortgages becomes more affordable. Bringing in any more rent control measures will cause even more landlords to sell up and make it even harder for renters to get anywhere to live.

Nothing much will change under Labour and they will spend the next ten years blaming the Conservatives for why nothing can be changed. Cynical me?

Not for those needing to rent.
Selling up is one of the reasons rent prices have shot up.

I was referring to second homes that are not being used for long term lets e.g. Airbnb. They don't help people wanting to rent.

No, house prices are set by the market, not by government.

Rent control, rental legislation, well, that's something else. But these still don't affect the price of property. Careless policy making will also encourage people to remove their properties from the rental market.

House prices rose stratospherically under the last Labour government and Labour didn’t care that many young adults could no longer afford to buy a home.

I was interested to read that if all prices had risen at the same rate as house prices, as of 2022 a duvet would cost £1,448, a kilo of bananas would cost nearly £10, and the average UK salary would be £96,579.

https://www.idealhome.co.uk/news/everyday-items-cost-if-matched-house-price-inflation-288496

😯. That’s shocking.

Those who think the government have no control over housing affordability are wrong. The government have a long-term plan for the building of new homes and infrastructure. They are also responsible for planning legislation.

Sorry wrong thread

House prices in the UK are only realistically going to fall (and people be able to afford them) if there is a huge house building programme.

Labour might do this - but, I fear it will take so long to ‘catch up’ with where we need to be, it wont help most young adults today.

Indeed.

I was a child at that time - but my understanding is that broadly it was seen as a good thing that prices were increasing, as everyone suddenly felt they were much wealthier.

Was there any debate at the time about the eventual issue of affordability? I’m not sure any government is able to look beyond their 5 year term tbh.

We’re short of a few million homes. This is due to post war, restrictive planning laws (1947, Labour government) plus other factors such as: family break ups, amazingly high immigration, incentives for the elderly to remain in large houses (e.g subsidised fuel bills), landbanking by the main housebuilders.

Re rent controls - the Scottish situation tells us what will happen here. It won’t help, likely to make the situation worse.

The incoming Labour government have talked about ditching the Rwanda scheme. Their solution to ‘stop the boats’ is to increase safe legal routes into the UK. My prediction is that they will enter into a European pact to take a proportion of illegals coming into Greece and Germany, for example. They have not said anything about stemmings the 100s of 1000s coming in via student visa (and their families) as far as I’m aware.

Obviously, we need to be welcoming and kind, but the sheers maths of the situation is not good.

I think we will see a resurgence of houses being divided into smaller units, more HMOs, higher house prices, increased rents. One thing that is worrying me is this scheme https://www.serco.com/uk/sites/serco-aasc/landlords because, if I were a landlord, why would I rent to locals who may or may not pay the rent (and whom I can’t evict) when I could sign up for 5 years’ guaranteed rent, maintenance and guaranteed vacating of property at the end of the term? This scheme, if it were to expand, would seriously reduce rental stock for people who already live here.

Labour did it last time and turned much of the south of England into a concrete jungle of new build houses that were and still are sold for £500k+!

Building more houses won't fix the problem. Encouraging businesses into areas outside of the south east and spreading the housing crisis round the country and out of (not just south east) cities will.

We aren't short of homes, what we are full of is single people buying up family sized homes as sole occupants. You can't really legislate against that because people will buy what they like and what they can afford, but the housing stock is there it's just got issues with occupancy.

We have reached the point of no return. We’d need to build 350k houses a year for at least a decade. We struggle to build 100k houses and that’s in a good year. We lack the infrastructure, voting power and willpower to ever build enough houses.

How many young people will never move out of the family home or start families. How many families in bedsits. Shocking. There is literally no hope. What will see is a two tier society developing divided by the haves and have nots. Perhaps, 10 years from now, encampments in public spaces.

But we don't need that many houses. Once the boomer generation are gone our population levels decline rapidly. So what we are at risk of doing is building excessively, losing our green spaces and farm land then will be in a situation of having too much housing stock.

I expect house prices to stagnate in nominal terms as they are now so unaffordable that the ‘housing ladder’ has gone. Maybe in 10 years, when baby boomers start dying/moving into care homes there may be a glut of family homes becoming available.

Otherwise they’ll stay pretty constant in nominal terms, but fall in real terms after adjusting for inflation.

The stats don’t back you up there. Young, single people generally can’t buy.