Why have people tolerated the housing catastrophe of the last 30 years

[nomemono]

I know it has been good for those geared up or alt the top of the ladder in the mid 90s, and to a declining degree, most years since then, but really, how has this been allowed to happen. Just as one illustration, houses in the frankly crime ridden North London estate I grew up now cost 4 times their real, inflation adjusted, 1997 price. £420,000 to live in one of the worst areas of London, in an old, poorly insulated house. Oxford, affordable when I was a student, now almost worse than London. Cambridge, Brighton, anywhere well linked and with good transport links or local jobs, the same. People casually posting on this website about having £900k to spend on a house. Single people shafted, ditto those without inheritances. How has it come to this?

A lot of the answers you give are exactly the reason we are in this mess. Eg. Borrowing more than 3x income- the inconvenient truth is that the U.K. needs a housing crash among other things but people only want to tinker around the edges.

I'd agree up to a point, in as far as a correction is long overdue. But politicians (of every party) won't or can't afford to allow it to happen, mainly because the way we count success and store wealth is via property. No politician who wants to be re-elected is ever going to vote to crash the property escalator.

Every government needs to encourage people to take a gamble that they have an idea which might make money. That is why I took the skid of going self-employed in 1990. I knew I had a client, who wanted to work with me for a while longer, but didn't want the whole team. I jumped, and the team got redundancy notices over a Bank Holiday weekend six weeks later. Because most of them were brilliant and hugely talented at design and graphics, they were mostly in new jobs a few weeks later. So I had an exploded network that kept on offering me work. I was hugely lucky with the timing.

Successive governments have proved they hate small businesses. All the incentives are aimed at bigger ones. Rishi excluded 3 million freelancers and self employed from covid support schemes whilst holiday let landlords were given £28k per letting unit in some areas! Shows where their priorities lay!

Some cancers & chronic conditions can be genetic, should people not reproduce?

Wrong thread!

And people didn’t necessarily have any family anywhere near to help. My DM certainly never did. She didn’t go back to work until I was 14, and considered mature enough to be responsible for siblings who were 4 and 6 years younger after school. This was in the 60s.

They wouldn't be worth building at these prices, not where I live anyway where a terraced house in an average area costs £600k

I wonder what would be the implications of crashing the housing market. Longer term, like. And how could you engineer a drop in prices anyway?

It doesn't cost 600k to build a 2 bedroom house. Wakeup.

I mean it happened in the 90’s and it was terrible for some people. But you could argue that the mess we are in now is WAY worse. But on the flip side, what are the
implications of not doing something - people are so skint and a lot of that is because of housing costs.

if you structure society on the basis that housing is a human right and that a prosperous society houses it’s population in decent secure affordable housing- it’s for the good of all society.

We don’t have that view in the U.K. at all and it is, of course, in ideology traceable back to Thatcher who created the mess we are in now ultimately.

It all depends on what kind of society we want doesn’t it?

That is absolutely nonsense. Savings were disregarded on tax credits... Tax credits lifted millions out of poverty, it did not stop people buying homes or anything of the sort.

I wonder what would be the implications of crashing the housing market. Longer term, like. And how could you engineer a drop in prices anyway?

People not being able to pay mortgages - so usually happens in recession - job loses and/or when have higher interest rates - so lose houses and often got left with debt as well - at least in recent past.

Thing is though more people outright own their houses now - aging population - and there's less owed in mortages that there are - again aging population - more renters due to high house prices. Even the mortage markets changed more people have fixed mortages than in past - so higher interest rates take longer to have effect than in past.

Long term aging population and increased deaths is supposed to lead to a 1-2% drop in prices as demand each year - but if immigration high that won't happen as more people will need housing. Also big house building program could also affect prices - supply increases but no one managed that in decades.

Apparently at moment UK housing market seeing a drop though it's expected to be brief - mostly stamp duty related. So maybe tax rules.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/06/18/house-prices-fall-sharpest-pace-four-years-stamp-duty-raid/

Though in my area they are rising.

Nearly 15 million increase in Uk population since1979. We could never build enough to deal with that level of increase. Add in increased life expectancy, smaller families, dual income households.

Thing is though more people outright own their houses now - aging population - and there's less owed in mortages that there are - again aging population - more renters due to high house prices.

thanks- so could it be something of a ‘soft landing’ with fewer people in real home-losing trouble and more people having a bit less to pass down to their inheritors? Or is it never going to be a ‘soft landing’?

The ideal would be a slow steady and consistant slump down in prices usually it's more slumps and highs due to wider economy impacts.

People owning more of housing stock outright just means it's out of circulation till they die - it only really helps them if they do mortgage release schemes which can trap them in properteis or they downsize or move to cheaper areas. So theoretically increasing numbers shouldn't care if their house price go down - but people aren't always rational and media seems to get excited when the prices go down.

It only adds to supply if there are fewer overall households - so theory is as baby boomer start to die there will be more housing stock so decrease in demand but natural population is supposed to have just reach tipping point of more dying that being born - but seperation of households and immigration means the demand isn't lessening - plus is housing stock where people need it.

There are lots of signs that taxing assets might start to happen more - inhertiance tax - which will likely mean less cash for younger generations to get on housing ladder or property taxes like in USA where one yearly tax is based on what the property is valued at.

Untill we do a big building program as we did in the past - or number of hosueholds declines unlikely to be big changes. Currently there something like over 164,000 children living in temporary accommodation with their families in UK at the moment. So lots of pent up demand - even if there were suddenly lots of affordable housing.

Japan interesting - as they have many empty houses due to slow population decline - however they aren't desirable to inherit.

They need a lot of money to bring up to modern codes - due to eathquakes - it's really expensive to get rid of rubbish - inhertiance taxes/laws don't help and many houses are in wrong locations. Most house over 30 years don't hold value though the land does - ( USA is similar many older homes don't hold value due to their building styles and natural hazards like earthquakes and code changes).

The decline in numbers going to University may start to release some homes in Uni cities especially with the almost never ending building/conversion of purpose built student accommodation. We may start to see some of the larger previously family homes coming back into residential use.

@Badbadbunny we are seeing this in Bath- masses of student billets being built means that I’ve noticed far more 3 and 4 bed houses ( of varying standard to be fair) coming on the market in Oldfield park - which is actually a pretty nice and convenient area for town

That's a good point about uni locations.

DD1 in private new student block in her uni town as are many of her peers in their second and third uni years so it must be freeing up some family homes.

Just got to hope the holiday letters don't snap them up as they'll be ideal and set up for holiday lets, i.e. large communal areas, lots of bedrooms, etc. Ironically, we stayed in such a place in Bath a couple of years ago that had previously been a multi-occupancy student let but converted into a holiday let. We got talking to the neighbours who had originally been happy to see the back of students (parties, over grown garden etc), but now they get stag and hen groups instead who they say are worse! It was a six bedroom semi (double story side extension for extra bedrooms and rear extension for larger communal living/kitchen area) with the front room also converted to a double bedroom.

@Badbadbunnywas this in newbridge? We nearly rented a house like this when we came back from Copenhagen - it was just at the end of 2nd lockdown and the owner was restricted for using it for this purpose- in the end we didn’t let it because we just had a gut feeling that at the end of the year she would want to revert to this - more money!!

Baby boomers may not have bought at those prices but they're certainly selling at them.

Or their heirs are. Always assuming the proceeds haven’t vanished in care home fees.

No but a small building plot in my village is £200k.

There's more profit in putting 4 beds on it than 2.