To think rents are going up because of insane levels of demand and not billionaires buying all the houses?

[BlueJuniper94]

Don't get me wrong, I don't like the billionaires, and I don't like them owning all the houses. But the main reason rents are rising like this is because we simply have too many people looking for housing than we have (or are building) houses for.

Your nasty ageism is not a good look.

Rent is down to supply and demand and the recent policies have dropped supply so price will go up.

8 million new people in the country since 2010 vs 1.7 million new homes in a similar timeframe.

I don’t see how the BTL boom in the nineties and noughties has caused a shortage in rental properties now? What’s your reasoning? Surely it means there are more rentals?

I agree. That would free up essential housing.

is said on a thread yesterday, schools in london are closing due to 15 % less children living in london. In my old home town there is uproar when new developments are put to planning but these are needed. Most eventually get through.

I can't really understand why we have massive mansions empty and not being bought to convert to small housing estates. I guess it's a case of nimby

Not unreasonable it's supply and demand. I assume billionaires buy them to rent them out anyway seeing as one cannot live in twenty homes at once.
And the price they could rent then for would depend on supply and demand

I know plenty of older people (70s and 80s) living very happily in flats that they downsized to from big houses with gardens.

It means they can stay living in their own home for longer rather than moving to a care home.

Not everyone cares about a garden, although I am sure some do. But bungalows or small houses with gardens exist.

When we bought a family home we decided to keep our old flat and rent it out.
We had a tenant for a long time but he decided to move out last year. We advertised it and were completely overwhelmed with interest. We took the ad down after 1 day. We had people writing us essays setting out their reasons why we should choose them. There was a real desperation from lots of them. I had no idea it was so bad before that.

Too many homes are underoccupied . In boomers days they lived in multi generational homes and stayed at home unito they got married.

Yes, maybe we could restrict homes to newly married couples and the rest can continue to live with their parents? 😂

I was wondering the other day how much impact the rising student population has on this because it means that essentially students have 2 homes - you need lots of flats in all the cities to cope with the temporary student population?

I still however also think that it was sellin off council homes that started the process - because there is now no stabilising effect in of decent low rent homes - there are so few social houses as a share of the housing stock compared to the 1970s

It’s both.

The housing crisis is caused by issues with both the supply and demand sides of the equation. Supply because as a country we haven’t built anything like enough homes, and particularly starter homes, since the 90s. And demand because 25 years of uncontrolled mass immigration has massively increased demand for the stock of housing we do have.

The problem with fixing this situation is that politicians refuse to tackle both sides of it. The right don’t want to build more houses, because that pisses off their voters, who are mostly older NIMBYs. And the left don’t want to seriously tackle immigration because they think it’s racist and it will piss off their voters who are mostly young & ‘woke’ or ethnic minorities.

And selling off social housing.

Many of your ‘greedy’ landlords have or are in the process of selling up due to the extreme leftists insane tax regime.

Why can’t any of you understand that when you reduce supply it becomes more expensive? And that when you support uncontrolled migration all these people need somewhere to live?

And why the hate towards billionaires?

Yeah but there were net migration of half a million people to the uk in 2024, you can’t have those year on year increases and not expect to face housing shortages. The idea that the actual number of people and the actual number of housing has no bearing in price is a bit mad really.

Yep some basic economics would help, supply, demand price. Look at the policies decreasing supply and increasing demand.

Partly supply and demand, partly house prices being allowed to soar for decades, partly housing benefits propping up what is actually affordable.
The housing stock we have isn't used efficiently, and there is too much opposition to building more. Disincentivise empty rooms and build high quality medium density housing. And scrap rtb entirely, immediately.

Building more houses isn’t the answer in itself because builders want to maximise profit and that doesn’t happen if there is a glut of new homes

round here they build big homes that most families can’t afford meaning locals are trapped on sofas and a lot of richer people are moving here ; and a much smaller pool of cheaper ( social ) homes because that’s all the social can afford

we need to be building social homes - and that really gets the nimby going - but without a big pool of social homes the problem will remain

There are whole blocks of luxury flats in London standing empty because they were bought by investors.

Did you not see the migration figures released this week? 750,000 in just one year. Only a tiny number of these are illegal migrants ie in hotels or HMOs. The rest have to live somewhere and they are in existing housing stock.

I’m in London, so might not be representative for the rest of the country. There are so many new flats on airb&b. There is a new development near me and I was shocked how many are rented out on a short term basis, it must make the landlord more money. Where I used to live (central, by the river), the flats were completely empty at the weekends as they were mostly filled with weekday workers. I know a few people renting near me and there seems to be a lot of availability, but the cheaper properties get snapped up quickly. There doesn’t seem to be a lack of properties, but a lack of affordable ones.

In pretty rural areas it’s second homes and holiday lets. Most villages locally have about half the smaller properties as holiday lets of second homes. There are whole rows of terraced cottages in the market towns and now it’s spreading to 1970s bungalow estates.
When a smaller bungalow or house on a nice plot with a garage and decent garden sells locally the new owners always make it bigger so it’s no longer suitable to downsize to.
The new housing estates don’t build bungalows and if they do they’re not on decent plots with garages, gardens and utility rooms.
I live in an area with very little immigration and many people can’t get an NHS dentist, doctors appointments are hard to come by and rentals almost impossible. There is social housing being built but it’s being built by councils 50 miles away to move people into. That shouldn’t be allowed. Social housing should be built for the local families as there are many who need housing.
Theres also many empty shops in the market towns, due to high rents, and many villages have an empty pub because the council don’t like them being converted to housing.

This, there was a new build of about 280 houses all sold. I wonder what do all these people do to afford them and when any go up for sale they are snapped up. Maybe it's people moving out from London.

Immigration is too high, we have around 5 houses to rent here, some months there is nothing. We can’t house indefinite numbers of people.

The mortgages are much higher, and the cost needs to be passed on.

Its only going to get worse.

If demand wasn't so high then buy to let landlords wouldn't have such an incentive to buy properties.

I think during the last year of conservative government, migration levels were over a million and net migration was about three quarters of a million. Whether houses and flats are owned or rented, it's irrelevant...they are still occupied. Increasing the population by hundreds of thousands each year is a challenge.