Daily Mail: Is Britain's property bubble about to burst?

[FabulousSophie]

I was reading this article in the Daily Mail today, and was particularly interested to see there is now a campaign group called Priced Out, which is campaigning for affordable house prices. I googled them and went to their website, and signed their petition.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6064685/Fears-grow-house-prices-fall-fastest-rate-financial-crisis.html

Obviously they’re not which is my point . What I am saying is that market forces will mean higher paid people will buy these houses, especially if they are more affordable. So how is this helping lower paid people

And the more competition there is the higher the price

Your posts read as if you think that decent housing is a luxury. It isn't - it's a basic necessity. London is currently seeing a return to the poor living in unhealthy crowded slums, as in pre-war days, and that isn't a good thing.

A home, with enough space for the occupants and fit for human habitation, is the bare minimum that everyone in this country should be able to expect. (It doesnt have to be owned - decent social housing should be available.) We are a first world country after all.

I think massive investment in social housing would be one solution. There are large shortages in many areas of the country. Plentiful social housing will decrease the private rental demand and lead to a proportion of BTL properties coming up for sale.

Of course our government won't do it though!

I understand that’s how my post reads. I am reflecting on the current situation (which I don’t especially agree with). But I have no idea how it can be improved. Other than the solutions I initially mentioned. Unless we disrupt market forces? But as with allowing people to purchase their own council houses, this isn’t a long term solution...

Allowing people to buy council houses was actually a big part of the problem.

This isn’t about social housing. Thus is about home ownership. I agree more social housing is vital though. But if you’re a highly qualified nurse (for example) would you not want to feel toucan own your own home even in London??

But social housing is part of the housing market. The amount of social housing available has a direct impact on demand in other sectors.

If private rental demand goes down, investors will sell up and the supply of houses will increase for those who want to buy.

An economy could not survive without its service workers, so if an area became so unbalanced that it priced out all its service workers, it would need to re-adjust in order to maintain its service workers so that it kept its prosperity. Service workers would command higher wages in a very prosperous region, just like a butler to a Chines industrialist can now earn £200,000 a year.

As a potential FTB there's no way I'm going to buy until after the worst of the brexit related dust has settled.

Partly because I think it's the most likely trigger for a crash (and I don't want to be on the wrong side of that). Partly because if the fallout is as brutal as I fear, I work in an industry defined by discretionary spending and I may lose my job. Partly because in the event of a brutal fallout I'd like my assets liquid and my ability to emigrate not hindered by my financial situation.

I can only imagine that there are a fair few other people thinking along the same lines - why would you stretch yourself on a mortgage at this point in time?

Whilst I am a huge supporter of social housing I do think that most people want to own their own homes if possible. Which is good for the country in a way, as it funds retirement or care home costs etc eventually. It also means less people receive housing benefit. So is there any way of making the house market more equitable (without a crash which obviously wouldn’t help)? Or should most ftb priced out actually be aspiring to social housing?

@fabuloussophie you say an economy would need to readjust if workers are priced out. But what exactly would be forcing the economy to readjust? It certainly doesn’t happen in London at the moment. Lower paid workers have the options of mammoth commutes or awful house shares.

I imagine if there were not enough service workers, life would either become intolerable for non-service workers, who would go somewhere else, where life was better; or wages for service workers would increase to attract more. In London at the moment there is a limitless supply of poorly paid service workers, so there is no pressure to pay service workers any more.

Isn’t this partly what is driving immigration though?

We've just bought/sold. If we didn't plan to live in it until they cart us off to retirement homes we wouldn't be buying it, but as it stands it's fairly future proof in terms of location and size. We are also using equity from our current house to buy which h means that we will continue to have 8 years of mortgage payments in the bank so if we lost our income we could survive on part time jobs. The house is also sufficiently large that we could take in a lodger with little to impact on our household.

If it wasn't for these things, I wouldn't even consider moving at this time. It feels like the signs are there that we are about piss a lot of money up the wall.

I don't think having virtually the entire economy concentrated in one small space makes the country a better place. Life used to be a lot more diffused around the country, but now it seems to be London or nothing.

I agree this is one of the biggest problems. But how does it change?

I don't know. Maybe better communications and/or remote working with technology. I think the Beeching cuts didn't help. And I think the planners have degraded once vibrant towns and cities, so they have lost their appeal.

Letting 300,000 immigrants into the U.K. need to stop now in the SE our beautiful countryside is being concreted over.

The U.K. does not need any more humans