7 ms·

UK survey: 40% of respondents pay more than 50% of their incomes on rent

46 points by temp 9y ago

dogma1138 9y ago
Probably even more if you count the commute cost. If you commute to London you can expect yearly ticket costs to be easily £5000 (that is if you can afford to buy a 12 month pass, if you do not you can pay as much as double, train pass loans are very common in the U.K.) for even a relatively short commute (Oxford or Luton to London for example). £5000 is 1/4-1/5th of the median salary in the U.K. If there is anything more depressing than U.K. rent it's its seasonal ticket rates: http://vt.nationalrail.co.uk/service/seasonticket/search http://vt.nationalrail.co.uk/service/seasonticket/search
- djmobley 9y ago
  Larger employers typically offer season ticket loans, repaid pre-tax through a salary sacrifice arrangement, so you can effectively discount the cost by your marginal tax rate. Higher rate (40%) tax payers therefore only pay £3,000 for a £5,000 season ticket (less if you include NI and other deductions)
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    Indeed, most employers however offer it only after 6 months of employment and you have to maintain your employment for 12 months if not, you have to repay the loan in full which often means you cannot benefit from the offset tax liability. It's also a case where those who can afford it more easily and can also afford London rent get discounts while people that earn less do not.
  - bencoder 9y ago
    I don't think those are pre-tax. They are just interest free loans. At least, in none of the companies I've worked for has it been pre-tax
  - isostatic 9y ago
    They aren't pre-tax, which is a major reason I work from home - when I took my current job I refused to work in their office as it would be £2500 a year, which means I'd have to earn about £6500 more just to pay for the commute, add the extra 2 unpaid hours a day and the commute would mean I'd want an extra £20k pre-tax (that's £100 post-tax per week for the time, or £10 an hour) My effective marginal tax rate because of this (income between £50k and £60k) is 60% -- 40% income, 2% NI, 18% reduction in child benefits. The company has to pay employer NI too. That means for every £1138 they spend on a payrise for me, I get £400. While my income is in the top 10%, our household income is pretty average for people with 2 children because my wife only works on occasional freelancing projects to keep fingers in the pie (say 10 days a year), and I work from home the majority of the time - we don't want to outsource the upbringing of children. If we do pay for child minding, it's an inlaw, which means petrol costs and a bottle of wine - which all comes out post-tax, so doubles in price compared to sending kids to a factory tax free (or "childcare").
- antouank 9y ago
  Last year I did a 1,5 hour commute to London daily. The biggest cost is not the ticket fare, but the time you waste being in a crowded train/underground for ~3 hours every day.
  - ris 9y ago
    It's all about finding a way to use that time. Podcasts?
    - antouank 9y ago
      Nah, it's not all about that. Of course I tried many ways to use that time, but after a while it's just a burden. And it's making your day more exhausting. I'm moving now to the City, I'll pay the high rent, but I'll walk/cycle to work in 5-10 mins. F* that train commute. ( and it seems like Brexit will force me to leave London for good anyway )
      - bitL 9y ago
        Yeah, tube is always full and unpleasant to travel on. If you are into music, buy UK's novation Circuit and do some song sketches while in tube, it gets you in creative mood, you forget you commute and it might raise your happiness if you find nice chords ;-) Another idea is to do some world-class MOOC or online MS while commuting (not via car ofc). Then you might land a position that would help you to escape this insanity.
        antouank 9y ago
        Yeah, you can do all that ( I'd be impressed if you actually do that on a daily basis! ). But isn't it like pretending the problem is not there? I'd say just don't do the long commute at all :) Pay the rent to be close to where you work or go live/work somewhere else, that's my solution. I'll live another year in the centre of London, and then go to an EU country that's accepting my passport.
        9y ago
denzil_correa 9y ago
I have been kind of struggling with this question lately. As a rule of thumb, what percentage of your income would/should be spend on rent? I can totally understand there are many variables but I'm assuming the cost of buying a new house could be one on that list.
- phyalow 9y ago
  1/3 max
- frede 9y ago
  From a landlord's perspective, they prefer if you do not spend more than 1/3 of your income on rent.
  - DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
    Keep it affordable for people to live in, but too expensive for the tenants to save-up to buy their own place. Devilish.
    - umanwizard 9y ago
      Renting is an ultra-competitive market -- landlords aren't personally deciding what your rent should be.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - poooogles 9y ago
      Pretty much. Hilariously the rate of house price increases in London is almost outpacing the rate I can save for a home. So even if you can save up, you still can't buy a house.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
  The rule of thumb is 1/4 of gross income before tax, 1/3rd of net income after tax - reasoning that 25% of your income is lost to taxes. Another approach is to take your salary, max out your pre-tax retirement contributions, find out what dollar amount you need to maintain your current lifestyle in non-accommodation costs, set aside at least a few hundred $ monthly buffer, then whatever's left will be your budget for housing.
ZenoArrow 9y ago
I'm currently converting a van to a campervan, in part to escape this money drain, in part to give me more freedom of where to live. It's not an option for everyone but I'm glad it's been working out so far (I should point out that wild camping is of dubious legality in many parts of the UK). An alternate option is living on a boat (narrowboat, Dutch barge, etc...) on the UK canals, which even with mooring fees can be more affordable than renting.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
  I understand that if you live the canal-boat lifestyle you also don't have to pay council tax.
  - slap 9y ago
    But you also have to move "forward" at least every 14 days if you don't want have a mooring.
    - ZenoArrow 9y ago
      To give some idea of mooring costs, the marina in my home city charges around £300 (a month, I believe, though it's not 100% clear) for mooring costs: https://bwml.co.uk/bath-marina/moorings/ https://bwml.co.uk/bath-marina/moorings/ The main challenge is getting a place, as moorings spots are fairly limited. I have heard of people making alternative arrangements. For example, paying a farmer whose land is next to a canal to moor there. Costs would most likely lower but there's also likely to be less in the way of on-land facilities.
  - notahacker 9y ago
    You do, however pay an annual boat licence fee to the Canal and River Trust comparable to the Council Tax bill for a small property
- iagovar 9y ago
  Ill do the same, but its noy legal in most municipalities in Spain to park and sleep in your ban.
namelost 9y ago
The green belts need to go. Cities should be allowed to expand outwards.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  No thanks. There's no reason cities can't expand upwards. Besides that, there's plenty of brownfield sites that could be converted to housing if the desire to do so was there. The best option in reducing prices would be to invest more heavily in transport infrastructure so that towns on the periphery of cities became more attractive to live in, and therefore develop in. Investments are being made in national rail infrastructure, but less so on the local level. It's a real shame that the UK lost so much of its railway infrastructure during the push towards automotive transportation.
- frede 9y ago
  For London it would also help to increase the density of housing. Large areas of the city are still built with Victorian houses.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
  Or upwards. London has a very low population density because of building height restrictions (now considered archaic, I understand). London has very few tall buildings and Canary Wharf is is closer to downtown Bellevue, WA than it is to Manhatten in terms of scale. Brits are somewhat opposed to "tower blocks" because they were a poorly-planned top-down social engineering experiment in the postwar years to deal with rehousing the residents of slums and other deprived areas. Modern "high-end living" flats in much taller, aesthetically pleasing, and most importantly: safer, structures are being built, but not at a sufficient pace. A reasons there hasn't been a total crash yet is because lovely, lower-density houses (think: 3 and 4 story spacious townhouses, not working-class 2-up/2-down terrace houses) are bought up for millions then internally gutted and remodelled into individual, modestly-sized flats to rent - sometimes barely larger than the size of a living room.
  - hordeallergy 9y ago
    Do you think the transport system can handle increased density of upward building? It's not really coping with current levels, and in no way pleasant.
NiklasMort 9y ago
The rent prices around the world in big cities are absolute perverse. And it will only get worse I fear. Partially due to rich foreigners and partially due to AirBNB & Co. Good example there is Prague, no normal Czech citizen can afford to live there anymore, the rent prices are ridiculous even compared to some German Cities.
- iagovar 9y ago
  It happens also in Spain. Ibiza is absolutely crazy, but also Barcelona and Madrid.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  How can it be any other way more people than ever want to live in cities and cities are Naturally constrained buy pre existing infrastructure and land area? People just need to get used to the idea that they can only afford to live in a second or third tier city.
  - NiklasMort 9y ago
    you'd be amazed how much rent prices are artificially inflated
NikolaeVarius 9y ago
Whats the breakdown between 1br/Studios and Roommate situations?
wmonk 9y ago
> Overall, 40 per cent of renters pay more than 50 per cent of their incomes on rent, the report found This feels much more telling than the title of this article.
mckoss 9y ago
Take the report with a grain of salt. It appears to be sourced by an investment firm with an interest in selling real estate securities. There are no details given about how their sample of 10,000 renters was created; the data also seems self reported by the renters, so I would have accuracy concerns. The figure seems dubious given most landlords would balk at extending a lease to a tenant who's major share of income would be going to rent (high credit risk).
- dilemma 9y ago
  As opposed to media organizations with an interest in selling capturing and selling reader attention. The implication that unbiased reporting exists is ridiculous; this isn't critical thinking.
  - haukilup 9y ago
    > As opposed to media organizations with an interest in selling capturing and selling reader attention. The implication that unbiased reporting exists is ridiculous; this isn't critical thinking. There's a jump required to get from the parents comment to yours. Readers should still take the source with a grain of salt, like most sources. It helps to consider what biases the article/report/whatever is likely to have.
nugget 9y ago
Couldn't this be a predictable result of deflation in other expense categories, i.e. as "stuff" becomes cheaper consumers will just reallocate the savings to competitive markets where demand outstrips supply (e.g. housing near good jobs)?
hanoz 9y ago
> renters across the UK spend an average of 62 per cent of their income on rent > 40 per cent of renters pay more than 50 per cent of their incomes on rent If 60% of renters pay less than 50% of their income, that leaves an infeasibly high number of renters paying at least 80% of their income, to make an average of 62%. Much as I think the high cost of housing and woeful tenancy rights are an absolute disgrace in the UK, I can't take these figures at all seriously.
- rwnspace 9y ago
  After some digging around gov.uk and looking for the back of an envelope, median income seems to be around £24k, and median rent/mth differs wildly between London (£1500) and the rest of England (~£750); can't seem to find a recent source for median income (London) and median income (rest of England). After tax I shouldn't suppose median income across the UK exceeds £20k. An educated guess would suggest most people spend 40% of income on rent alone. Given the decline in real wages I would imagine living costs in total soak as high as 80% of after-tax income for many. No comment on the content of the article itself since others have critiqued it so nicely - the above is mildly informed speculation.
throw2016 9y ago
Something changed in the global economic system in the 1990's that has led to asset inflation in nearly all major global cities. People buying are indebted for decades for more than 50% of their usually dual incomes and renters have equally large monthly outflows. This is global economic rent seeking in action. Wealth is not used for investment as economists insist but speculation and asset inflation led by banks being the main beneficiaries. The consistency and pattern of sharp increases across global cities cannot simply be a coincidence.
richliss 9y ago
TL:DR - We're screwed - blame politicians on both sides. This is only going to get worse because the politicians are beneficiaries. One in three UK politicians are landlords: https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/jan/14/mp-landlords-number-risen-quarter-last-parliament-housing-bill https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/jan/14/mp-l... One in three UK politicians has a significant percentage of their wealth dependent on rising house prices and rising rents which is why: 1. Help to buy schemes increase demand but not supply therefore increasing prices. 2. Large scale bulk buying of properties by dirty offshore money where apartments are not being rented out hasn't been stopped - its better to buy London property than pay for gold storage: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/31/inside-london-billionaires-row-derelict-mansions-hampstead https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/31/inside-londo... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/13/foreign-investors-snapping-up-london-homes-suitable-for-first-time-buyers https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/13/foreign-inve... 3. Train prices in London are the most expensive in the world, so many will decide to spend more on rent and have the extra hours per day back than travel and pay almost the same price once train costs are factored in: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-39806865 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-39806865 4. Increased population growth into London due to political focus on the South East - 100,000 extra per year increasing demand : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3834825/London-s-population-growing-100-000-YEAR-immigration-high-birth-rate-turns-capital-megacity.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3834825/London-s-pop... 5. Not enough homes are being built to satisfy a single year's needs let alone the cumulative shortage: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/news/12127141/Fewer-homes-being-built-in-London-as-UK-house-building-falls-25pc-short-of-target.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/news/12127141/Fe... 6. One in six Baby Boomers (who are the generation that has caused the property problem) intend on spending the inheritance their children could use on a deposit or buying their home, and therefore may remain renting: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3818803/The-baby-boomers-spending-kids-inheritance-One-six-50-70-year-olds-say-plan-use-money-die.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3818803/The-baby-boo... The most depressing thing is that its starting elsewhere in the UK now because people see the UK as a good place to invest, and its gone crazy in the best cities in other English speaking countries - Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto etc.
- 9y ago

46 points by temp 9y ago

Probably even more if you count the commute cost. If you commute to London you can expect yearly ticket costs to be easily £5000 (that is if you can afford to buy a 12 month pass, if you do not you can pay as much as double, train pass loans are very common in the U.K.) for even a relatively short commute (Oxford or Luton to London for example). £5000 is 1/4-1/5th of the median salary in the U.K. If there is anything more depressing than U.K. rent it's its seasonal ticket rates: http://vt.nationalrail.co.uk/service/seasonticket/search http://vt.nationalrail.co.uk/service/seasonticket/search

djmobley 9y ago
Larger employers typically offer season ticket loans, repaid pre-tax through a salary sacrifice arrangement, so you can effectively discount the cost by your marginal tax rate. Higher rate (40%) tax payers therefore only pay £3,000 for a £5,000 season ticket (less if you include NI and other deductions)
- dogma1138 9y ago
  Indeed, most employers however offer it only after 6 months of employment and you have to maintain your employment for 12 months if not, you have to repay the loan in full which often means you cannot benefit from the offset tax liability. It's also a case where those who can afford it more easily and can also afford London rent get discounts while people that earn less do not.
- bencoder 9y ago
  I don't think those are pre-tax. They are just interest free loans. At least, in none of the companies I've worked for has it been pre-tax
- isostatic 9y ago
  They aren't pre-tax, which is a major reason I work from home - when I took my current job I refused to work in their office as it would be £2500 a year, which means I'd have to earn about £6500 more just to pay for the commute, add the extra 2 unpaid hours a day and the commute would mean I'd want an extra £20k pre-tax (that's £100 post-tax per week for the time, or £10 an hour) My effective marginal tax rate because of this (income between £50k and £60k) is 60% -- 40% income, 2% NI, 18% reduction in child benefits. The company has to pay employer NI too. That means for every £1138 they spend on a payrise for me, I get £400. While my income is in the top 10%, our household income is pretty average for people with 2 children because my wife only works on occasional freelancing projects to keep fingers in the pie (say 10 days a year), and I work from home the majority of the time - we don't want to outsource the upbringing of children. If we do pay for child minding, it's an inlaw, which means petrol costs and a bottle of wine - which all comes out post-tax, so doubles in price compared to sending kids to a factory tax free (or "childcare").
antouank 9y ago
Last year I did a 1,5 hour commute to London daily. The biggest cost is not the ticket fare, but the time you waste being in a crowded train/underground for ~3 hours every day.
- ris 9y ago
  It's all about finding a way to use that time. Podcasts?
  - antouank 9y ago
    Nah, it's not all about that. Of course I tried many ways to use that time, but after a while it's just a burden. And it's making your day more exhausting. I'm moving now to the City, I'll pay the high rent, but I'll walk/cycle to work in 5-10 mins. F* that train commute. ( and it seems like Brexit will force me to leave London for good anyway )
    - bitL 9y ago
      Yeah, tube is always full and unpleasant to travel on. If you are into music, buy UK's novation Circuit and do some song sketches while in tube, it gets you in creative mood, you forget you commute and it might raise your happiness if you find nice chords ;-) Another idea is to do some world-class MOOC or online MS while commuting (not via car ofc). Then you might land a position that would help you to escape this insanity.
      - antouank 9y ago
        Yeah, you can do all that ( I'd be impressed if you actually do that on a daily basis! ). But isn't it like pretending the problem is not there? I'd say just don't do the long commute at all :) Pay the rent to be close to where you work or go live/work somewhere else, that's my solution. I'll live another year in the centre of London, and then go to an EU country that's accepting my passport.
        9y ago

denzil_correa 9y ago

I have been kind of struggling with this question lately. As a rule of thumb, what percentage of your income would/should be spend on rent? I can totally understand there are many variables but I'm assuming the cost of buying a new house could be one on that list.

phyalow 9y ago
1/3 max
frede 9y ago
From a landlord's perspective, they prefer if you do not spend more than 1/3 of your income on rent.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
  Keep it affordable for people to live in, but too expensive for the tenants to save-up to buy their own place. Devilish.
  - umanwizard 9y ago
    Renting is an ultra-competitive market -- landlords aren't personally deciding what your rent should be.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - poooogles 9y ago
    Pretty much. Hilariously the rate of house price increases in London is almost outpacing the rate I can save for a home. So even if you can save up, you still can't buy a house.
DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
The rule of thumb is 1/4 of gross income before tax, 1/3rd of net income after tax - reasoning that 25% of your income is lost to taxes. Another approach is to take your salary, max out your pre-tax retirement contributions, find out what dollar amount you need to maintain your current lifestyle in non-accommodation costs, set aside at least a few hundred $ monthly buffer, then whatever's left will be your budget for housing.

ZenoArrow 9y ago

I'm currently converting a van to a campervan, in part to escape this money drain, in part to give me more freedom of where to live. It's not an option for everyone but I'm glad it's been working out so far (I should point out that wild camping is of dubious legality in many parts of the UK). An alternate option is living on a boat (narrowboat, Dutch barge, etc...) on the UK canals, which even with mooring fees can be more affordable than renting.

DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
I understand that if you live the canal-boat lifestyle you also don't have to pay council tax.
- slap 9y ago
  But you also have to move "forward" at least every 14 days if you don't want have a mooring.
  - ZenoArrow 9y ago
    To give some idea of mooring costs, the marina in my home city charges around £300 (a month, I believe, though it's not 100% clear) for mooring costs: https://bwml.co.uk/bath-marina/moorings/ https://bwml.co.uk/bath-marina/moorings/ The main challenge is getting a place, as moorings spots are fairly limited. I have heard of people making alternative arrangements. For example, paying a farmer whose land is next to a canal to moor there. Costs would most likely lower but there's also likely to be less in the way of on-land facilities.
- notahacker 9y ago
  You do, however pay an annual boat licence fee to the Canal and River Trust comparable to the Council Tax bill for a small property
iagovar 9y ago
Ill do the same, but its noy legal in most municipalities in Spain to park and sleep in your ban.

namelost 9y ago

The green belts need to go. Cities should be allowed to expand outwards.

ZenoArrow 9y ago
No thanks. There's no reason cities can't expand upwards. Besides that, there's plenty of brownfield sites that could be converted to housing if the desire to do so was there. The best option in reducing prices would be to invest more heavily in transport infrastructure so that towns on the periphery of cities became more attractive to live in, and therefore develop in. Investments are being made in national rail infrastructure, but less so on the local level. It's a real shame that the UK lost so much of its railway infrastructure during the push towards automotive transportation.
frede 9y ago
For London it would also help to increase the density of housing. Large areas of the city are still built with Victorian houses.
DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
Or upwards. London has a very low population density because of building height restrictions (now considered archaic, I understand). London has very few tall buildings and Canary Wharf is is closer to downtown Bellevue, WA than it is to Manhatten in terms of scale. Brits are somewhat opposed to "tower blocks" because they were a poorly-planned top-down social engineering experiment in the postwar years to deal with rehousing the residents of slums and other deprived areas. Modern "high-end living" flats in much taller, aesthetically pleasing, and most importantly: safer, structures are being built, but not at a sufficient pace. A reasons there hasn't been a total crash yet is because lovely, lower-density houses (think: 3 and 4 story spacious townhouses, not working-class 2-up/2-down terrace houses) are bought up for millions then internally gutted and remodelled into individual, modestly-sized flats to rent - sometimes barely larger than the size of a living room.
- hordeallergy 9y ago
  Do you think the transport system can handle increased density of upward building? It's not really coping with current levels, and in no way pleasant.

NiklasMort 9y ago

The rent prices around the world in big cities are absolute perverse. And it will only get worse I fear. Partially due to rich foreigners and partially due to AirBNB & Co. Good example there is Prague, no normal Czech citizen can afford to live there anymore, the rent prices are ridiculous even compared to some German Cities.

iagovar 9y ago
It happens also in Spain. Ibiza is absolutely crazy, but also Barcelona and Madrid.
oh_sigh 9y ago
How can it be any other way more people than ever want to live in cities and cities are Naturally constrained buy pre existing infrastructure and land area? People just need to get used to the idea that they can only afford to live in a second or third tier city.
- NiklasMort 9y ago
  you'd be amazed how much rent prices are artificially inflated

NikolaeVarius 9y ago

Whats the breakdown between 1br/Studios and Roommate situations?

wmonk 9y ago

> Overall, 40 per cent of renters pay more than 50 per cent of their incomes on rent, the report found This feels much more telling than the title of this article.

mckoss 9y ago

Take the report with a grain of salt. It appears to be sourced by an investment firm with an interest in selling real estate securities. There are no details given about how their sample of 10,000 renters was created; the data also seems self reported by the renters, so I would have accuracy concerns. The figure seems dubious given most landlords would balk at extending a lease to a tenant who's major share of income would be going to rent (high credit risk).

dilemma 9y ago
As opposed to media organizations with an interest in selling capturing and selling reader attention. The implication that unbiased reporting exists is ridiculous; this isn't critical thinking.
- haukilup 9y ago
  > As opposed to media organizations with an interest in selling capturing and selling reader attention. The implication that unbiased reporting exists is ridiculous; this isn't critical thinking. There's a jump required to get from the parents comment to yours. Readers should still take the source with a grain of salt, like most sources. It helps to consider what biases the article/report/whatever is likely to have.

nugget 9y ago

Couldn't this be a predictable result of deflation in other expense categories, i.e. as "stuff" becomes cheaper consumers will just reallocate the savings to competitive markets where demand outstrips supply (e.g. housing near good jobs)?

hanoz 9y ago

> renters across the UK spend an average of 62 per cent of their income on rent > 40 per cent of renters pay more than 50 per cent of their incomes on rent If 60% of renters pay less than 50% of their income, that leaves an infeasibly high number of renters paying at least 80% of their income, to make an average of 62%. Much as I think the high cost of housing and woeful tenancy rights are an absolute disgrace in the UK, I can't take these figures at all seriously.

rwnspace 9y ago
After some digging around gov.uk and looking for the back of an envelope, median income seems to be around £24k, and median rent/mth differs wildly between London (£1500) and the rest of England (~£750); can't seem to find a recent source for median income (London) and median income (rest of England). After tax I shouldn't suppose median income across the UK exceeds £20k. An educated guess would suggest most people spend 40% of income on rent alone. Given the decline in real wages I would imagine living costs in total soak as high as 80% of after-tax income for many. No comment on the content of the article itself since others have critiqued it so nicely - the above is mildly informed speculation.

throw2016 9y ago

Something changed in the global economic system in the 1990's that has led to asset inflation in nearly all major global cities. People buying are indebted for decades for more than 50% of their usually dual incomes and renters have equally large monthly outflows. This is global economic rent seeking in action. Wealth is not used for investment as economists insist but speculation and asset inflation led by banks being the main beneficiaries. The consistency and pattern of sharp increases across global cities cannot simply be a coincidence.

richliss 9y ago

TL:DR - We're screwed - blame politicians on both sides. This is only going to get worse because the politicians are beneficiaries. One in three UK politicians are landlords: https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/jan/14/mp-landlords-number-risen-quarter-last-parliament-housing-bill https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/jan/14/mp-l... One in three UK politicians has a significant percentage of their wealth dependent on rising house prices and rising rents which is why: 1. Help to buy schemes increase demand but not supply therefore increasing prices. 2. Large scale bulk buying of properties by dirty offshore money where apartments are not being rented out hasn't been stopped - its better to buy London property than pay for gold storage: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/31/inside-london-billionaires-row-derelict-mansions-hampstead https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/31/inside-londo... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/13/foreign-investors-snapping-up-london-homes-suitable-for-first-time-buyers https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/13/foreign-inve... 3. Train prices in London are the most expensive in the world, so many will decide to spend more on rent and have the extra hours per day back than travel and pay almost the same price once train costs are factored in: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-39806865 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-39806865 4. Increased population growth into London due to political focus on the South East - 100,000 extra per year increasing demand : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3834825/London-s-population-growing-100-000-YEAR-immigration-high-birth-rate-turns-capital-megacity.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3834825/London-s-pop... 5. Not enough homes are being built to satisfy a single year's needs let alone the cumulative shortage: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/news/12127141/Fewer-homes-being-built-in-London-as-UK-house-building-falls-25pc-short-of-target.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/news/12127141/Fe... 6. One in six Baby Boomers (who are the generation that has caused the property problem) intend on spending the inheritance their children could use on a deposit or buying their home, and therefore may remain renting: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3818803/The-baby-boomers-spending-kids-inheritance-One-six-50-70-year-olds-say-plan-use-money-die.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3818803/The-baby-boo... The most depressing thing is that its starting elsewhere in the UK now because people see the UK as a good place to invest, and its gone crazy in the best cities in other English speaking countries - Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto etc.

9y ago