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I don't get it either, and I'm a hedge fund manager. To my mind nothing seems like it's a sensible price in any of the cities I look at. I mean I get that there

I don't get it either, and I'm a hedge fund manager. To my mind nothing seems like it's a sensible price in any of the cities I look at. I mean I get that there's a fair few people making good money who can buy a £2M home, but it doesn't make any sense that there are entire swathes of London where every home is like that. A quick google suggests that a £100K income is in the top 3% in this country, and top 1% is about £176K. Sure, there's a few hundred football players averaging maybe £3M a year who can thus buy maybe a £15M palace, but if you go on a property site they could each buy one and still have pages and pages of places left on the market. Similarly there's a bunch of finance/media/law people who've climbed to the top of the greasy pole and could afford a £3M house. But how many can we really be talking about? A few thousand? Ten thousand? Are there really that many MDs and law partners in London? Average income is still well under 6 figures in this country, and I know a load of doctors who are only just scraping into that category in their 30s. So if you're just scraping into 6 figs as a highly trained and rare specialist, how can there be so many houses that cost 7 figures? Even if you add parental help, how many people who are splitting inheritance between 2/3 kids is it actually going to help? I suspect a lot of people have actually drawn on all reserves: found a high income partner, got help from the parents, got a max leveraged mortgage, and possibly some have lied about their income. I get the feeling it will end badly.

thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
Being valued at £2M doesn't mean you could sell all of them for that price or that the people living in them paid £2M for them. The sort of person who could afford a nice house 3+ decades ago and spent the intervening years living in London isn't likely to move to somewhere more rural just because they can realise an investment.
- RobertKerans 5y ago
  > Being valued at £2M doesn't mean you could sell all of them for that price or that the people living in them paid £2M for them But in London these houses do sell, normally very quickly (and bullshit apartments in shiny new blocks that are in same price bracket I guess same, generally they do seem to sell, but I assume that's just parking money for tax purposes so not quite same thing).
  - thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
    That's exactly my point. The demand is far higher than the supply.
    - RobertKerans 5y ago
      Ah, sorry, I misread that. GP has fair points though, whole situation in the UK is crazy, infects everything, it's an arms race
NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
>I get the feeling it will end badly. Agreed. As to the question of who has that kind of money: you're talking about income from employment, not assets. Maybe there are a lot of people with assets that put them in reach of £2-3M homes. And of course there are foreigners who don't work in the U.K., like Saudis, Russians, and Chinese.
comeonseriously 5y ago
> I get the feeling it will end badly. Yes, it will. When people get shoved into tiny homes with their parents and children and have zero hope for any future on their own, you will see the people say enough is enough. They will march. They will protest. They will vote. They will clean house.
mywittyname 5y ago
Isn't London housing driven largely by foreign investment? As in, wealthy people from across the world who are parking capital there because it's safe, not because they care particularly about returns. If brexit didn't end this, then it's probably a pretty stable system. It sucks for locals, but there are far worse places to over extend yourself on housing than in London.

thrwyoilarticle 5y ago

Being valued at £2M doesn't mean you could sell all of them for that price or that the people living in them paid £2M for them. The sort of person who could afford a nice house 3+ decades ago and spent the intervening years living in London isn't likely to move to somewhere more rural just because they can realise an investment.

RobertKerans 5y ago
> Being valued at £2M doesn't mean you could sell all of them for that price or that the people living in them paid £2M for them But in London these houses do sell, normally very quickly (and bullshit apartments in shiny new blocks that are in same price bracket I guess same, generally they do seem to sell, but I assume that's just parking money for tax purposes so not quite same thing).
- thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
  That's exactly my point. The demand is far higher than the supply.
  - RobertKerans 5y ago
    Ah, sorry, I misread that. GP has fair points though, whole situation in the UK is crazy, infects everything, it's an arms race

NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago

>I get the feeling it will end badly. Agreed. As to the question of who has that kind of money: you're talking about income from employment, not assets. Maybe there are a lot of people with assets that put them in reach of £2-3M homes. And of course there are foreigners who don't work in the U.K., like Saudis, Russians, and Chinese.

comeonseriously 5y ago

> I get the feeling it will end badly. Yes, it will. When people get shoved into tiny homes with their parents and children and have zero hope for any future on their own, you will see the people say enough is enough. They will march. They will protest. They will vote. They will clean house.

mywittyname 5y ago

Isn't London housing driven largely by foreign investment? As in, wealthy people from across the world who are parking capital there because it's safe, not because they care particularly about returns. If brexit didn't end this, then it's probably a pretty stable system. It sucks for locals, but there are far worse places to over extend yourself on housing than in London.