The problems of the London (and UK) property market go back to the days of Margaret Thatcher. Selling council homes, abolishing rates and low interest rates and

The problems of the London (and UK) property market go back to the days of Margaret Thatcher. Selling council homes, abolishing rates and low interest rates and deposit requirements have stacked the cards in favour of the few. Effectively we are borrowing from the grandchildren with the property bubble. The property bubble received a boost with the dot com crash as it was the only outlet for speculative capital. There have been some dips, however, house price inflation is never seen for what it is - inflation. In fact it is kept out of the headline inflation figure. You can have housing go up 10% a year and inflation be at 2% - notionally. When 25-33% of people's income is spent on housing you would expect that if that cost goes up 10% then the overall inflation would go up by at least 2.5% even if everything else, e.g. food and fuel was static. In the UK we need to look at what our European neighbours do and borrow a few ideas from here and there. For instance in Switzerland foreign nationals need to live there for five years to buy a house and even then they have to actually live in it rather than rent it out. They also have a sizeable tax on owning a property equivalent to its rental value. Consequently the house price inflation in Switzerland is practically non existent and most Swiss people rent. They live like kings compared to most Londoners and don't have a bee in their bonnet about having to be 'on the housing ladder'. In a world where not everyone has a roof over their head, homes should be homes rather than speculative investments for the work shy. Something has gone wrong with capitalism if it makes more sense to invest in property than to invest in the bank (low risk) or the stock market (some risk).