The difference is the cost of land. If you are in London and given a big deposit from parents to keep your mortgage payments down they you benefit from apprecia

The difference is the cost of land. If you are in London and given a big deposit from parents to keep your mortgage payments down they you benefit from appreciating asset prices and have disposable income. Life is good (for you). However the cost of appreciating land (in real terms) is that younger people have to pledge more and more of their life to live in the same pile of bricks. It's clearly now reached the point where it's untenable, it's simply a speculative bubble now. All the UK banks are tied up in it, the UK itself is overly reliant on the financial sector, which lends heavily into housing which shows up as "growth" in GDP stats. They will fight hard to prop it up as long as possible. So far we've seen the UK artificially suppressing interest rates and also directly underwriting mortgage risk because even the crazy UK banks won't do it.