Those invested in property will argue with all sorts of airy phrases like: “yes, it’s such a difficult situation this housing crisis, but unfortunately there’s not much we can do without ruining the economy”
There’ll be an excuse about why every policy to fix the housing crisis is *wrong,* or *implausible* or *economically illiterate,* but the fact remains the housing bubble needs to burst, and other countries have far better housing/rental markets.
When you profit from a massive passive wealth increase stream like property investment or landlordism (and what *passive* really means is *the active working hours of someone else)* it’s very easy to create a convoluted moral and intellectual code that justifies carrying on as usual.
The problem is that our media and parliamentary systems are dominated by people from the above class, and because they set the conversational narrative they’ll make it seem like what they’re saying is “common sense” through the sheer hegemony they hold. They’ll ridicule anyone who puts forward robust policy like rent controls and state-housing or right-to-buy for private renters.
There absolutely are policies to tackle this crisis – always keep that in mind and remember the housing bubble is a *political choice,* not an unavoidable part of the economy.
I’m 24 and SO is 25 and we make £23-25k each. We have SS ISAs and LISAs, save nearly everything after rent, bills and groceries and it will take some long few years until we can actually start to think about looking at houses
I’m starting to think that the finish just gets further away the more we walk…
might as well just rent, fuck buying a house in this climate. Fucking joke it is.
Who actually benefits from property prices being out of control besides huge commercial landlords, banks and people getting off the property ladder?
If you’re on the ladder, prices are probably increasing at the same pace as your house, so if you wanted to move it’ll cost you all the same. Plus you have to deal with stamp duty going up which can be a huge outlay.
I don’t have some answer to a rhetorical here, I genuinely don’t know. I understand a fear of negative equity, but its not like an x increase in house prices in such a short space of time is particularly bankable.
Edit – thanks for all the replies, they definitely cleared up a point of ignorance for me
Until either party commits to serious planning reform instead of endless help-to-buy schemes to help the bubble grow, there’s no reason to try to get a mortgage in this climate. Why even bother when your repayments will nearly match rent anyway at these prices?
I cancelled my Netflix, when am I signing my mortgage papers?
I’m a soldier and my Net is 21k which is higher than most other infantrymen, I want a home, why do I bother.
Just buy less coffees and utilise all 24 hours in the day and you’ll afford one in no time
Don’t mistake average for minimum, there are plenty of places for sale well under that figure.
So my help to buy ISA that can only be used on properties up to 250k is looking less and less useful now.
Essentially this prices non-couples out of ever being homeowners.
Let’s take a high-earner in the UK as an example. Someone that earns, for instance, £50k per year.
The bank will only lend 4x your income max, right? So 200k. Best hope you can raise another 60k otherwise for your deposit! Best hope the asking price doesn’t go up or the estate agent doesn’t want any fees on top!
Obviously the situation is difficult for low earners. But it’s insane if someone like a headteacher of a school, CEO of a charity, small business owner or mid-level accountant isn’t able to even afford the *average* house in the country!
Productivity has increased 300% since 1970 and wages barely keep up with inflation.
Property prices have gone up 1000% but wages stay the same.
Cost of living continues to increase – including new technology and the power to run it (you need the internet and a mobile just to get a job, £100 a month working tax minimum) – cost of living from energy to food increases.
Wages barely keep up with inflation.
In the 1990s – *during our lifetime* – house prices were about x3 the average wage.
They’re now *6.7 times the average wage*.
What’s the plan here? Late Stage UK Capitalism is drifting towards actual feudalism. Indentured servitude in order to afford basic survival. That’s essentially where we are now – earning our own right to exist. At the behest of a ruling class who blame us for the circumstances they orchestrate.
And the number of Tory trolls in the comments with their “you, a slave, object to your treatment, but you participate in the system (under threat of imprisonment or death). Curious” takes is fucking embarrassing. Are you serious? That’s your take?
An entire party with the political perspective of “let them eat cake”. Fucking idiotic, abjectly atrocious. This country is an embarrassment.
For those paying attention it’s been clear this has been the neoliberal capitalist strategy all along, the doctrine followed by every government since Thatcher, both Conservative and Labour.
Civil rights are fine to progress; racism, sexism, homophobia etc. will all be addressed,
neoliberal capitalism will allow the Left to win those fights and will also take credit for their victories, but at the same time the rise in income inequality will gradually erase all the gains of all the other movements whilst plunging The 99% into passive servitude to the owners of capital.
Neoliberal capitalist ideology strikes me as just being fascism with a good PR team. Skyrocketing house prices is just one cog in the wheel to ensure the labour force has no access to owning capital and freeing itself from servitude.
My wife and I (early 30s) bought our first house 3 years ago, after living in a small shitty apartment for 7 years before hand.
Our mortgage now is less than our rent was then. It’s a trap.
We only got lucky that the sellers were looking for a quick sale so sold to us below market value as we were the only first time buyers interested, otherwise I imagine we’d have had to wait another year for something to come up that we liked and could afford.
I found it so goddamn hard to get onto the property ladder, yet somehow it’s only getting harder for younger people.
Ban companies from owning properties. Individuals can only own max 2 houses.
Problem solved. Some people will work around this but it will be nowhere near the extent that it is today where a company may own hundreds of houses feeding off the rent paid by the poor who will never be able to buy their own even though they can afford it since rent costs more than a mortgage.
Edit: I should clarify in the first sentence I said properties, but I meant houses as I wrote in the second sentence.
We had an offer accepted on a property in October last year. In the beginning of Feb the sellers pulled out because they couldn’t secure a mortgage on the property they wanted to buy. So we were back to looking. In those short few months, houses in that area jumped £20k-£30k and the amount of houses on the market plummeted.
We’re now priced out of houses that need extensive work done to them.
It’s a joke.
Is the answer to this taxes for a 2nd house?, or limiting the profits one case make from being a landlord? Basically, should we introduce disincentives to being a landlord?
i count myself lucky every day that i was able to buy our house, a modest 2 bed, at the age of 35, and all it took was saving up 20k and also borrowing 20k from family as well! (which of course not everyone can do).
sometimes i look at our baby son and think how lucky i am to be able to have a baby and house and then i think how has it come to the point where basic human necessities such as shelter and the ability to reproduce are seen as privilege?
what is the actual point of this society if it can’t provide this? and wtf are we playing at simply lying down and accepting it? it’s time for something new.
Just about everything going on in society today has some impact on mental health. It’s often described as the next epidemic
I can’t imagine being in my 30s to 40s still at home with my parents. But that’s the norm these days.
Talk about crushing your individuality, social / sex life.
Something is going to have to change for people to start getting on some of these so-called ladders; socio-economic, property, career, financial, family..
I don’t have a solution. Maybe just some ideas.. more families living together, better new starter houses built, policies encouraging growth and first time buyers.
.
Honestly I think we are at the point where, legally, everyone should only be allowed one house.
Houses = investments is toxic and has caused huge damage already which is only getting worse as the *haves* grab more and more.
This is mental – how are young people meant to get security in this country? I bought my house a few years ago and it took me nearly 8 years to save a 20% deposit thanks to the banks tanking the economy in 2008 and getting rid of low deposit/rate mortgages – and I had to start a business to make the kind of income to save that whilst renting – wages in this country are obscenely low, added to that cost of living, rising national insurance and energy companies tripling everyone’s bill overnight.
I feel the younger generation are completely fucked it’s so sad and non of their fault, despite what Kirsty allsopp says in her tone deaf comments.
This country is being run by a disgusting self served government who just gave themselves a fucking TWO GRAND (of even more of your money) pay rise, because of ‘hard work serving the public during the pandemic’ – fuck all for the nurses though, bunch of pricks.
And then they decided to write off SIX BILLION POUNDS of Covid fraud FROM YOU YOU TAXPAYER – because, let’s face it – it WILL implicate the Tories and their mates. The government then tried to pass a law to stop us protesting about it.
This has been the largest theft of taxpayer money in the History of the Uk and still it continues, day in, day out.
House prices going up is not the problem, the government is, they could’ve built or allowed more homes to be built, but the house builders want to increase profit on existing stock – a huge amount of Tory donations (13% in q1 2021) comes from property tycoons and house building companies.
The Government are the ones responsible for all of this – don’t let them distract your focus.
Well, they’re not making any more houses. I mean they are, but they’re leasehold, and covered in flameable cladding, and built out of plaster on flood plains so they’ll dissolve as soon as it rains 1% more than average, and none of the rooms are actually large enough for a human adult to lie flat in…
I know someone who was bragging about having just paid off their mortgage the other day. They said that the very next day they went to the bank and remortgaged their house for the highest amount possible then proceeded to go out and buy two more houses with the intention of renting them out or selling them for a profit.
People use to worked for years to pay off their mortgage and celebrated when they did so. Now they just use it as leverage.
Buy to let mortgages. Ring your bank right now and ask for a loan so you can gamble on the stock market and you’ll be refused. But gambling on the housing market is encouraged.
Quick reminder that all of us with Help To Buy ISAs can now no longer use those to buy an average priced house in the UK, as it only applies to houses that are £250k or less…
Yes cos Debbie working in fecking farmfoods get paid enough for a quarter million pound house…this fucking shite needs to stop…it’s just madness at this point.
See you next month when it’s £270,000 for the first time!
Bruh… it was literally £240k a few months ago. The fuck.
Just sent an angry email to my mp over this. Doubt she’ll do anything but it felt good to vent!
29 comments
Those invested in property will argue with all sorts of airy phrases like: “yes, it’s such a difficult situation this housing crisis, but unfortunately there’s not much we can do without ruining the economy”
There’ll be an excuse about why every policy to fix the housing crisis is *wrong,* or *implausible* or *economically illiterate,* but the fact remains the housing bubble needs to burst, and other countries have far better housing/rental markets.
When you profit from a massive passive wealth increase stream like property investment or landlordism (and what *passive* really means is *the active working hours of someone else)* it’s very easy to create a convoluted moral and intellectual code that justifies carrying on as usual.
The problem is that our media and parliamentary systems are dominated by people from the above class, and because they set the conversational narrative they’ll make it seem like what they’re saying is “common sense” through the sheer hegemony they hold. They’ll ridicule anyone who puts forward robust policy like rent controls and state-housing or right-to-buy for private renters.
There absolutely are policies to tackle this crisis – always keep that in mind and remember the housing bubble is a *political choice,* not an unavoidable part of the economy.
I’m 24 and SO is 25 and we make £23-25k each. We have SS ISAs and LISAs, save nearly everything after rent, bills and groceries and it will take some long few years until we can actually start to think about looking at houses
I’m starting to think that the finish just gets further away the more we walk…
might as well just rent, fuck buying a house in this climate. Fucking joke it is.
Who actually benefits from property prices being out of control besides huge commercial landlords, banks and people getting off the property ladder?
If you’re on the ladder, prices are probably increasing at the same pace as your house, so if you wanted to move it’ll cost you all the same. Plus you have to deal with stamp duty going up which can be a huge outlay.
I don’t have some answer to a rhetorical here, I genuinely don’t know. I understand a fear of negative equity, but its not like an x increase in house prices in such a short space of time is particularly bankable.
Edit – thanks for all the replies, they definitely cleared up a point of ignorance for me
Until either party commits to serious planning reform instead of endless help-to-buy schemes to help the bubble grow, there’s no reason to try to get a mortgage in this climate. Why even bother when your repayments will nearly match rent anyway at these prices?
I cancelled my Netflix, when am I signing my mortgage papers?
I’m a soldier and my Net is 21k which is higher than most other infantrymen, I want a home, why do I bother.
Just buy less coffees and utilise all 24 hours in the day and you’ll afford one in no time
Don’t mistake average for minimum, there are plenty of places for sale well under that figure.
So my help to buy ISA that can only be used on properties up to 250k is looking less and less useful now.
Essentially this prices non-couples out of ever being homeowners.
Let’s take a high-earner in the UK as an example. Someone that earns, for instance, £50k per year.
The bank will only lend 4x your income max, right? So 200k. Best hope you can raise another 60k otherwise for your deposit! Best hope the asking price doesn’t go up or the estate agent doesn’t want any fees on top!
Obviously the situation is difficult for low earners. But it’s insane if someone like a headteacher of a school, CEO of a charity, small business owner or mid-level accountant isn’t able to even afford the *average* house in the country!
Productivity has increased 300% since 1970 and wages barely keep up with inflation.
Property prices have gone up 1000% but wages stay the same.
Cost of living continues to increase – including new technology and the power to run it (you need the internet and a mobile just to get a job, £100 a month working tax minimum) – cost of living from energy to food increases.
Wages barely keep up with inflation.
In the 1990s – *during our lifetime* – house prices were about x3 the average wage.
They’re now *6.7 times the average wage*.
What’s the plan here? Late Stage UK Capitalism is drifting towards actual feudalism. Indentured servitude in order to afford basic survival. That’s essentially where we are now – earning our own right to exist. At the behest of a ruling class who blame us for the circumstances they orchestrate.
And the number of Tory trolls in the comments with their “you, a slave, object to your treatment, but you participate in the system (under threat of imprisonment or death). Curious” takes is fucking embarrassing. Are you serious? That’s your take?
An entire party with the political perspective of “let them eat cake”. Fucking idiotic, abjectly atrocious. This country is an embarrassment.
For those paying attention it’s been clear this has been the neoliberal capitalist strategy all along, the doctrine followed by every government since Thatcher, both Conservative and Labour.
Civil rights are fine to progress; racism, sexism, homophobia etc. will all be addressed,
neoliberal capitalism will allow the Left to win those fights and will also take credit for their victories, but at the same time the rise in income inequality will gradually erase all the gains of all the other movements whilst plunging The 99% into passive servitude to the owners of capital.
Neoliberal capitalist ideology strikes me as just being fascism with a good PR team. Skyrocketing house prices is just one cog in the wheel to ensure the labour force has no access to owning capital and freeing itself from servitude.
My wife and I (early 30s) bought our first house 3 years ago, after living in a small shitty apartment for 7 years before hand.
Our mortgage now is less than our rent was then. It’s a trap.
We only got lucky that the sellers were looking for a quick sale so sold to us below market value as we were the only first time buyers interested, otherwise I imagine we’d have had to wait another year for something to come up that we liked and could afford.
I found it so goddamn hard to get onto the property ladder, yet somehow it’s only getting harder for younger people.
Ban companies from owning properties. Individuals can only own max 2 houses.
Problem solved. Some people will work around this but it will be nowhere near the extent that it is today where a company may own hundreds of houses feeding off the rent paid by the poor who will never be able to buy their own even though they can afford it since rent costs more than a mortgage.
Edit: I should clarify in the first sentence I said properties, but I meant houses as I wrote in the second sentence.
We had an offer accepted on a property in October last year. In the beginning of Feb the sellers pulled out because they couldn’t secure a mortgage on the property they wanted to buy. So we were back to looking. In those short few months, houses in that area jumped £20k-£30k and the amount of houses on the market plummeted.
We’re now priced out of houses that need extensive work done to them.
It’s a joke.
Is the answer to this taxes for a 2nd house?, or limiting the profits one case make from being a landlord? Basically, should we introduce disincentives to being a landlord?
i count myself lucky every day that i was able to buy our house, a modest 2 bed, at the age of 35, and all it took was saving up 20k and also borrowing 20k from family as well! (which of course not everyone can do).
sometimes i look at our baby son and think how lucky i am to be able to have a baby and house and then i think how has it come to the point where basic human necessities such as shelter and the ability to reproduce are seen as privilege?
what is the actual point of this society if it can’t provide this? and wtf are we playing at simply lying down and accepting it? it’s time for something new.
Just about everything going on in society today has some impact on mental health. It’s often described as the next epidemic
I can’t imagine being in my 30s to 40s still at home with my parents. But that’s the norm these days.
Talk about crushing your individuality, social / sex life.
Something is going to have to change for people to start getting on some of these so-called ladders; socio-economic, property, career, financial, family..
I don’t have a solution. Maybe just some ideas.. more families living together, better new starter houses built, policies encouraging growth and first time buyers.
.
Honestly I think we are at the point where, legally, everyone should only be allowed one house.
Houses = investments is toxic and has caused huge damage already which is only getting worse as the *haves* grab more and more.
This is mental – how are young people meant to get security in this country? I bought my house a few years ago and it took me nearly 8 years to save a 20% deposit thanks to the banks tanking the economy in 2008 and getting rid of low deposit/rate mortgages – and I had to start a business to make the kind of income to save that whilst renting – wages in this country are obscenely low, added to that cost of living, rising national insurance and energy companies tripling everyone’s bill overnight.
I feel the younger generation are completely fucked it’s so sad and non of their fault, despite what Kirsty allsopp says in her tone deaf comments.
This country is being run by a disgusting self served government who just gave themselves a fucking TWO GRAND (of even more of your money) pay rise, because of ‘hard work serving the public during the pandemic’ – fuck all for the nurses though, bunch of pricks.
And then they decided to write off SIX BILLION POUNDS of Covid fraud FROM YOU YOU TAXPAYER – because, let’s face it – it WILL implicate the Tories and their mates. The government then tried to pass a law to stop us protesting about it.
This has been the largest theft of taxpayer money in the History of the Uk and still it continues, day in, day out.
House prices going up is not the problem, the government is, they could’ve built or allowed more homes to be built, but the house builders want to increase profit on existing stock – a huge amount of Tory donations (13% in q1 2021) comes from property tycoons and house building companies.
The Government are the ones responsible for all of this – don’t let them distract your focus.
Well, they’re not making any more houses. I mean they are, but they’re leasehold, and covered in flameable cladding, and built out of plaster on flood plains so they’ll dissolve as soon as it rains 1% more than average, and none of the rooms are actually large enough for a human adult to lie flat in…
I know someone who was bragging about having just paid off their mortgage the other day. They said that the very next day they went to the bank and remortgaged their house for the highest amount possible then proceeded to go out and buy two more houses with the intention of renting them out or selling them for a profit.
People use to worked for years to pay off their mortgage and celebrated when they did so. Now they just use it as leverage.
Buy to let mortgages. Ring your bank right now and ask for a loan so you can gamble on the stock market and you’ll be refused. But gambling on the housing market is encouraged.
Quick reminder that all of us with Help To Buy ISAs can now no longer use those to buy an average priced house in the UK, as it only applies to houses that are £250k or less…
Yes cos Debbie working in fecking farmfoods get paid enough for a quarter million pound house…this fucking shite needs to stop…it’s just madness at this point.
See you next month when it’s £270,000 for the first time!
Bruh… it was literally £240k a few months ago. The fuck.
Just sent an angry email to my mp over this. Doubt she’ll do anything but it felt good to vent!