The ugly truth behind our rigged housing system – politicians live in fear of owners | Sonia Sodha

4 comments
  1. >Rising house prices mean that, by the time you’ve paid off your mortgage, not only will you have somewhere to live cost free, you will have an asset that has inflated significantly in value to pass on to children or grandchildren.

    And there in lies the rub for most people. All owning your home does is give you somewhere to afford to live when you retire and something for you kids to sqable over if by chance you manage to keep it when you get moved to a home in your final years. What isn’t really made clear in the article is that unless you are a landlord, is that home ownership is in many ways a financial millstone to many.

    I’m lucky. I own my own home. It’s worth a lot because it’s the culmination of 30 years of building equity through purchase, renovation and resale which I then used to build my own home so I had an affordable mortgage, but unless I sell it and I move to a more affordable part of the world – I’m never going to release the cash that I have invested in property over the years.

    Unless I upsticks and move to Albania permanently or something, it’s dead money. Thanks to Brexit this isn’t even an easy or realistic option any more so that idea is rapidly becoming a pipe dream.

    Sure it gives me the security of not having to deal with landlords, but as a personal investment? It’s not much good as I will still need to live somewhere, and if that somewhere is in the UK at current prices, all I’m doing is moving that pot of dead money somewhere else for a bit whist extensively remaining trapped by the system. When my kids are in their late 30’s (hopefully!) or something they might get a windfall to split between them that they can use to start the whole process again.

    Honestly, the whole system is so fucked up. Young people have the shittyest end of the stick by far, but even when you claw your way onto the ladder, it’s still a race against diminishing returns. Buy a house for 180k? You are looking at that costing you over 1/4 million quid over most of your working life at today’s prices – and that’s if the Tories don’t force interest rates up to 15% again like the did when I first got involved with all this bollox.

    The worst think is I honestly don’t see a solution to this apart from every property in the country having it’s value being reduced by a factor of 10 and the government taking on the debt – and that’s really not very realistic.

  2. When Generation(s) Rent outnumber homeowners, the balance will shift. There will come a point where people my age who have only ever rented or only ever lived with their parents will be the biggest voting group and no amount of money thrown at politicians will make those generations forget their troubles getting on the property market.

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