Yes I know that.....and the banks very much let the powers that be know that as well. Even when the banks behave stupidly, the governments bend to their will. The government are their puppets now. (I think 2008 rubber stamped that)
I think Gutterboy is declaring what he sees as the end point. ie back to a fair balance of affordability and value.
Of course, what has happened through government policy and banking economic policy is for the situation to run away with itself (and much like other crises we face eg water), to such an extent that unwinding it is complicated and requires delicate skill as not to cause a number of related crises.
Property pretty much supported the 'feel good' vibes of the middle classes, thru BTL and MEW as prices just kept heading north supported by government schemes, artificially low interest rates and longer term mortgages.
The result of that is what we see now. Affordability problems and a non functioning property ladder/market
Roof over your head is ANOTHER essential. An essential that has been fudged around with for massive wealth gains. And as usual the massive wealth gainers only ever want to be on the winning side of the bet.
Agree with much of this. On house prices it goes back to supply and demand though. There is a "housing shortage". The housing shortage is because of a number of factors (theres a housing shortage thats never been worse but the number of empty homes has never been higher), but the biggest factor is demand hugely outstripping supply.
The turn of the millennium was probably the last sort of time the UK and world felt vaguely positive, that things were on an upward trend. In 2000 the UK population was an estimated 58.89 million. In 1970 the population was 55.66 million. So an increase of circa 3 million in 30 years, or 1 million a decade average. This increase was largely due to increases in living standards and healthcare standards which drove the average life expectancy from 68.7 years (males) and 75 years (females) in 1970 to 78.7 years (males) and 82.6 years (females) in 2000.
Tony Blair admitted that he deliberately encouraged mass immigration. This is one of the most disastrous decisions taken by any leader and combined with the decision to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan has led to many of the most significant issues the country now faces.
The population of the UK in 2025 is 69.5 million, an increase of more than 10 million in a 25 year period. FYI the 2020 projection was for the population to be 69.2 million in 2030.
So we are more than five years ahead of schedule of where we were projected to be population-wise by analysts.
The growth is overwhelmingly driven by net migration with the disparity in births v deaths being less than 100K a decade.
Net migration is currently outstripping government projections by circa 50% over a decade meaning at current rates it is impossible to create policy to cope.
The government's housing plan was to build 1.5 million houses over 5 years or 300,000 a year. This target is not going to be hit. Nobody gives it a prayer. Yet the target, despite being ridiculously stretching, is woefully inadequate to deal with demand.
And what kind of pressure is 1.5 million homes going to place on the water system? The capacity of the waste water system is widely discussed. What isn't being discussed is capacity in the fresh water system. We have just had one of the longest drought in England and reservoir levels are critical. Partly its driven by warming temperatures but an extra 400-900K people a year (current net migration figures from 2023 to 2024) requiring fresh water.
All the major crisis areas you can think of: NHS capacity, rail capacity, road capacity, housing capacity, sewerage capacity, water capacity, school capacity, you name it capacity - they are all being driven by population growth of mind blowing proportions. Inflation - its fundamentally supply being outstripped by demand. And inflation is the biggest killer of living standards there is.
The average wage and home ownership rates of the UK's established populations of white British, British-indian, British-pakistani, british-carribean are in marked contrast to other, newer demographic groups.
We have been importing poverty for 25 years and its starting to push down on living standards for everyone.
And years of kicking can down the road while trying to "educate the knuckle draggers that this is all good for them" have brought us to the crash point.
You can only artificially press down on house prices so much if supply is being outstripped by demand at the current rates.