The truth about Britain's housing crisis | Vicky Spratt interview
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 พ.ค. 2024
- Housing correspondent for The i Vicky Spratt swung by JOE Towers this week to have a chat about the permacrisis that is the British housing market, the conditions making it actively worse, and what can be done to alleviate pressures on young people to get on the property ladder.
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Since Thatcher sold off council houses, utilities and the railways we are slowly going back to Victorian times. Low wages and a great divide between rich & poor.
So 40 yrs ago. Nothing of Labour opening the floodgates to mass immigration or Gordon Brown lowering the bar for mortgage borrowing
Tbf it was John Major who sold off the railways, Thatcher thought privatisation of railwais was too far 😂
Except for housing benefit, child support, PIP, DSS, and everything else
Not accurate. The real damage was done under Blair and Brown with the artificially low interest rates manipulated to keep house prices soaring (and not letting the banks fail), and the levels of incoming immigration helping to put upward pressure on property prices. The influx of cheap labour also meant wages in the semi-skilled or low skilled sectors stagnated for over a decade, and some sectors like builders and HGV drivers were even more negatively affected. You had huge levels of net incoming migration which means more competition for every room in a house share in London, making it ever more attractive to turn family sized houses into HMOs and here we are. People voted for Brexit hoping that increased sovereignty would be accompanied by more control of immigration. But instead the wave of incoming people has increased significantly. So the problems are even worse than they were when part of the EU, ironically.
Thatcher selling off council houses isn't a bad thing, not replacing them is. You have to build houses if you want people to have affordable housing.
As an Australian id like to correct one thing she said. Long term fixed rate mortgages do not exist here so we cop it on every rate rise just like the brits.
Yes, same here in Canada. Amotorized over 40 years, but a 3 year term where your forced to renew at the going interest rate.
2025 is the year Canadians start losing our homes.
@@annalee5751The Canadian Big Short?
@Graemecrompton Canadian housing is arguably a bigger polical football here than in the UK.
It's the # 1 election issue and Pierre is 20 points ahead of Trudeau talking about it.
She made many points that were inaccurate or told only half the truth. That’s what happens when instead of hands on knowledge you rely upon data to make your argument. Data can be presented any way you choose.
Thanks for clarifying the point though.
Yes it’s just a US thing.
The problem is the lack of long term social affordable housing. It's down from 5.5 million (late 1970's) to 4 million today, a 1.5 million loss while the UK's population has grown 11 million in the last 40 years. Private rented property isn't social, it can't and should not replace social housing. All shades of government have ducked their responsibility to generate enough social housing to meet the UK's needs. We need a genuine effort to invest in large scale affordable social housing.
Exactly right but the easy targets are landlords. Why do we cop all the blame for government policy decisions taken 50 years ago?!
How many times are people gonna make the same argument. It ain't gonna happen. They haven't done it for decades. Why are they going to start again now. Those days are gone!
Thurrock council in Essex had £2b to invest in a scam wind farm but didn’t have money to build houses
It's not a problem of demand or supply but one of ownership and regulation. As this video states, plenty of oligarchs snapping up properties and leaving them vacant or letting out. We need more state intervention to regulate both ownership and rents. Neither the Whories nor Liebour will do that .
A shocking amount of the social house sold on right to buy are now privately rented accommodation
Rather than rent control, I'd prefer mass amounts of social housing like in Vienna. Rent control tends to be ripe for exploitation and second order effects that were unpredicted. However, building such a large amount of social housing obviously takes time so likely would require rent control in place until it can be built.
We already know what rent control will entail as knock on effects: Socialist housing schemes in Eastern Bloc states and even NYC since 2019 showcase it well - they result in less overall housing being built and maintained, since costs cannot be recouped, eventually leading to housing stock decreasing as units become unlivable and condemned. This on top of non-rent controlled units inevitably subsidizing the losses of the rent controlled ones, raising the overall market rate as tenants divide in to the rent-controlled "haves" and the burned market rate "have-nots". This is actually exactly what is happening in cities like Vienna, Amsterdam and Stockholm, which have large socialized housing schemes - there market rents are far, far higher than the "average" which is brought down on paper by the stabilized rents, but to qualify for a stabilized unit, one must already live for 3-5 years in the city to be able to apply, and then another 8-12 years to be allocated such a unit, often without any choice of disposition or neighborhood location. In the meantime they pay out of the wazoo.
Yeah, there's not been a successful example of rent controls without building more houses. It's a very populist policy not borne out in reality.
Rent controls tend to lead to situations whereby "landlords", ( both public and private ) cut back on the maintenance/services side of property management either by design or by neglect. In the case of private landlords it is to maintain the percentage return on investment or in the case of public landlords it is the inability to cover the maintenance/service within the budget available, regular service intervals get pushed out to longer timeframes and the same with responsive works. The only realistic solution long term is for the supply of affordable housing to be increased, that is a real problem for high cost areas like major capital cities where people tend to want to live.
@@johnstirling6597 This may be true, but I'm quite confident this is also the case without rent control - my HA landlord also has terrible service intervals, rushed and poor quality maintenance, slow call out repair... All while charging a bomb. I'll take more of the same for less money anyday.
This is more socialist nonsense. I’d like to live in Notting Hill or Chelsea but I can’t afford to, so I don’t.
We all need food yet we rely upon a complex private supply chain, farmers work to supply a market, house builders can’t supply the market because planners say no. That’s been the case for decades.
The reason rents are high is because nimbys and councils prevent house building at scale, whilst they let 700,000 new people in to the UK each year. To suggest that immigration doesn’t impact housing cost and demand is clearly fantasy economics.
Germany has about 550 houses per 1000 of population the UK has only 450 homes per 1000 people. That’s a deficit of over 3,000,000 homes in the UK.
Germany has only 7% of housing stock as subsidised, UK has about 19% as affordable.
Berlin brought in a 5 year rent freeze in 2020 within 12 months new build to rent housing schemes were cancelled, due to being unviable, the number of apartments to rent dropped over 30%. I think they’ve now abandoned their rent controls. You can’t legislate more space you can only build it, but lefty policy making has made most building prohibitively expensive.
occurs to me we cant compete internationally on wages because we are so burdened with housing costs, so we lose our jobs , then our homes, happy days
Housing costs are higher in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sydney and a host of other international cities. You have to strip out the cost of housing in London which affects the average. On that basis housing in parts of the north west is some of the cheapest in Europe when compared to earnings.
Wef policy is being played out you'll own nothing and be happy get ready for a global hyperinflationary depression by design
It's not housing, the root of the problem is the accumulation of huge amounts of debt.
Shouldn’t try so hard to compete internationally. If it were up to me we’d be focusing on a self-sustaining economy and population size not endless growth and corporatism.
@@mogznwaz agreed
...you're getting there. Would it surprise you to hear Architects were arguing about this twenty years ago? Some of us saw what was coming... we just didn't win the argument at the time.
Then, they put their ideas to a guy at the top with an extensive property portfolio. 😂
An it get put on a back burner.
We know lol 😆
Shame those architects weren't also arguing for houses to be designed with high energy performance.
This is their primary role, I wouldn't say politics is?
You should read a bit more about building procurement before you blame architects
@@alanbeveridge4416 I am an Architect, and I know all about building procurement thank you. Not all of us run to the same font of excuses.
@@SeventhCircleID An excuse if an architect has no control over quality, safety or performance through design and build contracts?
I'm a landlord (hisss, booo etc) thought this was a great conversation. I agree that the changes in the 80s with right to buy and AST's started the ball rolling in this direction but also private landlord numbers really took off when access to finance became easier. With 20k deposit you can get a BTL mortgage on a terrace house in the North West.I work on construction sites and and joiners and plumbers are doing these so they have an asset to sell at retirement, it isn't always about making loads of profit out of renters. The property I have is for supported living so doesn't affect the private market in the same way, I know a lot of people doing this too. I think this podcast and the new statesman can be a little london centric. The NW needs a lot of rentable housing, some people will never save for a depoist even if values were only three times wages like in the 70's then there's students, young professionals etc.
Last point is that rent controls from the examples I have read about led to a worsening of rental supply and increased rents like in Scotland and Berlin but I believe the latter have now repealed that legislation to help increase supply.
I would have liked to hear Vickys' thoughts on Scotland and why rent controls haven't seemed to be help.I'm sure she would have given an eloquent answer.
I'm pretty sure rent controls will happen though with labour coming in so will have to just roll with it. Just hope it doesn't make matters worse
Between 2004 and 2009, 1.5 million people came to uk.
These were EU citizens arriving and needing housing. This had a huge impact on our housing resource.
Careful now. The emperor is wearing beautiful robes.
There was some lack of planning wasn't there
meanwhile 1.5m brits bought properties in Portugal, Span, France, Italy, Thailand and Philipines. This had a huge impact on housing.
@@TruckingBritain Thailand I can speak on because I looked at buying a place there. Forginers are not allowed to buy land. You can buy a condo but not a farm. In that example you are wrong.
@@TruckingBritainsix separate countries......one country with very limited space.
Oh, and many of the Brits leaving will be wealthy people buying outright and helping the local economies.
I worked in public sector housing management for over 40 years and I absolutely agree with you. The problems really began with the Right To Buy and the introduction of ‘assured tenancies’ in 1989, which basically scrapped all protections for tenants. Scrapping of new build housing standards and a lack of enforcement of building regulations have encouraged the familiar ‘race to the bottom’ in so many aspects of life in the U.K.
What a complete generalisation.
Unlike you I build houses not just talk about it. Building regulation is robust with decent on site interaction with building control officers. Houses built today are much better than houses built in the 1970’s some workmanship is questionable as in any industry, but they are a minority, most buyers are happy with their new home.
Right to buy was a good policy, where it failed was not building replacement housing. That said the UK has 19% of its housing stock as subsidised, compare that with Germany that has only 7% of its housing stock as subsidised.
Ultimately councils restrict house building by refusing planning permissions. They do that routinely, then Councillors stand up and say there’s a housing crisis! They caused it.
I absolutely agree with you. XXX
@@graemebarriball303I have worked in social housing but not recently, I stopped being in that role in 1996, although I do still have a keen interest in what is happening.
The Right to Buy, in my opinion was a disaster for our country, the vast proportion from proceeds of sale went to Government and were not able to be used for reinvestment.
Social housing is one of the only "benefits" where applicants are approved but never reassessed, I think this would be an obvious way to continue, applicants could and imho should, be reassessed for smaller/larger housing requirements and for income and situation of circumstances reassessment, it would also see a regular (maybe every 2 years for example) inspection of stock.
I can only go on what I hear about private sector new build and again, only what I hear and understand, building materials and regulations have come a long way and restrictions are tight, as you suggest, but snag lists are like war and peace, I personally only hear bad reports and would never buy a new property, even if I could afford to, maybe you are the exception rather than the rule? XXX
Let's not blame the 1.5 million legal migrants that came in 2 years that need housing, it's like stuffing a teddy that's full but you just keep going till it bursts
@@user-tm7ld1dx6f can’t be them helping to cause the problem! 🤣
I think MPs being landlords is absolutely connected. When I was at uni ten years ago, it was not illegal to rent homes that were classed unfit for human habitation. Those laws that mandate that responsibility have come in pretty recently, and were voted down by parliament initially.
Also, further to your later point, when I lived in Cardiff most of my landlords were not based in the UK. They were from the Middle East and their properties were managed by letting agencies. But that meant whenever anything broke, the letting agent was meant to contact the owner before any action could be taken. I lived in one property for 14 months, while the letting agent had zero contact or responses from the owner, meaning nothing got fixed, and we had to contest losing our deposits for fixing things ourselves.
Renting is punitive as hell.
Section 21, sale and non replacement of council houses, buy to let mortgages, homes being bought by overseas investors, houses as investments not homes...
F****king section 21! the owners used it within two years twice the section 21 clause. We were forced with SCHOOL AGE KID two move twice. It is costly and stressful and not necessary. Please stop this madness. UK living is inefficent and it is hurting everyone. Living in a owned or rented housing is a basic need. How on earth capitalism managed to get us this far.
And massive inward pressure on housing because of uncontrolled net incoming migration..... 750k new face last year has a direct impact on cost of rent and property. No way to keep up with that level of migration.
I got 1 more th-cam.com/video/PTc_5dmKdck/w-d-xo.htmlsi=es9MHq-hDzHw3EZy
@@Roadrunner_1000 This is the evil which you must stand.
A home is a home not a toy for the markets.
@@Roadrunner_1000 I'm very grown up. Take your condescending waffle somewhere else.
If rent controls are introduced, expect to be living in your car or a tent. The queue for rent controlled accommodation in Sweden is 30 years long.
Ok boomer. Well if that's not possible, then we'll need to remove the pension payouts for all the pensioners who owns a house. Why should we pay taxes for people who got rich by abusing the system? You see, it's easy to find solutions when you're not concerned by the outcome. Especially since our generations won't get any state pension when we're old anyway.
Amazing, so you’re saying there aren’t ANY houses?
Could it be that humans, and indeed certain stupid ones, control too much stuff?
If that occurs, I have 20 tenants who will be looking for a new home as I will be selling and investing my money elsewhere. It's pretty simple really. It is MY choice to be in this market place but if it is not attractive I will leave.
@@pauldavidthomasfrodo Exactly
@@pauldavidthomasfrodo You mean greedy landlords who see hoarding properties as a legitimate source of income will sell, making prices more affordable for first-time buyers? I’m not a fan of rent controls but you’re making a convincing argument.
Watching people who still do not understand supply and demand is beautiful to watch. Not one mention of the problem
These people could be in power one day. Check what that did to Eastern Europe. It’s catching up now, but 35 years of free markets have not fully fixed the scars of the types of policy she wants. Scary.
@jimsully9851 The trouble is that we still don't have free markets, especially when it comes to house building. Try building a house or buying land, completely controlled by the government, and takes years just to get permission
The problem is that the currency has lost 99 percent of the purchasing power guess what is coming next a hyperinflationary depression by design you'll own nothing and be happy wef policy is happening right now that is why the stock market and property prices are skyrocketing were are the solution for the people perhaps you can tell us all
@DarrenSmith-tq2xz yes and supply and demand even with inflation
This woman is highly impressive. Knowledgeable, calm, concise, explains difficult concepts in a translatable way, and has a very soothing, persuasive voice.
You can tell the housing crisis makes her angry, but that anger is measured, which is great rhetorically since it makes her very difficult to disagree with.
We need to see much more of her.
Why so angry after making a career out of it?
Ah yes becuase no one has ever worked in an industry has tried improve it, you a cowboy builder by any chance?
This is stupid like there's not a relation to the 1.5 million legal migrants that came in 2 years, the more demand there is higher the prices are going it's not rocket science
Except she misses several points that are important and downplays the signficance of immgration in this equation which is completely false. Keeping large stocks of "social housing" is not a good idea for the tax payer. People when offered housing for nothing will take it, many people i went to school with had one plan only at the time, get their bird knocked up and get a council house, and never work. That was a problem which needed to be tackled. They obviously did not enough on that til they capped the amount of housing benefit you could get, and limited child benefits to two kids. But i imagine they still need to go further on this, people need to be held far more responsible for their own decisions regarding having a family. The immigration point is highly relative to house prices, when you take it into context along with numbers of properties being built. Incoming migration helped create the reduced numbers of family homes in all major cities, particularly London, but all were similarly affected as HMOs became more attractive to landlords. Immigration also keeps wages low, first rule of ecconomics, supply and demand - in exactly the same way it affects housing availability and affordability. Hence last year with 750k new people arriving net into the UK rents in London for example leapt by more than they had in a decade, with multiple people viewing and entering bidding wars to get the place they wanted. It is disingenuous to say anything else. And no, just because you exist does not mean you deserve anything.
You need someone who realizes what the actual problems are and wants to offer solutions. She isn't it. She's wrong on quite a bit of the issue and nearly all of the solution. Letting fees and that strange land rent system on leasehold property were awful though but one is gone and the other is apparently going away.
Housing is a supply and demand issue like any commodity. No one wants to talk about that though, they want to talk about "solutions" that have already been tried and failed. You must build more houses, of all types and sizes. Tiny houses/apartments could help in the worst markets (basically those around London) but one way you can increase supply is to move jobs to places where houses are cheaper and more plentiful. The government could move most of their jobs out of the capital to the northern cities with empty houses and make a sizable dent. Just an example.
Increasing density and brownfill or whatever you call it are not a solutions, but ways to nibble at the edges. You'll need to build new cities and towns in some of the green spaces. The idea the country can continue to grow in basically the same footprint is an absurdity that UK housing policy essentially embraces as gospel truth.
London population 1990 6.7M / 2024 9.7M 44% rise. UK population only rose 18% in that time. London is just too successful, too popular. Nice and cheap here in the sticks.
London isn't successful. It's a dump but we have allowed in millions of extra people. Halt immigration and property prices and rents will drop but not one person has mentioned this.
Yup, would like to move there, leave this hell hole to the crusties and cannabis fiends that are this channels demographic.
And a 2 hour journey into work waking up 4 o clock and becoming a husk for a London company that don’t care about your welfare. Who wants to do that?
Add illegal immigration and the figure is more like 12/13 million in london
wait a minute, if your flat is worth 2mill, how much will the house you want to buy be? the madness is that it's phantom equity, which you can only benefit from if you leave the country to somewhere with sane house prices.
That's it.
Lets say a house is double the price of a flat.
My flat is worth 300k. Ive got about 200k equity. A house in the area is about 600k. Id need to find 400k
If my flat fell to 200k. Id have 100k equity. The house might fall to 400k.
Id need to find 300k.
Let the fuckers drop.
Long term fixed rates are not common in Australia - USA yes, Australia no..... pretty much the same as UK
Things are out of control. £800-1100 for a 1 bedroom flat is insane. That with council tax is 1/2 my pay. 😢
Move then. Get a job somewhere more affordable. Nothing is going to change with regards to rent cost until more social housing is built and immigration put under control.
It's now £1100 for a room! In London! But also the landlords costs have gone up meaning they can't lower the rent. It's a nightmare both ends.
Advocating Rent controls speaks to an underlying lack of economic understanding. The housing market as a whole is inflated and it’s not just about rentals, that is just a side effect. It’s already not economic to be a landlord in much of Britain which pushes rents up as people leave the sector. Beneath it all? Too many people in the country for the resources we have and too much prime London property used as a piggy bank not a home. The latter should be heavily taxed.
Just when I thought that you would know what is really happening you mentioned the same thing as most of the people on here we are in the beginnings of a global hyperinflationary depression by design you'll own nothing and be happy wef policy is being implemented wait until the debt market implodes stock markets and property markets will fall off a cliff
Boomers don’t want more houses to be built because they won’t be able to squeeze as much out of the younger generations. They’ve been leeches their whole lives, they’re not going to change and they’re still in charge.
I live in London and am surrounded by upper middle class peers. It’s very common for them be to be given a few hundred thousand by a grandparent to buy a home.
These sorts of people don’t want to raise the playing field for the rest for us as their status will be lowered. They do not want to the rest of us to be levelled up.
The average English person does not like to admit that they are struggling either.
The government we have here has recently applied rent controls here in my city, Barcelona, what a disaster! After only a few months there are now about 20% less apartments for rent in the city and it's going to get worst, rent controls don't work!
Of course there are 20% less properties. Because some landlords are forced to sell up. But the properties don’t just disappear. They’re just being lived in by owners instead of renters…. Rent controls are literally the only way to immediately combat the housing crisis.
@@joshuastebbing7408 or left empty as it costs less than renting it out
@@joshuastebbing7408- why comment when you don’t know what you’re talking about? You want something to be true, so not having the information means you can ignore any facts and say what you want. Look up housing density in owner occupied verses PRS and see why what you’re saying isn’t correct. Also, look at EVERYWHERE rent controls have been tried and just how successful they are. New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland. It’s a socialist disaster. The only answer is to build more.
Same in Ireland rent controls followed by a famine in rental supply.
I remember Spain were facing major issues when housing developers built so many houses for foreign buyers, and ended up flooding the housing market and no one wanted to buy them ...... ...... Now strangely, there are shortages and higher rent ..... ...... Spain can't afford to kick foreigners sorry Europeans out of Spain because Spain economy rely on tourism mainly ...and Cofid19 showed how fragile Spain and Portugal economies and without bailouts by EU, Spain would've gone into civil unrests .....
Immigration is a big contributor to the housing crisis. I am a landlord in Australia and Germany and nearly 75% of the applications were recent arrivals.
Keep saying no. You will be greatful in the long run.
It is the single biggest factor, i'm tired of these posh muppets not seeing the bleeding obvious, millions of people who SHOULD NOT BE HERE
@davestevenson9080 No, it's not the biggest factor at all. The biggest factor is we have a subversive government that is deliberately planning all this nonesense.
Running dark agendas.
Which country did you emigrate to ?
They know very well. They have bought everything to house them, get the grants and nick the money.
It’s called Stakeholder Capitalism.
Not landlords, the correct term is home scalpers.
Property pirate's.
They are helping drive economic growth
@@HarleyButler-ox3qn How does an economically parasitic behaviour 'drive economic growth'?
@@enisylo It increases wealth inequality which is exactly what this government want.
@@HarleyButler-ox3qn Not for ordinary people. GDP went up but GDP per capita went down.
Rent control aint going to fix the problem. Its "Supply & Demand".
With the lack of social housing avaliable or being built aint keeping up with the demand.
Landlords/investors are actually turning old derelict run-down properties and turning them into housing stock. Therefore helping the housing crisis.
landlords don't help the housing crisis, not the majority anyways, this has been proven by countless studies across the UK, Europe, USA etc its a fallacy that gets thrown around anytime people complain about housing costs. Don't let them fool you.
What happened to council homes?
@@samuelmelton8353 Margaret Thatcher introduced a scheme to allow tenants to buy their council homes at a heavily discounted rate from 1979.
those flats are generally shocking, making homes out of buildings that were never meant to be lived in, with totally inapropriate layouts and materials, either too few windows or all windows that can't be opened and not replacing centrally controlled air conditioning because it cost too much. there are so many examples of this and it's down to the fact that planning regulations didn't require conversions from commercial/industrial buildings to housing to meet the same standards as new builds (which aren't even that great in the first place compared to a lot of comparative countries).
we don't just need any old housing, we need suitable housing that enables people to live comfortably, healthily and securely which is required so they can contribute to society. this is why we need regualtions on our housing sector and people using that as an excuse why supply isnt' high are missing the point. supply is controlled by the big developers who land bank and don't want prices to stabalise since it means they don't make as much money.
The sub prime wasn’t caused by people on low incomes getting 100% mortgages, it was caused by homeowners remortgaging their homes to release cash and these loans with ridiculous high interest being packaged up and sold as securities on Wall Street.
The definition of sub prime is denoting or relating to credit or loan arrangements for borrowers with a poor credit history, typically having unfavourable conditions such as high interest rates.
Sub prime didn’t pay and couldn’t pay. the spaghetti packaging and layering of the debt just made the situation a whole lot worse for the world.
And know what 2008 2.0 has already started get ready for a global banking calaps and a hyperinflationary depression this is all by design I'm afraid for those people who haven't listened to the wornings over the last 5 years
Before COVID I rented out a large room in my house for £600 a month. Now I'm thinking of getting another tennant. But since then the government/central bank has increased the money supply by over 30%. If you were to say to me I can't increase the rent to get at least the same in real value, then I'll just leave the room empty. Even landlords with multiple properties are in basically the same position. The problem is the fiat currency being inflated away leading to lower real wages, while places to rent are limited. Landlords are not going to provide accomodation without a profit incentive. The UK needs to allow wages to rise, tax workers far less, cut government spending and immigration dramatically, and build more houses. And ultimately have some kind of return to a harder currency. Rent controls will just cause a shortage of places to rent.
I agree with almost all of your points, hence offering to challenge Vicky on her points. People are far too quick to assume that the symptom is the problem. The manipulation of the debt based (let's call it what it is now) currency, the unbelievable lack of accountability on spending, the assumption that all people with more than one home are greedy investors (instead of trying to find a way to level the aforementioned playing field) and house numbers vs population are closer to the root causes. Responsibility and accountability are even closer.
While a room in a house might increase the housing stock - it is not a good place to live and raise a family.
As for landlords who own houses and leave them unoccupied - quite frankly I don't see why they should deserve any sympathy because those houses would be better utilised if sold to a working family who do real jobs instead of soaking up other people's wages.
It was the 1988 Housing Act that removed rent control when Thatcher was PM.
Vicky obviously cares about getting housing for all and is trying to fix the house crises. She is very articulate, but I dont agree will all her thoughts.
1. House Price Inflation only favours those on their last house, or BTL investors. Everyone else ends up paying more when they trade up their house. Even some of those coborts who directly benefit, will end up paying large deposits for their kids to help them onto an unaffordable housing ladder.
2. The Private Rental sector is not "unregulated". It is full of rules and regulations, many of which are simply not needed (e.g. Legionairres certificate ). This is especially true in Scotland.
3. 9% Rent inflation is not " far above recent inflstion".
4. Rent controls are not the answer. Building more homes to increase rental home supply is the answer.
5. Northern Rock did not crash because of 125% Mortgages. It crashed because it was overly depenedent of the wholsale markets for its funding. This caused the lender a liquidity crises when the markets stopped lending. The government actually made a profit for the sale of the good bank to Virgin Money and the back bank to other investors.
The main fix is to build more homes, especially good quality council homes. Labour when they come in, need to start doing this. Constantly focusing on Landlords with more admin and more restrictions, leads to Landlords leaving the market, leaving less homes for rental, and ultimately renters worse off.
All thay said, I totally agree that owning your own home helps drive the econony, supports a healthy population, and reduces crime, and other bad outcomes.
Building isn’t a fix if the same multiples of difference in pay to home prices remains as is.
If you build lots more houses that create more supply, you push the house prices down. This is simple economics.
I think you've already missed the boat. Yes rent should be proportional to income but because so many landlords have mortgages, which are based on the base rate, as soon as it becomes unprofitable, they decide to no longer to be a landlord.
Great on paper, but if you're renting because of your inability to get on the housing ladder, this won't help you short term either.
The problem that has to be address which will address all others after it is the supply of housing. There simply isn't enough and until there is, prices will continue to rise.
Whilst we do need more of a surplus housing, your analogy is flawed - many landlords have mortgages on their rented properties and use the rent to pay this off - if they stop renting the property because rental income no longer covers the entirety of / as large a portion of their mortgage then they will most likely sell. Very few landlords, except those with huge portfolios of outright owned properties, will hold onto a property they are paying the mortgage of via rental income. If you have a large subset of landlords selling for this reason the market price will fall, which will have two effects: a), it will reduce the barrier to entry for prospective first time buyers, reducing the rent burden and thus rent competition and b) it will also decrease the cost of entry for prospective landlords, which will balance out the viability of rental income as a means of paying mortgage, but at the same time at a reasonable price for the renter whilst no longer being a get rich quick scheme for the landlord. We do need more houses, yes, but it is speculative overvaluation that truly amplifies inequality between home owners / renters - a rent cap does not necessarily eliminate the function of a landlord, it simply brings balance to the equation - if rental prices are fair and give realistic space to save in order to buy, then the concept of renting from a private landlord doesn't have to be so negative.
Not long ago a BTL investor had a tax advantage over a owner occupier plus generally BTL mortgages are interest only . Banks make a profit from lending and investing , the Banks are the ones responsible for S21 and the Banks are the ones who have allowed property prices to become unrealistic
@minktronics I've acknowledged that they would sell. My point which you've missed is just because another house becomes available on the market doesn't mean the average renter can suddenly buy it.
Be realistic. The vast majority of homes are privately owned without a mortgage in the UK. I found a figure suggesting there are 13m outstanding mortgages as of Dec 23 but I'm not sure how reliable that is. That said I've heard several figures in the past that put mortgage based property ownership in the 50% region.
Let's just for argument sake suggest 25% of those are but to let or private rental and 50% of those decide to sell because it becomes unprofitable. At best you've found 6% of all housing stock on the market. This is barely going to make a dent on the price of housing because the population is still expanding.
Unless enough homes are built to outstrip demand, prices will never fall more than what the base rate of interest dictates. Just won't happen.
@dolphine675 Not at all. The majority of property in the UK is mortgage free.
@@SammyInnit yes they are but that not because they were purchase last week it's because they have been family owned when if you really wanted to and did what old people call "hard work " you could pay off the mortgage in 5 years try doing that now. BTL got a tax advantage for buying an asset over your owner occupier and the loans were cheaper , I have friends who have BTL loans and live in the house themselves to prove this .things have changed slightly now but this corner that renters find themselves in is a result of unexplainable house price rises in economic terms other than rent is uncontrolled , banks demanded section 21 to protect their loans for BTL , in reality there is no requirement to sell a property vacant but landlords being low on IQ always want to kick the tenants out as a way of increasing rents this scenario was only ever going to increase house values in one direction when the population of the UK is going up by 3/4 of a million per year , house builders are big businesses with bank and investor backing so building housing to meet demand will effect profits .One is always left asking what do the government actually do other than collect tax now and screw the British people
Rent controls are going really well in Scotland! It has resulted in more rapid contraction of supply and even higher percentage increases in rents than in England over the same period.
I also find it economically illiterate to deny that the rules of supply and demand don’t apply to housing when it comes to immigration?
The answer is to build a million new homes and drastically cut immigration.
Yes, rents set to price in an increase ahead of the freeze and now put up beyond the cap since everyone else did it. Total disaster for renters and worked out well for landlords who didn’t sell.
Immigration is by far the biggest issue.
“Social housing” sounds wonderful. But I grew up on three different council estates in the 60s and 70s and it was pretty shite, although admittedly affordable for my parents to afford. I have seen great social housing in places like Germany and Norway. So why is so good? Because Germans and Norwegians lived there not Brits.
Greed does need to regulated, and human rights need to have more freedom.
Making a basic necessity a central asset is a huge problem.
exactly
Imagine playing the same game with food or oxygen 😂
The most pressing issue is the economic inequality between ‘us’ and the super rich! Not the ever decreasing middle classes (some of which may be a landlord with one extra property, struggling to survive!) and the even poorer poor who are now going to food banks! Tax the super rich and corporations who don’t pay ANY tax at all and are controlling governments! Landlords NEVER evict without a reason! There is ALWAYS a reason! Once the new bill goes through…. Landlords will just GIVE the reason! It won’t make ANY difference!!
Yeah, World Government, totalitarian Marxism now to impose these punitive confiscations! What could go wrong?
It all flows from the property scam sugar.
Found the landlord
they do pay taxes net profit down and revenue up it costs up
Turkeys don't vote for Christmas we can do something about this and that's refuse to vote for anyone and then we can get back control over our own lives at the moment we are plantation workers of slavelander Goarge Osborne and these pupetitions wouldn't get away with allowing Google and others to pay 0.5 percent in tax
Rent controls do not work. It reduces rental supply and when new contracts are issued they would be at a higher rate.
And because areas fluctuate massively in value, it will not be possible to set a blanket limit on rent or rent control.
To bring rents down you need to reduce immigration and give tax breaks to attract small landlords back to the marlet.
More supply like there used to be was why we had lower rents.
Also how about controlling immigration, 2nd and overseas buyers, just saying
yeah Brtis shouldnt be allowed to buy properties in Spain and Portugal. Agreed.
@@TruckingBritainI don't think Brits turn the house into a dwelling for seven people
@@TruckingBritain neither in France, and Italy please
Controlling migration? At what cost? Getting rid of the state pension?
@@esoteric_chaos Housing benefit costs for the government would go down as rents go down. The UK would be better off with around 15 million population, there is no need to try to keep the numbers growing like they are. The financial system also needs an overhaul, at the moment its all based on shortage and having people run around all week just to keep a roof over their head. Its not necessary.
I wish they spoke more about increasing the housing supply and zoning laws
A landlord can offer rent control in exchange for tenant control. If a landlord can't quickly evict a bad tenant then losses are greater than having cheaper rent.
Wow great guest. Well spoken, concise and engaging
@@Roadrunner_1000 Boohoo the landlords don't like to hear the facts. LOL
@@Roadrunner_1000 you would be one ruling over a slum.
@@Roadrunner_1000 we will have tent city's the way we are going.
@@Roadrunner_1000 robbing Petter to pay Paul is all anyone can do at the minute.
I ain't playing my violin for landlords.
They have bled me dry.
Fxxk em. Hope they double the taxes on the free loaders 😉lol 😆
@@Roadrunner_1000 We can't pass on our tax responsibility to some other cxxt. The more money they charge the more tax they pay. Percentages are clever like that.
You just think people are thick.
Rent prices have always gone up like clock work. It has got nothing to do with tax.
Or inflation.
Or market forces.
Or Global conditions.
Or Houthi rebels hijacking ships.
Or whatever else your trying to sell us.
It goes up like clock work because landlords think they are entitled to do it.
They want more money.
That's the only reason.
The truth about Britain's housing crisis is that the supply is being stripped by demand. We can dance around this massive 'elephant in the room' until the cows come home, but the population explosion we've undergone over the last two decades has come with a significant price. Inflation, interest rates, regulations etc all play a part, but there's no getting away from the the basic market forces of supply being outstripped by demand.
Great interview. Love the housing Theory of Everything. Such an underdiscussed and underreported yet profoundly important area of our lives. Top work to Vick S and PolJoe. Maybe a part 2 soon to discuss the creeping insurgency of institutional landlords, which may be worse than the privateers and their letting-agent cousins.
Sally Spratt’s reply to Politics Joe’s question, as to whether large-scale immigration intakes are negatively impacting someone’s capacity to purchase or, rent an abode, was the atypical response you’d expect from a brain-pickled person of her generational ilk. Spratt agreed that, “immigration does have a negative impact on affairs, but it’s not in the way that the people who invoke it. As though there is there is some game that if you have a housing crisis, that unless you cut immigration then you can’t fix the problem.”
She then tersely makes it perfectly clear to Joe that; she doesn’t want the discussion to have anything to do with immigration. Immediately after she that meanders off on to an Alice in Wonderland dimension of how “everyone has a right to housing (after all, as she makes it clear, it’s a human right).” Well, that might be morally correct.
However, Sally, that’s not how life pans out: surely, you can’t be that gullible as to imagine for a solitary moment that, every person in Britain - let alone on the planet - will be magically allotted a cozy abode to live out their lives in?
As for, “everyone having a fundamental right to a decent place to live in”, I’ll bet my right arm being amputated that, if you were in charge of dolling out abodes for the down and outers that White-British, and other Euro-types would be at the bottom of the list. And I decipher this would be the case, because of you being so allergic to having to confront the indisputable, and sordid reality that LARGE-SCALE immigration into Britain is the indisputable crux of the problem.
Unfortunately, because you’re smack bang in the middle of a generation that has been swamped with being made feel guilty for all the travesties encumbering the billions of Third Worlder’s. Hence, the guilt you would have been bombarded with at school, and social networks makes it impossible for you realise that, mass-immigration is the irrefutable nub of the housing crisis. And, INDEED, the more dire situation of immigrants colonising swathes of Britain: and, also, throw in Canada, the US, and Australia, too.
Finally, harking back to Spratt mentioning “the people who invoke it”, clearly designates that, the “people” she’s inherently referring to are those terrible xenophobic White racists, who take umbrage with London and Birmingham now having non-whites as the majorities of these cities.
the main cause of soaring rents is the double whammy of bank deregulation - allowing near unlimited debt creation - and QE money printing. This has hit the economy twice over. On the demand side, people's wages are being sucked into rents meaning they have less left over to buy products and services, and therefore businesses are getting fewer customers. On the supply side, businesspeople are deciding NOT to invest in products and services and instead into a business that creates NO WEALTH: letting property. Result: An economy collapsing and reliant on 0% interest rates to survive
This is not just about equity and fairness, this is about the survival of the economy
My UK taxes don’t owe a Sudanese illegal immigrant a home, whether there are enough dwellings or not.
If it were only just tax. How much debt are we in. It's unsustainable. never any talk about it we can actually afford to be the world's welfare state.
Rent controls ,the one solution thats not actually worked anywhere.
Give 100 billion to Ucraine
hahah.... blame tories for that, i hope you didnt vote for them the last 14 years+
Yes. Brits should just enjoy the luck that pure chance has brought them in not being born in Sudan.
@@stevepetty7009 I will.
If you introduce rent control, landlords will just sell up, they are not in it for a charitable reason. Council Housing should Never have been sold off. Big Mistake..
Rent control has been tried and tried and failed and failed and failed. And yup, I no longer am a landlord, too much interference.
Yet if a million ex council houses were "renationalised" that'd be a million fewer properties on the cheaper end of the FTB market.
So true, i have sold 3 already and have 2 left to go.............. the RRB has been the final nail. Let the councils house the needy, last time i looked i was an investor not a charity.
Weird that housing price inflation is the only inflation we deem justified . It’s been a catastrophic experiment.
It's interest rates. You pay one price but add interest and suddenly you need house prices to go up because by the time you finish paying for your home you've probably paid for it twice. The "market" is a con.
True...but government and central banks openly aim for 2% inflation. Why? Wouldn't it be a good thing if all prices went down??
For the population, yes. For governments and central banks, no.
The council houses that were sold off haven't ceased to exist. They've simply changed from being (relatively) cheap homes for rent to (relatively) cheap homes for sale.
You guys are f***ing amazing for bring coverage to this issue. Thank you so much!!
Can we have food heating and fuel controls as well?
Why not clothing cost controls? and public travel cost controls as well? 🤦♂️
You want nationalisation! Shame we privatised everything.
@@aries6776 That’s exactly my point. Where does government intervention stop?
Are we in the UK now communists?
@@aries6776 communism is what most people are asking for in reality .. which means more poverty for them.
@@aries6776 you want comunism, like Cuba, Korea, Russia... LOL
@@aureliomedina460 No I want something like Norway, where the state owns majority shares in all their energy companies so that they have the highest standard of living in the world. Sounds terrible doesn't it? LOL
Are they really small or are the table and microphone just big
She's tiny
I'm guessing they bought that table to comply with COVID 2m distancing rules
I am an out of work gas engineer. Why does the government not create a civil building service to help people that are qualified and competent, but don't have the experience to gain employment in athe private sector. I invest 6.2k and 6 months of unpaid work to het myself qualified and the army and government have just abandoned me.
There are people unemployed with skills like me that can make difference if there was leadership, but that is what happens when your counrltry is lead by bankers!
My grammerly clearly wasn't working 😅
Same is happening in the US. landlords/realtors/private equity are all colluding together using algorithms from Real Page to jack up housing prices to unrealistic prices. I had to move in with my parents because rent prices are so high and i make 80k a year. Rent prices are $2,000 no utilities included for 800sq ft 1 bed 1 bath. If you include Utilities your looking at $2,500 a month. House prices are so messed up houses that were $200,000 are now $400,000 - $500,000. I saw a house on the market for $500,000 that was on a small plot of land and it was burned to a crisp.
This system is rigged by the rich and greedy, they need to pay.
Weldone for taking a stand. Too many just put up with it.
Yes migrants might take the worst accomodation INITIALLY. That is still accomodation that would have been available for a native citizen who might have generations living in the UK. Even then, where do you think that migrant will go once they are established ? They don’t magically disappear.
How can you straight face say that population increases don’t factor in.
It’s not the only factor but it is a key factor.
Also wealth inequality and older generations sitting in incorrectly sized houses and lack of social housing.
Completely correct, the native population is shrinking, the housing problem would eventually sort itself if we stopped importing people by the hundreds of thousands
@@mossfoster5317 Cool. You ready to go pick fruit and veg in the fields?
@@daveturner4134 Yes of course, we shouldn't have the argument of "we need immigrants to do the jobs we don't want to" if we're not prepared to do those jobs we shouldn't expect anyone else to. It's morally corrupt. We used to be a nation of farmers providing for themselves and the country now most people work in an office pushing paper around contributing nothing of actual value.
If we didn't have such a high number of people competing for housing, the prices of housing would go down. If there is a shortage of people looking for jobs, employers at these farms would be forced to raise wages which would make these jobs more attractive for the native population who have higher standards than the immigrants who go for these jobs (generally speaking).
All in all, the British worker would be in a more advantageous position if the country was not constantly importing immigrants. Engels made this point in The Condition of the Working Class in 1842 and explains it in more detail. @@daveturner4134
She did say it was a factor
If you increase the population by 15% ish in 20 years through immigration then what do you expect is going to happen ?
This is an excuse. Not the main reason. It is wealth inequality and the unregulated free market economy that are to blame
@@stevepetty7009
No immigration might not be the main reason but no one can discount that it isn’t a significant reason. You think it’s down to wealth inequality….but surely if there was less wealth inequality and the average person was better off then house prices would be even higher.
It's basic supply and demand
@@jackkruese4258 There are enough houses in the UK. Too often they are not where they are needed or they are second homes that are barely used. We need rent controls to rectify the issues that are causing the housing crisis. Sadly Around 400 households are made homeless every day in the UK. This drives up costs for Councils. It causes people to end up further in debt. It can be linked to increases in mental health issues and crime. We cannot go on like this.
@@stevepetty7009 That was the advantages that brought a lot of the immigrants to the country in the first place...
also possible to refinance the fixed rates loans when rates drop. you will pay some fees which can be rolled into the loan, typically there is a savings.
the uk system seems crazy. i guess it explains grand designs.
The idea of a 40-year mortgage is truly insane. It can only make sense for someone who knows that he or she will inherit a great deal of wealth in future decades to pay off the debt with the proceeds of the sale of their parents' house. Cross your fingers that your parents don't get seriously ill and need round- the clock residential care that will force them to sell the house before they die...
We don't have enough houses, that's why there's a housing crisis. Rent controls will be great for those who are in a place but it's not gonna fix the underlying issue that there aren't enough homes to go around.
Plus the factor no one likes to mention for fear of being accused of bigotry. Immigration (all source)
@@kdog3908 Yea. They have changed some visa rules this year that might lower numbers buyt were so far in the hole now its gonna take decades to come out
Developers are only interested in profit so it's not in their interests to build enough affordable houses. They'd rather build less to keep demand high and less affordable to maximise profits. Unless homes are seen as a human right and the government takes charge to fix it, nothing will change. You can't entrust house building to private developers.
@@aries6776 Do you have a right to my (eventual) expertise and labour? As an apprentice electrician, what you' re suggesting is my efforts are your human right. You need people like me to build those homes. I'm not doing it for free.
@@kdog3908 Totally agree mate. The problem is the old houses that have been paid for 100x over are still going up in value due to lack of supply.
I've experienced rough sleeping. The majority of rough sleepers are not from other countries. I never saw none native English people on the streets. People from other countries are taking housing stock from native English people regardless of the state of the roof, native English are at the back of the queue when it comes to shelter.
I was brow beaten into making use of the right to buy and it lead to homelessness. Huge mistake removing housing stock from the councils.
J P Morgan is one name behind Serco swallowing up private rental housing for exclusively none native English folk.
Just spit-balling, but would rent control that is implemented based on the quality of the house work? Like if we graded the house based on general conditions then rent could be increased at a higher level. (Like, if the property didn't have a damp problem, for example.) It would incentivise landlords to keep the property in working order and would stop/restrict them from scalping the tenants?
basically you're saying you'd be happy for poorer people to live in worse conditions. Good luck with that argument.
@chaipup7045 Well not entirely. But I see what you are saying. The grading could also factor in tax bandings so that the maximum rent you could charge a tenant would be 'x' and you would subtract 'y' for every problem the property had. You might be right, but I think that is at least a little more fair?
@@andrewturnbull6144 Good luck with paying the salaries for the extra 50k housing inspectors you'd need to verify each of these claims for the whole country, on top of the new red tape, appeals process, supervisory committees etc. And if the "subtractions" would be numerous enough, then it would be easier for the owner to simply leave the unit empty and wait for the land value to accrue. The opportunity to misuse would be far too high. Tenants would be incentivized to make constant complaints or create defects themselves, since it would lower their rent, so either the inundation of claims would be rubber stamped, or cost too much to verify (e.g. let's say each defect would cut 100 GBP off the rent, the entire inspection and bureaucracy process, including verification of how long the defect existed, certification etc. would need to come under that to make financial sense, and 100 GBP is a pretty steep discount per defect already).
Thats how they do it in Germany.
@@serebii666 What would need evaluating? To put a house on the market for rental, you need to detail council tax banding, energy efficiency, local amenities etc.. Any complaints would be handled by the landlord in the first instance, and if the landlord does not resolve the issue then you would escalate it to the local authorities environmental health department, as is currently the case. But if there was an outstanding complaint that was upheld, then rent increases could not be implemented. I am aware this isn't the cure. I was just playing with idea. Thank you for taking the time to respond 😀
Being a landlord isnt a license to print money, being government is. It just so happens that property prices (and by extension rents) rise with inflation (printing of money)
taxes goes up on landlords more like it
Uncontrolled capitalisim always eats it's self.
But everyone else first.
Any capitalism eats itself. Uncontrolled, or controlled. And we always end up back at uncontrolled because of the dynamics that’s left in place, as the last 80 years has shown.
We had 14 years of a labour government, home building/council homes went down🙄
And socialism destroys itself🤭.
Indeed - both ends of the same learning curve exit here in only a few comments ….. interesting 🤔 love to debate with this lady …. As a responsible and caring landlord - we only ever nuance towards the irresponsible landlord. Love to chat with her.
Rent has gone up for one reason, more tenants than available property. This has been partly caused by all the additional costs that have been put onto landlord. It's very easy for a landlord to exit the market. You mentioned the pre 1988 rent control period, this resulted in few private landlords, so the state had to step in and buy houses and become social landlord. That takes time and society's money, need to do that first before forcing all the private landlords to exit.
Fuck private landlords.
@@sieratzkyhope you are a homeowner.
Otherwise welcome to rent inflation. 🍩
You're wrong. Rent has gone up because of currency inflation across the globe. Housing has become an 'export' along with arms, technology and pharmaceuticals. As such, new-build houses have become institutional trading chips and not homes. Likewise with population, which is necessary for a consumer economy. If the population ceases to replace itself (yes, for a number of complex reasons) then both the consumer base and the ability to build, maintain, innovate and develop also ceases to 'grow'. The global economic model is commodity based. If you don't have natural resources you have to create them. Housing is a synthetic commodity.
@@RustyOrange71 yes housing becoming international is what caused this, same shit in Australia almost at the exact same time. Same as many other coincidental phenomena
@@ironmind258 more taxes in australia means it more expesnsive to transport buildimg materials to build homes
The government will never build everyone a home because it would fuck house prices to a point that only desirable houses would be worth anything
Well said you are a national treasure as a retired senior project manager construction I see the way forward will be achieved by housing co ops what we have now is a national housing DISASTER
Thank you so much for highlighting this issue.
672,000 people settled in the UK last year, 745,000 in 2021-22.Yes there are other factors but if this figure was cut to zero we'd alleviate the stress. We simply cant keep building more houses, the queue to leave my small town stretches nearly the entire length of the town in both directions at rush hour. Yet there is 52 new houses going up next to me, 400 on the outskirts and many more in between. We simply can't handle the population size, unless you want everyone to live in a single room with a wardrobe in the corridor, I personally don't.
if you don't want imigration then you need to fundamentally change our ecomonic system, which depends on growth. reproduction rates are falling across the developed world, populations have been getting older and ths is often cited as a disater for ecomomies, e.g. Japan. so we need imigration because there is no political drive to change our economy.
@@matthewdobson100 of course we need political change, can't just put a plaster over the issue. There's fundamentally something wrong if you can't support a country with your own population when it's 60 million+
Add the dimension of disability in and you're royally screwed. You're trying to either save for a deposit on about 1.4x the average couples income (in a cost of living crisis) or you're being overlooked for rentals by people/couples with higher salary income.
If you've got mobility issues you need ground floor/bungalow or a place with lifts.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's SO much harder, and nobody talks about this element
I find it incredibly sad that so many people do not understand what is really going on.
Since 1971 we have been on a fiat system where money has not been backed by anything, but the money supply really increased after the 2008 crisis, when they bailed out the banks. Then we had COVID and the money printing really got out of control. 60% of all Dollars in existence were created in the last 3 years.
This huge debasement of money has created asset price inflation, widening the gap between rich and poor. Rent controls will not work, you have to stop the central banks from printing money to cover government deficits or it will get worse.
We work for money that they can create at a press of a button. It does not make sense right? They create more money and the amount in your bank does not change, but what it can buy falls. They are stealing from us. It is not landlords, or companies or immigrants: the money is broken.
We should be all be benefiting from the efficiency gains that technology brings us. Technology makes things cheaper and is therefore deflationary. Then why does the Bank of England have a 2% inflation target? Answer: that is the amount they can steal from us without us noticing. Right now, we can see the inflation that THEY caused - it is expressed in houses, food, rent, stock everything.
We are about to enter a significant currency crisis within the next 10 years and hope more people can learn about what is really happening, or there will be so much pain.
As soon as you say "rent control" you say "I'm a halfwit". It does NOT work. You get an even larger shortage of housing. It certainly doesn't free any up long term. Rent works on a basic supply and demand curve. You want lower rent you have to collapse house prices. The UK version of social housing is a fine if you add vast quantities of housing to that. The costs of ownership are too high and THAT is what is passed on in rent. It's not a "license to print money", most landlords made far more money on the increases in values (assuming those get realized before a much needed collapse). Rent can rarely cover costs though I do agree with the housing theory of everything in many senses. If housing is expensive, so will be everything else. Anyone excited to watch their house values increase is silly unless they are super wealthy with many properties.
What do you expect she's an academic which means she has zero common sense
@@lewisdirienzo201 I thought she was a reporter... which have zero ANY sense.
This makes no sense! The properties don’t just disappear. The houses are still there. They’re just lived in by the people who own them. What do you fail to understand about that?
@joshuastebbing7408 lol. They're are entire books on the subject. What happens depends on the market but the supply always dries up. For buying as well. When houses start to have more value empty, they are empty. You can see this in London today without rent control, certain properties can't attract renters worth the bother.
The main problem though, the that people stop delivering housing supply. This may come as a shock, but renters often can't afford to buy. A small drop in value may happen in rent control, but huge ones do not, often values continue to rise. See san francisco or new York. Jobs and growth continued regardless and values kept rising. People stopped providing housing to the rental sector though. Some bought those houses... yep, for more than they would have paid for them without rent control though. So now they pay more in insurance and taxes too.
A portion of the buildings have their use changed... to commercial. Another portion begins to be converted to larger or more luxurious units, immune to rent controls in most systems. Whatever type of housing is controlled DOES begin to disappear quite often. But certainly no one adds to the supply, and that is what us desperately needed. Supply is always the solution for a basic demand problem. Stop thinking you can outsmart the market. It's been tried and failed, then tried and failed. Tried again, and failed. More tries, more failures. It's nice for those that get it, at least for some and for a time, but often creates slums in the end to boot, rents are expensive because the cost of ownership is high because the supply is too low. Reform the planning system. Shame the nimbys (this is an American term but brits use it). Impose community nimby taxes on communities that do not meet goals set by the national government.
@@joshuastebbing7408 Agree they do not, but this is trotted out all the time, as a landlord myself i can say this........ Those who can afford to buy can also afford to rent, those who can ONLY afford to rent, CANNOT afford to buy. Get the problem with fewer rental properties ?
Now I know where my dad's glasses from the early 1980s went.
lol
Great input there mate
Immigration both legal, illegal, asylum obviously impacts the demand for housing supply in this country, you either increase supply or you reduce the demand, govts of both colours have failed to do either.
Its a great argument for reducing mass migration to limit demand
Rent controls are not the solution. If you force a private owner to reduce the price of the rent they will take the houses from rent. If you want them to reduce the cost of rent, the government should give a tax discount whenever they follow the regulation. Otherwise, nobody will be interested in letting their investments.
what do they do with it if they dont rent it out
@@garyowen4112 Yes. They don't rent it out. Because if they did so they would lose money. Which means even less stock of houses to rent, which means prices go up. Again.
@@spanishjohn420 so what do they do with it
If they stop renting and sell instead that would be better
Or they just keep it as house prices only ever go up... i know a guy who has an enoty house he cba to rent out hut isnt seling because he doesnt need the money... just has a 3 bed in a satellite town to london sitting empty.... and thats without rent controls lol
Rent controls tried in Scotland. They were told time and time again it won’t solve the problem, but make it worse. Guess what happened.
What were the stats on that? Where in Scotland exactly? And what are housing rates for council housing compared to privatized housing? Also, in what way does privatized housing help communities when the entire point of any privatized business is the company's profit over the community benefit?
Really, with 80% of our MP's in that particular industry.
You say they had some mathematical problem getting a price cap to work 🤔
After all those years at Oxford and Cambridge. Nobody quite had the skills to address the issue correctly 🙄 wow I just don't understand how that could happen.
It's almost like they did not want it to work.
🤣 🤣 🤣
@@alexanderhrabovsky1069 Reduce a supply by scaring off landlords and stopping investment. Lots of “build to rent” schemes in Scotland went on hiatus when rent control kicked in. Made new rents skyrocket. It’s a bad deal for everyone when landlords can be free enough to operate.
If you google rent increases in Scotland you’ll easily find stats. Also private housing is used as council housing. Like or not that is what the SNP and previous governments did.
It got worse!
@@juliesimpson2122 shaow did! Not my problem tho. Unfortunately my tenants problem. I just feel bad for them but that’s the market!
I get what she's saying about house prices I'm a month out from exchanging contracts and the recent fall in house prices has been great for getting me on the ladder, however I would like to see them come down further what, I had to do (in terms of saving up for the house) to get here was insane and is something I wouldn't wish on anyone as I had to put my entire life on hold for 3 years to do it, no holidays, gigs, cinema trips, festivals or any large expenses plus being so careful with day to day spending as well (all while living with my parents) it's been grim. But now I get a home to call my own that's safe and secure and my life will soon be in my hands once again and something everyone should be able to work towards without going to the extremes I have to do it. Cap rents and find someway of stagnating the housing market (building a few million new homes mostly social/affordable housing would do the trick I reckon) and I'd be fine with that, yes the value of my house might go down or stay the same but I'll take it if everyone else gets to have the security both in terms of their financial and living situation.
You are not safe until you have paid off your mortgage. What happens if you lose your job to AI like millions will?
@@blueboy77 Crime, in all seriousness though I was using safe in a relative term compared to the rental market I can't just get non faulted or if there are issue's with the house I don't need the landlord to decide whether or not it's worth sorting out I can just fix it, especially when it comes to stuff like damp/mould in the house which can affect my own health. Also I'll have enough money spare each month (because I'm not paying the current rental prices) I can afford stuff like income protection insurance to help if I'm ever out of work long term plus I'll be able to put money into long term savings each month that for that extra security. If I was renting I'd be living pay check to pay check and if anything ever went wrong I would be totally screwed and back living with my parents
5 years ago i paid 90k for my house, it needed stripping back to brick and new everything, 1 owner from the 70's and i dont have drive way, my mortgage is now 305, thanks to liz truss and a 2am re-mortgage, The house over the road from me, which at the time i got mine would have been 125k ish, 3 bed semi with a driveway, is up for and has now rented out for £900 a month in st helens... If that was my rent, i would need a 2nd income or a lodger, there is no way i could afford that, never mind save anything to be able to one day have a deposit to move out and buy my own place.
thanks to liz truss...or if you not that careless you would have picked the fix rate mortgage...you brits are not take any responsibility at all
@latakicsi2183 I was on 5 year fix at 2.1, but when she recked the place, interest rates were going to 6%, and I had the option 3.9 but had to pay to end mine as I had 11 months left, but It made more sense to end it early, so infact I had a fix and moved on to another 5 year fix...
Nearly everybody knows how to play Monopoly. Nobody seems to learn the lesson
Oh we do. But we get £70 instead of £200 for passing go. Then we have to pay £60 in rent. Then the properties are already bought.
Food and Shelter are a basic need.
You would think it was disgusting if someone bought up all the surplus food there was and drip fed it to the poor at ever inflating prices, right?
Why do we think it’s ok to do that with shelter?
In 2024, theres many ways to invest money, outside of property.
It shouldn’t be seen as an ‘investment’ class.
You should only be able to own the home you live in.
There's surplus housing? where would that be?
@@FirstLast-rh9jw One person can have a property portfolio with literally hundreds of homes.
Do you understand?
Food and shelter are provided by someone's labour...are you suggesting the government should force people to provide them so that everyone can have them for "free"??
@@maxilopez1596 Another complete misinterpretation of my post? Yes, we all know we must work for food and shelter. Can you read?
My point is that shelter needs to be outside the realm of predatory investors who use their economic advantage to buy many properties, creating the scarcity of a basic human need. Human suffering is lessened when we are able to turn basic human needs into utilities, not luxuries. It’s how we have sanitation, mains electricity, public transportation and all the things that make up a civil society.
Decades of experience worldwide has shown that the best way to balance supply and demand of resources seems to be a functioning market, with legislation to prevent monopolies. State run monopolies and state-controlled pricing do not work well, as we have seen time and again.
Switzerland has rent controls based on investment in the property and average mortgage interest rates. I quite like it now, but i honestly don't know if it helps. In such an organised and wealthy country there is underinvestment and lack of availability. Switzerland is small and highly organised which makes me doubt this system would work on a bigger scale.
This is such an interesting interview. One thing I'd love to know the answer to is, Vicky talked about why people were buying houses (as a pension).
What is the "thing" we now need to convince people to put their money into instead of property to retire, please?
Thank you for any and all help with this.
Agree on this. People who are retiring and can downsize their property and sustain themselves is a good thing. Otherwise we’ll have a lot of destitute people who are too old to work.
@@kellywalker4494 I just don't get how you retire... ideally before you're in your 70s. And in comfort. I can see why buying property appeals in that respect, so I really want to know how you put people off doing it and where else does the money go for the future?
@@simoncaine9515 I have an ISA that's tripled in value over 18 years. If rentals were drastically cheaper than mortgages then potentially I would have been able to invest more, and over time reap similar "rewards" comparable to property gains.
Sally Spratt’s reply to Politics Joe’s question, as to whether large-scale immigration intakes are negatively impacting someone’s capacity to purchase or, rent an abode, was the atypical response you’d expect from a brain-pickled person of her generational ilk. Spratt agreed that, “immigration does have a negative impact on affairs, but it’s not in the way that the people who invoke it. As though there is there is some game that if you have a housing crisis, that unless you cut immigration then you can’t fix the problem.”
She then tersely makes it perfectly clear to Joe that; she doesn’t want the discussion to have anything to do with immigration. Immediately after she that meanders off on to an Alice in Wonderland dimension of how “everyone has a right to housing (after all, as she makes it clear, it’s a human right).” Well, that might be morally correct.
However, Sally, that’s not how life pans out: surely, you can’t be that gullible as to imagine for a solitary moment that, every person in Britain - let alone on the planet - will be magically allotted a cozy abode to live out their lives in?
As for, “everyone having a fundamental right to a decent place to live in”, I’ll bet my right arm being amputated that, if you were in charge of dolling out abodes for the down and outers that White-British, and other Euro-types would be at the bottom of the list. And I decipher this would be the case, because of you being so allergic to having to confront the indisputable, and sordid reality that LARGE-SCALE immigration into Britain is the indisputable crux of the problem.
Unfortunately, because you’re smack bang in the middle of a generation that has been swamped with being made feel guilty for all the travesties encumbering the billions of Third Worlder’s. Hence, the guilt you would have been bombarded with at school, and social networks makes it impossible for you realise that, mass-immigration is the irrefutable nub of the housing crisis. And, INDEED, the more dire situation of immigrants colonising swathes of Britain: and, also, throw in Canada, the US, and Australia, too.
Finally, harking back to Spratt mentioning “the people who invoke it”, clearly designates that, the “people” she’s inherently referring to are those terrible xenophobic White racists, who take umbrage with London and Birmingham now having non-whites as the majorities of these cities.
One issue in the UK is that were love subsiding low quality people.
Me and my wife work in finance. We have 2 jobs. We save up for our new build which cost 250k. There are 8 houses around us that were given to unemployed people.
And 5 more are rented out to people on benefits who don’t work.
Jesus Christ
Rent controls are a decent, emergency, short term option. But ultimately it will fail in the longer run due to the dynamics it’s leaving in place.
Rent Control is a short term fix that creates a full on failure down the road. NYC for example.
Great work guys, esp with the factual information provided that cant be jumped around with dilly dallying
The problem is lack of supply. Rent controls aren't going to impact the quantity of houses but they will impact the quality.
there's plenty of supply. it's just people are buying too many as investments.
@@HairyStuntWaffle There isn't, we've 6million less dwellings than france who have the same population.
@@HairyStuntWaffle Shortfall of new builds was almost a million in 2022. Net immigration of 675,000 exacerbates this.
It's lack of supply and when you look closer even the new homes that are being built are not at the affordable end. Developers are chasing profits and you don't do that by concentrating on affordability. It needs to be taken out of the hands of private developers. I don't blame them as all businesses try to maximise profits but somewhere to live should be primarily a basic human right not a way to make money.
@@HairyStuntWaffledefinitely not enough supply. We are not building enough social housing year on year. The UK is massively behind on their yearly targets.
Essay Warning: I've been researching housing unaffordability for seven years and am about to start writing a dissertation on Rent Control (℅ Dr Anna Minton). After all these years of trying to find solutions, the elephant in the room is Rent Control. Why? Because it gets right to the heart of the issue, which is, in fact (drum roll)......Land values. A disappointing and slightly dull answer, but it's one of the keys that have unlocked many doors for working and middle-class people who don't want to spend 30-50% of their income on a 40-year mortgage or rent to a landlord.
Some of the main authors to thank for this conclusion are: John Doling (tries to be neutral), Danny Dorling (left), Nick Bano (left), Kemp (right), and Christine Whitehead (LSE, right). It is always good to see if there is a counter-argument of value-there isn't.
(As well as Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Keynes, Piketty, Blyth, Mazzucato, Christophers, Kenton, Richard Murry and Minton)
Why? An example: I'm a former bricklayer who ran a business in construction, so I know about house building pricing. My humble little flat;
In 1994 was purchased for £47,700 with a floor area of 42m². In 1994, it cost £600 per m² all in to build, thus £25,200 to rebuild. Therefore, 53% build/47% land value = £47,700.
Now (without all the breakdowns) it’s 33% build/67% land value! @£250K purchase price (based on £2K/m² rebuild).
The killer: in the 1950s, land values of new builds dropped to 3%. Based on those values and present-day build values (£2K per/m²), my flat would be on the market for £86,600, which equates to 2.4 times the full-time national average income (£35K). 2.4 times was also the amount needed in the 1950s-60s for an average income to buy an average 2.5 bed semi (.5 being the box room).
History 1910-1988
In 1910, 10% of the population owned 90% of property; they were the private rental sector (PRS) at their height. Then, as Vicky explained, WW1 backdated rent freeze and various forms of rent control until 1988.
What rent control does to the PRS is reduce their needed yield to make the investment worth the hassle; otherwise, they’d put it in government bonds/stock markets, etc. So they got out, often selling to their tenants (one million properties were sold by landlords to their tenants from 1920-1930). This caused the once high land values (remember the percentage of the final price) to crash. Along with government-regulated and subsidised mortgages (1% below the base rate) from highly regulated Mutual Building Societies (banks were not allowed post-1929; this reverted back in 1986 via the 'Big Bang' of financial deregulation of the banks, financial services, and stock market) as well as something called stop/go policy (a whole other subject). Suffice it to say, by the 1950s land values had dropped to between 3-15% of the total value. The government (of both colours, i.e., post-war consensus till 1979) made sure it stayed there so it could purchase land for New Towns and social housing. A win-win. All because rent control killed the commodified land value market.
By the late 1970s the PRS has dropped to 7% from 90% (1910) and there were serious conversations as to whether it would cease to exist. Nobody was crying out for more PRS, just more social housing and potential ownership.
Now? So far (still working on this concerning covering known consequences).
Rent Control has to be national, with an initial backdated rent freeze for 3-5 years. Then a form of rent control.
What form? Well, in fact, we still have a form of rent control in Shared Ownership that was never tackled in 1988.
My Shared Ownership of 50% was based on the 3% of the original purchase value the former owner purchased it on (I took over the lease), which was around £64K in 1990. Thus, minus the deposit, £32K @3% = £960 per annum divided by 12 months = £80 per month. The annual rent increase in law (at the time and in the lease agreement) is no more than RPI (now the lower CPI). Therefore, over the years, my rent has fallen behind market rents. No need for rent assessments, rent officers, the economy, i.e., national CPI inflation determines the max (some years it was 0%) amount.
In reality, it would take between 10-20 years for the housing market (i.e., land values) to return from the present 70-90% land values to 15%.
The losers:
PRS, but they have already had their dividends via unearned rent.
Those who bought at the height, falling into negative equity, I would suggest a reduction in term.
End of this ridiculous mortgage market. Variable and that's it for the life of the mortgage. Return of Mutuals only, no banks.
Banks (but they never lose).
The winners:
Everybody else.
Conclusion:
The Nordics have this idea that each generation should cut the apron strings when they leave home. So young people can (like I could, due to the accident of birth in 1964) buy a home without the Bank of Mum and Dad or grandparents' inheritance. Parents don't need to amass wealth to pass on, as the kids can afford it on their own. Now we just need to tackle university/further education (free at the point of need), child and elderly care (free at the point of need), and homelessness (Finland: we have homeless people; answer: build homes. It has worked).
I was at a Further Education event (ICE at Cambridge) and I suggested a Beveridge 2.0, to which someone (correctly) said it has to get a lot worse (i.e., 1930s) before people will respond to a modern-day Beveridge Report (1943) that was the springing point of the Attlee 1945 reformist government that gave us Nye Bevan, housing and health secretary, who led to housing reform and the NHS.
This is brief and basic.
housingresearch.solutions For further information and updates on the dissertation, if you are at all interested in 'solutions' to the problems we are already aware of.
Thanks Vicky (great book read it as soon as it came out) and Joe for a great interview.
grantbeerling4396
“answer: build homes“
question: where?
floodplain? farmland? eroding coastline? parkland?
@@balham456 Rent control will return approximately 2 million homes from the private rental sector (PRS) to either owner-occupiers or housing associations. That's 2 million properties that won't need to be built.
To achieve a surplus (to further reduce scarcity as in the 1970s), we need to build approximately 500,000 homes over 10 years. The reality is that we have the same amount of property per capita as in the 1970s, but the PRS now owns a further 14% (2 million) more than in the 1970s. This:
a) Creates scarcity, thus increasing land values and leading to higher rents and purchase prices.
b) Pressures governments to build 2.5 million homes, which often end up being purchased by hedge funds and overseas investors (e.g., Blackstone), who are influenced by certain MPs with questionable ties to gentleman’s clubs.
Houses and flats are being built everywhere, and densities are increasing. We should not be building on flood plains, but that is a topic for later discussion. Post-war governments focused on New Towns.
Building more properties is not the primary solution; it’s more important to return the 2 million properties from the PRS back to the housing market. Then we can consider where and when to add more.
Between 1920 and 1930, after 4 years of a rent freeze (1914-1918) and subsequent rent controls, 1 million properties were sold to tenants by their former landlords.
Thank you for your reply.
This is a complex issue and, as I mentioned in the original post, it has much more history, consequences, and empirical evidence than can be addressed in a thousand words or so.
Rule No. 1: Complex problems are not solved by simple, populist soundbites.
@@grantbeerling4396 are you thick or just a liar ??
where are the people going to go that live in the privately rented homes??
Wonderful post and a great response to the "build more homes" and the "it's supply and demand" crowd.
We have the homes, but they are being held to ransom in the PRS.
How are you going to manage that now 2/3 of the population are renting from the bank via a mortgage or own their home outright. Negative equity will cancel out the electoral gains from the rental sector.
We need to build 3 million council houses , but with MPs and journalist owning homes it will never happen
Who is going to pay for these houses ?
@@sarahann530 They need to be genuinely affordable.
Not these BS artificially hiked prices.
If you think £250000 for and old reconditioned council house is realistic. Then I worry for you.
@@sarahann530 middle class & upper class in higher taxes then lower class will grow bigger socialism doesnt grow middle class
@@sarahann530 it why 90% of singaporean live in public hosuing stuido apartments not own them ?? is paying rent to government crooks better no
@paulgibbons2320 Where is the cheap land , labour and materials going to come from to build these cheap house ?
The value of a home should be the cost of the land plus the cost to build it and the value based on the condition of the house but these days it's based on what estate agents believe they can get for you.
The price of housing relative to wages is at an all time high. This is what has seriously made it increasingly difficult to buy a house for the less well paid in Britain.
It's the race to the bottom all over which suits the wealthy but impedes the less well off.
This isn’t capitalism? I value your your iPhone as some plastic and cheap lcd, I demand you sell it to me for £20 !
@coderider3022 I'm afraid the seller determines the price, not the buyer. I have what you want but don't need to part with it, I can take it or leave it, either way. I don't need to sell, I'm just liquidating some goods.
Try going round a supermarket and get to the till. Your shopping is scanned and the bill comes to £96.50, for arguments sake. You say ooh that's a bit more than I wanted to pay, how about I give you £65 and we call it quits, and you see what the answer is.
It's a free market system. As private landlords move out will be taken over by private equity who will package rentals income into bonds and, rather like they did with mortgages, will then be traded like any other commodity. It's not good but legislating to stop might be tricky.
This is a great video, loved it
There are few things a govt can do to raise the GDP without a lot of effort (which never happens). Letting the rent income get so out of control is an easy way the govt helps its economy whilst doing absolutely nothing. Same for house prices, allowing greed to rule. It's a windfall to hard to reject, it's never going to happen.
which is part of the problem of just using GDP to quantify how well your economy is doing. you can increase GDP whilst the vast majority of people in the economy are getting progressively poorer. but it's ok because GDP is increasing and the rich are getting richer.
Keep devaluing the £ by printing more £’s and all assets (including housing) will continue to rise. Those with a greater demand due to scarcity will rise faster. Increasing supply is a must. Starter homes not 4 bed detached are urgently needed.
the fact there are people literally sub letting places to people barely able to make ends meet is such an atrocious situation as well.
like you may be able to find places if you're lucky for less than £500/month but if you can't jump on them 2 weeks later they've had ikea furniature put into it and it's up for £800+/month
it shouldn't be allowed at all.
Well if nothing is done. Then the India Model is where you are all headed. Slums cobbled together with whatever people can find or steal, with all the problems that brings.
Up to you Landlords, you've been warned.
Great video, very informative. To my knowledge New York and Germany both have rent control, it was Thatcher that got rid of it in the UK. Whilst we live in a democracy political pressure will eventually force the reintroduction ... as Vicki says it just a matter of when.
Old mother Thatcher would have got rid of rent control.
Have you seen rents in New York? Rent controls don't work, they didn't work in Edinburgh either. You need to actually build houses for people to live in (which Germany has done better tbf)
New York has serious housing problems. Rent controls are not a solution, they are a convenient sticking plaster to make it look like politicians are solving a problem, when really by virtue of migration policies they also happen to be the cause of.
rent control doesn't work - it makes the problem worse. Landlord sell if the rent can't cover their mortgage which restricts supply further. Rent control sounds obvious/ sexy solution but in reality its an empty policy which was a disaster in Scotland.
when people buy a home, they place themselves into the community, in an area, they also feel a responsibility to improve the community and try to reduce negative situations in the community (and im not talking blocking new builds)... How often do people say "people dont even talk to their neighbours anymore" ? Well people are fed up with making friends with people only for them to be booted out in 18 months time...
if everyone just rents they know they are there temporarily, (especially when they look into the future and think, I wont be able to afford to rent this place in X years time...) so areas become a coming and going people.
At best - they couldn't care less about: local businesses, if the streets they live on are a path of degradation , the people around them or honestly if the accomodation they live in falls into disrepair - we only have to endure this for another 12 months and were moving to X country/city/town/suburb.
At worst - you create (and it is going to hit very very soon) a majority of greater than 65 year olds that cannot afford to live anywhere because their income doesnt exist and the dole wont cover it.... and our retiring population end up in tents like in the USA.... but those with parents with multiple properties, they will be ok
Consider this: Rent has gone up because of currency inflation across the globe. Housing has become an 'export' along with arms, technology and pharmaceuticals. As such, new-build houses have become institutional trading chips and not homes. Likewise with population is necessary for a consumer economy.
I've considered that above, and concluded its "word salad".
@@FirstLast-rh9jw I've considered your reply and concluded that your intelligence is undermined by your lack of maturity. You'll be relieved to know that deferred adolescence is not necessarily permanent but you'll have to work on it. All the best.
Rent controls have the opposite effect on rents to what's intended.
It’s more nuanced tbh. Rent control by itself is a problem for the market BUT in combination with policy to build more housing is a perfect storm
@@Daveyjonesvi it's a disaster. Scotland is a prime example
She is bloody great.
People here in UK didn't stay in the same home and pay off their 25 years mortgage. When house price going up, they refinance, take cash out from the home, and spent it on holiday, new car and etc.
Because rent controls are going so well in Scotland? Seriously this is your hare brained solution? Stop persecuting housing suppliers and help them! Increase the supply and get builders building. So many landlords have been leaving the market (because of punitive tax changes, increasing difficulties dealing with delinquent tenants and fear of incoming Labour government) rental supply is at a 10 year low and as a result prices are up. What a surprise. Non of us landlord want or need insane house price increases or mad rents, we just want a stable environment to operate in. Any of us with half a brain or soul realise insane price rises are bad for society and our businesses in the long term. Again, the answer is to increase supply. Most of us are for fair and balanced changes to regulation of the rental market (condition standards, reporting rogue landlords etc) but regulations that will put us out of business will only backfire for everyone