When you are German and knows how bad the housing crisis is over here and still get referenced as a better case. It must be really horrible on the island.
I mean, I wouldnt say that its a good comparison. Germany has a lower number of houses in total because of our prevsilant renting culture, so a 3% rise is less than a 2% rise in the UK
Families are moving to poorer parts of the UK to buy homes, because they can't afford to live in the places they grew up in. Where I live in Swansea the average working family (both parents working) makes £33,000 a year. And a 3bed house will cost you about £85,000 in a bad neighborhood, £120,000 in an average neighborhood, and £180,000+ in a posh neighborhood. This is extremely good value. About as low as it gets in a city, outside Scotland. If you go two hours up the motorway to Bristol 1 bedroom flats start at about £120,000, and three bedroom houses are £250,000+. The closer you get to London, the more absurd it gets. Want to live in central London? I hope you have £500,000 for a studio apartment.
@@joshuaparrott2458 Except not, housing is not the only investment. It is even shown that you can earn more money through smart stock or ETF investments. We also have a lot more renter protection and regulation than countries in the anglo sphere and it only got bad in the biggest cities, when regulations were abolished and social housing sold in the early 2000s. Vienna is the perfect example how you can have a stable and affordable living expenses with your population being almost only renters
@@jm-je4tl i live in birmingham and there are parts of 'brum' with properties that have been empty for ages yet there are homeless people living on the streets.
I’m living in London. Every time I go house browsing, I can only cry, because houses are generally in the 400K to 1M range. The cheapest houses are more than 10X my annual salary. Even renting is a extremely unreasonable, I have to give up about 60% of my salary on the rent alone, only for a basic tiny studio apartment.
yeah man. I moved up north 2 years ago. Instead of paying 650 (bills included) for a room in a share house, me and a mate pay 500 rent (around 700 with bills) for a 2 bed house. So I pay 350 and there's just us two in the house.
1M only in London ? In villages in Luxembourg houses are already 1.4M. And in the city between 3M to 7M average for houses depending on area of the city
@@THEREALZENFORCE My job is in London, and I don’t have a Visa. I only just started working as well, so I don’t really have the ability to just pack my bags and leave just yet. There is a potential that my job might become remote at some point, which would open me up to more options.
quote - Why Are Houses Unaffordable in Britain? To ensure more people rent to keep the haves having more than the have nots. The entire system needs changing!!!
I'm of the older generation living in a flat long since paid off, but I'm feeling anything but smug, instead I'm very angry. I bought my London flat on my own when I was a primary school teacher and I was able to afford it. Now, two teachers would not be able to afford it. Along with this is the degrading of language associated with housing : every new development is "luxury", "Manhattan Style", "boutique", "designer" (particulary ridiculous as every building is designed) etc. Then we are told that in every development there must be a number of "affordable" flats. Meaningless, because a person earning the average wage has no chance whatsoever of being able to "afford" one, and even at that price, it seems that the number of "affordable" flats in a development has been allowed to shrink. The amount of social housing in London has dramatically fallen since my purchase, and many people who had lived in an area all their lives have been forced to relocate away from friends and support networks. It's all so unfair, but I see no chance of change because those in power are all too happy to let this continue, although they may shed crocodile tears from time to time.
The result of foreign investment in the UK and also banks generating digital cash for mortgages with no back-up. In reality banks should destroy every time there is a repayment to each digitally created loan and keep interest. But they obviosuly don’t do this. This system increased the affordability of home buying in the last 30 years coupled with foreign investment. If everyone actually sold their houses and decided to take cash and move abroad, the system would break down, but they know clearly people wouldnt do this so it is a perfect place to hide inflation due to digitally generated cash. Another example is the stock market. So in summary 2-3 % pay rise you get (if that...) every year based on Retail Price Index, they should factor in this HIDDEN inflation in housing market. People now have to take mortgages as couples rather singles as they did 10-20 years ago. Granted the interest rate in 1990 was 15% and probably you had to pay similar monthly payments. They managed to offset this price increase by reducing the interest rates, but how much further can they do this ? Surely you cannot have negative interest rates. The whole system is broken and in the future we will need to have 100 year mortgages to pass affordability...
I worked on some developments in London, I forget where but I walked past it when I was there once, an old cinema turned into ridiculously expensive apartments, right across the road were council like flats. I believe there was a big uproar about it all and rightly so, a surprising amount of developments in London are aimed at the foreign wealthy markets.
This is such a tiny, tiny percentage yet I always see Socialists bringing this up, but when health tourism or illegal immigration is brought up, you're told to shut up, as it's only a tiny minority of people who fit that bill.
Health tourism is deceptive way to put it as UK nationals had ability to health tour other countries. Secondly, what's the fucking problem if somebody has their life saved by the NHS, we pay the NHS a relative pittance anyways and it does fairly well! And as for illegal immigration the clue is in the first word: ILLEGAL. Nice attempt at wHtabboutism
Personal property is stability and freedom. This monopolisation of property by a handful of rich investors, landlords and corporations will make the average person less stable, less free and more powerless than ever before. If this goes any further, we will need a revolution, there can be no other way.
Voting for Leftists caused this problem, and even after a revolution there will be Leftists eager to implement the same "caring" (read: stupid) policies that caused the problem in the first place.
@@oneillnandie7999 Doesn't matter what party the current PM is in. News media have too many citizens "believe" that moving away from Leftist ideals is "mean". So basically the problem can't be solved with common sense. Restructure the green belt? MEAN ! Reduce regulation to make new housing builds more doable? MEAN ! The Leftist philosophy, of "caring", is only about superficially showing there is care. If consequences lead to more hardship, well that's okay, we'll care about you at that time then. The Left is quite content with giving a man a fish, if said man promises not to learn how to fish.
Of course a video on the possible solutions is needed.... Was actually hoping that you would cover the topic in a bit more detail. Btw I think another reason for the housing shortage and sudden increase in prices this year was the stamp duty holiday, low interest rates and most importantly the practice of banks giving interest only mortgage due to which people who already home owners are buying a second property to let out, As the rents cover the mortgage repayment with neat a couple hundred pounds in profit. Thus increasing the house prices unrealistically.
Under Thatcher we also had the deregulation of the banks and with that, under John Major the start of Buy to Let which really took off under Tony Blair, including himself. This created additional demand for house purchasing. Then of course in the last year with have had Sunak's special house price hike of over 10%. The interest only mortgage is the second speculative stage by the banks in Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis which then slips into the third Ponzi stage and an inevitable crash. Politicians seem to become increasingly incompetent with each passing decade, and we already know that this is only going to end in tears.
According to an article in the Guardian in 2017, 1 in 10 UK adults owned a second home whilst simultaneously 4 in 10 UK adults owned no property whatsoever. And of that half (52%) of all the assets held in additional properties is held by the baby boomers, born 1946-65, and a further quarter (25%) by generation X, born 1966-80. There isn’t a lack of properties in this country. There are enough house for every homeless person and every single person or family to live. The problem is the distribution of housing, both in terms of singular individuals owning multiple properties as well as the fact that people want to live in specific areas and not all houses are where the majority of people desire to live. Something needs doing about it but I can’t see this government or the opposition doing anything about it anytime soon.
@@arghjayem Sure, there are enough properties, except a large chunk of them are rented out. So are you saying we should somehow confiscate those properties and give them to the person currently renting?
Young people?! I'm 43, earn about the national average, but because I'm single and rent, there's no way I'll ever be able to afford a deposit, let alone be able to move somewhere bigger than the studio I'm in unless I lipsticks and move somewhere cheaper where, as per, there's less jobs and worse salaries.
@Henry Gill-Pratt uh no. People in the countryside oppose any and all development. This country is entrenched in the "I've got mine so you can f*ck off mentality"
The wider issue here is why the desire to own. Consistently my non real estate portfolio has out preformed the housing I own, by some considerable margin. Anyone with a compounding clue can tell you 5% a year since 1993 will kill any house gain in any area in the UK. The UK has this insane desire to want to own. I own for diversification it's easier to dump property into my daughters trusts than other assets but if you don't need to own then borrow to invest elsewhere. You won't listen no-one will. Non residential outpacers about 60,000 per million per year.
@@JakeyG-eq1un It affects young people the least other than those who already have houses. This video totally missed a key point that the government has factored in, birth rate, if it's below 2 the population is shrinking, it's currently 1.6 per woman so for young people this opens up a massive opportunity in 10-20 years.
@@reheyesd8666 how about there be BOTH options. Social housing should of stayed at a certain percentage of that of private developments. But it didn't, people in the 80's brought up their council homes in their droves but the governments since then never reinvested that money into more social housing. Leading to a supply and demand issue. You have high demand but low supply, meaning the houses that being built become more expensive. And the houses being built are private leading to insane mortgage costs or high rent costs from a private landlord. If we had had a steady supply of BOTH social and private developments there wouldn't be this crisis. The right to buy scheme was a good one in principle but in practise it was a long term disaster and totally mismanged by all preceeding governments.
All my neighbours live in council houses and refuse to buy them for extremely cheap price because anything happens they call the number an council solves it. While anything happens to my house that I'll be paying off for next 25 years, I pay for it. The country is full of leeches and crooks who exploit the system whether rich or poor
@@raukoring What you are explaining there is a wage issue. Those people have become comfortable paying rent and more than likely couldn't afford to buy those houses and pay for the up keep themselves. Those people are probably living pay check to pay check and you expect them to take out a mortgage? When more than likely their jobs are not secure enough and their pay isn't high enough. This is what people say about wage stagnation. Prices for everything have continued to rise but wages haven't kept up at the same pace. Capitalism and consumerism 1 O 1.
@@Fezzy976 my neighbour can buy his council house for 40K. the same house I bought for 145K. They're exactly the same houses mirror attached to each other. I'm a non skilled warehouse worker, pay my taxes NI, never asked for any benefits even when I was eligible because I don't consider that my money, I didn't earn them and as I'm not a cripple and can earn my money I save what I can and do overtimes. What I'm saying is I paid 145K+ interest while the neighbour refuse to pay 40K cuz if his boiler goes down, he calls the number and they bring a new one. If my boiler goes down, my bank account looses £2.000. if his roof breaks down, he calls the number. If my roof breaks down, I use all my savings/take a loan. I don't care he can't save his money. Other neighbour who works part time, spends evenings in jacuzzi in his council backyard with his unemployed wife while I'm in work thinking how can I support my future child while this guy has three kids I've no idea where he gets money for them from his part time unskilled job. Other neighbour living with his "ex" wife and new born, while officially renting other house. It's worth for him to send £250 every month to some people who put him on their rent so that his wife can be claiming single unemployed mother money living on her own.. while he lives with her. I could go on. Just saying. Tons of leeches here. Would be awesome to loose both the thieves from top AND from bottom
Low interest rates are designed to generate tax without actively putting tax up. If interest rates were high everyone would save in their bank and not spend their money thus not stimulating the economy. If you want interest rates higher then expect tax rates higher which is unpopular in conservative government especially since the main target for tax is now the extremely wealthy. The simple issue is that no one wants to build houses. It wouldn't matter for low interests if a lower percentage of overall houses were renting. However local governments don't like that because it brings their land value down especially if the external estates are incredibly successful which they will be because of low mortgage rates.
Right to buy was the problem. Sell low with no penalties to then sell on cashing in on that profit BUT WORSE don’t replace stock. I can say that as a) grandparents and aunts had houses in East London, grandparents wouldn’t buy despite children trying to buy on their behalf but aunts did but however stayed until passing away. B) I looked to buy with my fiancée between 1986-1988 and all were ex council and priced the same as non ex council. West London then Essex. We would turn up for a viewing to be told ‘sold’. Mental. My daughter has a part buy part buy rent property, she’s disabled and works, bought 2010. System is broken. My sister joined the buy for profit game and bugged the life out of me. In 33 years we have moved once. A house should be for living in, not short term profit. My opinion, I won’t reply or engage.
I live in a garage which I've worked on myself and I pay £60 a month in rent, I've spent about £2000 to make it livable. I dont have running water or electricity, but I have alternatives, but the fact is it wouldnt be hard for the council to connect this if they wanted to, however they wont because the houing market is a racket. Consider how many years a mortgage takes to pay off and you'll understand why no politician wants to allow people to build their own homes. You have to work at least 40 hours a week to afford to make payments, and you have to work for around 40 years to clear the mortgage. People are a resource which is simply too valuable and the housing market and the motor industry is the key to keeping peole in the rat race. Building more houses is not the solution. I live in britain and they are always building more houses. The fact is there is too much money to be made in construction. Heres a breakdown of salaries per hour and jobs on a construction site. Labourer £9 Forklift £14-18 Dumper £15 Excavator £20 + Manager/forman £25+ Bricklayer £20+ Carpenter £20+ Electrician £20+ These are just some to name a few but should give you an idea of what to expect and you have to add to the health and safety inspector, slingers etc etc. Construction always run over budget costs are cut as much as possible, contractors cut corners so they can bill for more hours etc etc, list of problems go on. What should essentially cost around £50k costs the end buyer £100 because of inflation, and I don't mean standard economic inflation, I mean the fact that these people are straight up willing to sell you plasterboard homes for the price of a stone house. The houses are of poor quality and many new builds fail inspections upon completion. The solution is to let people build their own homes but corruption is never going to let that happen.
This channel seems to have a left wing ideology (which historically harms the poorest the most) and are clearly economically illiterate, so not the best creators to ask to create such a series. Try reasonTV or reading Thomas Sowell’s book “housing book and bust” which is brilliant (and available as audio)
what makes the whole thing worse is that landlords are buying up what few "affordable" houses/flats that young couples would potentially be able to afford and then renting them out way over priced.
That is true, it's happening throughout Greater Manchester. The rents are ridiculous but demand is high, so we end up paying two thirds of our salaries on rent, unless you are fortunate to get somewhere, at slightly more reasonable rent! Even though 1500 is common monthly rent, that does not guarantee we won't be begging and chasing for basic maintenance work to be done. Greedy, immoral landlord and agents are aplenty!
That's the other thing that wasn't mentioned in the video, that a lot more people who own their own house who are obviously middle-aged-retired are living much longer, which a) delays the availability of existing houses coming free for people in their 20s/30s and b) means that the house prices keeps rising for the extra 15-20 years they live in it. Plus C) just cause you are lucky to have a house become available that someone who was in their 80s/90s even lived in. Chances are they wouldn't have done much to it for decades since retiring, so their is the added cost of doing it up so upgrade and modernize it properly. My Parents are pretty old now and well into retirement, but are both healthy and spritely still could easily last another 10-15 years, so it won't be of any real benefit to me by the age I'll be as and when that happens, more of a random 'bonus' in the 2nd half of my life. So I may end up selling it and putting the money into savings/investments/pension plan for when I get too old to work anymore. and it's not like anyone is chucking £50-60k a year jobs at people in their 20-30s either to allow them to get on the ladder, so it's either lots of debt in one go, or somehow budget and worry about every penny for 20-25 years and have no life enjoyment. (and who wants to make that kind of commitment at 21)
The people with parents that also had to rent won't be getting a house at all unless people like you rent it to them. And yet you complain about your life..
the solution is alternative accommodation. I live in a garage and whilst it doesnt have electricity or water the council could connect that if they wanted to. But they wont because its not in their interest to allow me to afford to live without having to work.
You missed out all the demand side factors pushing prices up such as how housing is taxed, the financial credit system, domestic (landlords), corporations, and wealthy foreign investors buying up housing (especially in London) etc. It's not all about supply and just building wherever we can, its as much a distribution crisis as it is a supply one.
I wasn't looking at the screen when you said the price of a house was £104 and I was like ????? until I looked up and realised it was £104k and the audio is just wrong lmao
@@jeremybiggs8413 rent caps can make the problem worse long term . rent control has already been studied to have a negative effect on long term housing supply
Pray that pod sleeping as seen in San Francisco, where you rent a bed to sleep in, with dozens of other people and no space to yourself, is not presented as the solution and does not start creeping into our island. I don't know if that would be in line with the laws here but you know our future is absolutely bleak, miserable, and in poverty if it gets established here.
I can't even imagine how lucky people who expect to inherit a home from their parents must feel, while trying to be a first-time owner in your family is like trying to climb mount fuji with a broken leg
I'm dreading it, what my mother inherited is worth a lot of money but the houses and few old farm buildings are in ruins. She had to pay £100,000 plus just in taxes to keep living in the same place she always has lived, by the time it gets to me and my brother the only way to pay the tax would be to sell the lot which is not something we want to do... My grandad bought it in the 50s for a few hundred quid to farm the land and in the coming decades it'll all be gone thanks to the appalling tax system we have, you're even taxed in death
I hear you. All my family are either living in a housing association area (my grandparents) or council house (my mother.) I knew growing up hearing about how much they wished they could have afforded a home of their own. And how my mother feels guilty that she is unable to leave anything to me. This made owning my own home a dream of mine. A place I could look after my grandparents and my mum whenever the time comes. Unfortunately it is starting to look like just that - an unattainable dream. I've saved and worked since I was 17 y/o (now 23), I just don't see the point of trying anymore. What a time to be alive ay.
Inheritance is a gamble because of social care. The average person without a savvy accountant cannot, if they even wanted to, avoid care costs for elderly parents. Our bill, a charge on ma in laws house, was £130K. My disabled sister aged 56 has had a charge put on her house for the cost of a stair lift and wet room. This will only increase so inheritance is not to be relied upon,
@@freyachristina1340 33 years old, me and my partner are in the process of buying our own home. Don't give up. Your income will grow, you're still young.
Increase building social housing. Pay for it by investing (or increased targeted taxing haha) in large scale multiple housing developers. So while the crisis lasts the government gets more income through the latter to build more social housing. Eventually the ROI on these investments should go down, which means the increase in social housing has had the proper effect.
Easy to have a global project homes for all we have means and technology! but toxic oil banking people in power of us and would not make money then loss power! We have the technology and fiscal modelling for green homes for all. 1980 worked on a theoretical project greening London homes for all! but we have a toxic system mmmm time for global change
End the state. Without state violence there's no more bribes, delays waiting for third party permission, no support for land ownership or unilateral contracts, finance not provided by QE.
@@ConsumerWatchdogUK Erm.. why not? The key thing with problems created by the government is not that it has been created by the government but how it has been created by the government.
OK so, I think there's been a little bit of oversimplification of the greenbelts here. Most people know it's farms, we like farms, we'd prefer to still have them in the fertile areas around which our cities were historically built.
Completely agree - although farms aren't lush green forests bursting with ecodiversity, they are useful for growing food and as you say are much more attractive than having a load of des reses or apartment block 2 inches from your front door.
@@andreaslind6338 More of the land in the north is less arable and more grazing or forest. Most of the green belt around Manchester are woods, meadows and moorland.
@@thomasczthomash1859 plenty up north, Wales and Scottish borders. Not included is also second homes and empty rentals. Buy-to-rent will earn more through rent than their mortgage and upkeep, maintaining higher rents than mortgages.
@@AWest-ns3dl While most of our new stock is lapped up by BTL landlords, I'm afraid no amount of refurbished abandoned properties will do it. The BTL landlords are called "investors" but in reality they, like vampires, are sucking housing away from those who should be able to buy it -- but can't -- their money availability does not depend on house prices much, as they pay off their mortgages with someone else's broken hope money. First time buyers, however, don't have unlimited resources. And all these ideas, like help to buy, or allowing to use "the bank of mum and dad" (even this is attacked by some banks who demand to see the own income source from FTB's and call it "responsible lending"), or offering 30-40 years mortgages (sad and disgusting travesty sucking money from unhappy poor people their entire working life with ridiculous amount of interest to pay for it) -- they only try to cater to existing unfair "market" conditions.
The biggest step we can take against the crisis? Voting out the party that is purposely not trying to fix it, but enacting just enough superficial policies to make it look like they're not completely ignoring it
In short don't vote for the conservative party. In the last 10 years they effectively cut the NHS budget by 20%. This means less nurses and less doctors.
@@paxundpeace9970 Wrong, large scale immigration caused by Labour party policy caused the majority of the housing crisis. Why would voting for the same failed policies make it better? Not that the Tories have done anything to sort out immigration.
So, instead we should do nothing other than keep voting tory, a party that deliberately skews housing policy to pre-existing homeowners because they know that's their core voted demographic? Good solution! Well done, you've solved it 😂👍
The solution is to make rental properties a bad investment. There are enough homes, they are just not owned by the people living in them. You can see this easily enough because while house prices may double, the amount of homeless doesn't double. Tax residential land which isn't your primary residence at an enormous rate. Make holding land as attractive as hot sick. Gear up the government to buy a new set of social housing stock for the people who do need to rent when properties get dumped to market.
Ah yes, because when you can't afford a place of your own you must automatically end up on the street rather than suffering other forms of reduced living standards such as being forced to live with parents until you're 30 or live in a house share for an amount of money that should normally be able to afford you an entire house to yourself. Rented or owned, there are not enough properties to house the current UK population. Simple as that.
@@Hashterix "there are not enough properties to house the current UK population" then where the fock are they living in? Their shoes? Unless half the UK is homeless and i haven't noticed, there's enough roofs to cover us all. Problem is who owns the houses? My landlord owns 6 of them, 2 inherited and the rest mortgaged and he's a small fry i reckon. Rory is right taxation on rental homes should be progressive until your third property is no longer profitable to rent. Your free capitalism will make the majority of the population unfree. No one needs more than 3 houses.
@@Hashterix totally incorrect. There are more than enough houses out there for everyone in the UK. It's jist that most houses are owned by a few. Be it landlords or large companies. The government could easily regulate this by progressive taxation and by building affordable houses that only first-time buyers can purchase with no sale or rent clause for a number of years. Of course this will never happen as the interest is not to help the young generation but to fleech the people.
@@mdo stupid argument. Yes there are enough, there are enough houses in the world to house everyone. In fact, there are hundreds of millions of empty properties!! Can you believe it?! Problem solved! No. It's not that simple and we understand the world doesn't work like a child thinks it does, do we. Those houses are not where the population is. The demand is high in specific areas. What's your solution? We move thousands of people to live in derelict mining towns that have lots of empty houses but no jobs? Or perhaps we should move all the homeless into the millions of empty properties in China. Oh, how easy and simple of a solution 👏👏👏 It's supply and demand, it always has been and it always will be. Also, just to highlight how disengaged you are from reality, those schemes you suggested do actually exist, and they do not help whatsoever, they only push prices even higher because the DEMAND is so high anyone who wants to buy has to stretch themselves financially to their limit because if they don't then the next person does.
@@alexc7367 oh yes, you're right, because nobody needs a house do they, everyone can just live in a bedroom and they can share a kitchen and bathroom; heck, they can even share a bedroom! How do you determine there are not enough houses? How about the fact you cannot afford it because there's always someone ready to fill any space that comes up and keeps the market inflated. You go where there is more supply and less demand and houses get cheaper, that is a fact. If a landlord owns a house does that mean nobody lives in it?? No, it means it's more likely to be lived in as efficiently as possible, as in nobody is going to pay extra for space they don't need. All my peers, ALL of them, lived with their parents until age 27+. And you are telling me that there is enough housing. Go pull that rod out of your arse.
That sounds like a lot but that is only 0.38% of the UK population each year. Consider as well many immigrants tend to live in 'denser' housing structures (i.e. HMOs or smaller houses with many residents generally). I am not for nor against immigration but you need to put the numbers in perspective.
Doesn't matter if it's immigration, ex pats, birth rates. We are an island country. England is running out of fresh water. We don't make our own food and if finance sector move out of London are economy is exposed for the fraud it is. Were walking off a cliff.
I was forced to buy a house in Winchester in 2017 because of my new born at the time , buying that house was the biggest mistake of my life ! The house was overpriced and small ! Luckily I just sold that house and we are moving to Auvergne in France we bought a farm house for 35k with 250 sqm2 and 1 acre of land . What we bought in France the equivalent in Winchester is probably worth 1 or 2m £. House prices in the UK makes no sense at all
@@robfodder5575 I'm French and My wife is English because we are married she has double nationality ! I mean if you want to buy a property in France and beat the 90 day rule it's probably best if you invest in a flat cheaper and you can rent it out in the summer and enjoy in the winter for ski season
As someone who moved to the UK recently, the housing situation is intolerable. The British live in crappy houses and most don't even realise it because they've never lived abroad. You tell them it's because of the Green Belt and they don't understand or care. Extremely frustrating.
You know what I do if I find a foreign country intolerable? I go home. Obvious, no? And it's not because of the Green Belt, it's because of mass immigration pushing down working class wages and pushing up house prices. Simple supply and demand.
@@edwardkenworthy7013 it's both mass immigration and the green belt. Mass immigration increases demand for houses while the green belt reduces supply. You can have one policy or another, but not both. The state is artificially increasing house prices, in other words, which benefits the wealthy and home owners at the expense of everyone else.
@@chemicalwasted3450 First, the Green Belt doesn't reduce supply, but it does limit growth, and that's a good thing: this is a green and pleasant land, not a concreted over land. Second, immigration also suppresses working class wages making it even harder for them to afford to buy a house. In other word you are part of the problem and if you find it intolerable you could help solve two problems in one go.
@@edwardkenworthy7013 You can keep the land green but it will cost you millions in increased home prices; everything in life is a trade off. As for mass immigration, nothing is stopping the working classes from voting a right wing party into power except their own lack of political will.
I know the used car market wasn't exactly a crisis but it was a major concern for many of us. Dealerships were buying cars back at higher than the customer paid so they could flip them for a lot more
You've missed the absolute biggest driver of house price increase: interest rates. With rates falling so low, it makes monthly payments lower, driving up prices. This comes at the expense of higher initial capital requirement, causing that divide.
This is mostly true, although interest rates only matter if supply is limited. If supply is limited house prices get bid up to a point where it is marginally affordable - which is determined by monthly repayments and thus interest rates. If the market were well supplied then the price would not get pushed up to the edge of affordability
This doesn't make much sense, actually. You are suggesting that borrowing costs are so low that the housing market is flooded with more buyers than sellers. That's not the case for even a 4% SVR keeps most people off the housing ladder...mortgages have to be maintained and the reality is most people are struggling. So, what might be closer to the truth is that whilst prices have been rising (for years), real wages have been trending downwards (for years). What everyone is seeing now is the gap between prices and the inability of working people to keep up. In actual fact, when no one can afford to buy, there is no housing market; maybe that is the real crisis.
@@GRYL180 rates are 1.45% for a mortgage (at least where i live in europe)... so yeah it is rates. If you have a somewhat decent jobs you can easily borrow 200-300k. Add savings and parents lending a helping hand and you have a recipe for everyone to fomo buy.
@@__Wanderer Exactly. When I bought my first place in 1990 I was paying over 12% mortgage interest. If I was looking now, with 2/3% interest rates and similar income I could afford to bid far higher on the same property so pushing prices up significantly.
Really the ECB and BOE have been printing stupid amounts of money none stop since the 2008 financial crash and inflation has struggled to get anywhere near the 2% target until recently
I saw a great tweet from someone who said 'The bank says I can't afford afford $900 a month for a mortgage, so I pay $1400 a month in rent instead'. I think that beautifully sums up the issue.
@@mitsterful What the bank is actually saying is because the buyer doesn't have the necessary cash to convert to equity that the risk level is too high to lend against. Banks are not charities and high risk lending on a wide scale in the housing market partly resulted in the 2008 economic crash. The rental risk isn't necessarily owned by a bank but the landlord who is responsible and therefore offsets his/her own risk on a case by case basis. Ultimately another bank may be in the equation but they don't have sole ownership of the risk and therefore it is safer.
@@mitsterful The person probably couldn't afford $900 per month, which is why the $1400 they are paying in rent unsustainable. Assuming they can't find a cheaper property (unlikely) wouldn't be suprised if they have to get a flat mate or move back in with parents.
@@tomtimtomtim You make a good point. However, it still highlights an issue that people pay more for rent than they would a mortgage, making it harder to save for a deposit on a house and being stuck in a renting cycle. People are being told their finances are too risky because they don't have enough, or they're too unstable, so they have to rent instead which costs more and is worse for stability anyway.
no, its simply this, the greatest gen found oil energy, they used the oil to take over the world and multiply like rabbits on heat, then the boomers they bred were the first here, they took everything, then their kids had nothing, the end.
Nowhere does he raise the question of the effect of mass migration. I can't help thinking if you import a population explosion it will exacerbate such problems.
Had to scroll way down the comments to see this elephant in the room. Mass immigration without infrastructure scaling is wreaking untold misery on many fronts.
UK is not the only country that has seen mass migration, yet it's the country that can't handle it in reasonable way. Migration is a contributing factor but there are other bigger reasons like land ownership and building approvals mentioned in video. Elsewhere an ordinary citizen can buy plot of land fairly easily and build house on it, hence why in certain countries self-build dominates the market. UK rather prefers stuffing pockets of big developers with money. Another stupid idea that I can't understand is the land lease business in UK. You can own a house or flat but you don't own land that it stands on byt rather pay some lord or some big corporation to use that land. Insane!
there isent a housing crisis the problem is most of the new houses that are being built are unobtainable for first time buyers or for working class people and there isent enough low cost housing yet government still build new houses that are expensive and hardy anyone can afford
@@danielwebb8402 ill give you an example - were i live there is 141 new homes being built all of which are between 294k and 435k to buy - there are 19 affordable housing aswell how is that fair . for the houses ur gunna need at least 45k deposit minimum . the average salary for people in that are isent even 45k if we take the rule of thumb 20% of income thats 5 years just for the deposit ur looking about 30 - 40 years before you own the house its ridiculous
@@kirkwilson72 Agree deposits is the problem / pinch point today. Not the monthly mortgage payments. You can, and should be, able to get 95% mortgages. So you'd need 15k for a 300k property. Or 5k a year / 400 a month saving for 3 years. That doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Having a 90% LTV for first time buyers is a large hurdle. Completely agree. How many homes out of those 141 do you think is "fair" for them to sell at a loss / less than they could? Why is it their job to be a charity? I don't understand why they have to sell any at a government prescribed cost.
@@Snugggg there’s more vacant homes than homeless people. Property developers own the land and have planning permission to build around 1,000,000 new houses but don’t so the prices continue to rise. An increasing number of homes are being bought by landlords, including about 40% of all the social/ counsel houses that were sold off. I think there’s a few more details but I can’t remember them right now.
There's also the housing market in London, which has had a knock on effect nationally. Desirable properties in the centre of town have been bought up by Oligarchs, Sheikhs and International Property Investment Syndicates over a number of years. This has fuelled a boom, driving up prices for everyone across the whole city. The Covid Lockdown has seen an exodus of Londoners to the regions, able to cash in on the value of their sold London homes, in turn driving up the cost of housing in the places they move to. At a time when the economy is on its knees, Estate Agents are quietly having a party. Some people are saying that this will inevitably lead to a burst bubble, but I suspect that the price of property might just remain out of reach for most, as long as the population continues to increase, in proportion to the number of houses being built.
You also missed the fact that in last 20 years immigration has increased by over 7 million thanks to Tony Blair open door policy. This has also had an impact with more people buying with less housing available.
Of course, like all racists, you've not mentioned where all the tax paid by the increased population has gone. Immigration has added £10,000,000,000.00 as year to UK government tax receipts. Racists ignore that!
@@agataartwork9097 supply and demand, it's an uncomfortable truth but it's true. Your emigration is a tiny contributing factor of the housing crisis. The fact that You are willing to provide relatively (assumption) cheap labour also contributes to lower wages. I mean why did you emigrate in the first place? I bet it wasn't for the weather. (For the record I would do the same in your shoes) Don't be so naive to think all natives have stable families, my family aren't there for me and never were. I was on my own from day 1. In fact there's many, many dysfunctional families, just go to Blackpool or Neath. I'm self employed and work 2 jobs for a better future for my son. No one except top 10% of earners have it easy. I don't hate immigrants by the way, I blame ridiculous regulations, greed, and the government for the state of things not the immigrants. Enjoy your stay, and congratulations that you're looking to own.
I don't want to be hasty, but the thing about increased profits from a dominated developing market and a decrease in social housing sounds like intentional conservative policies to me... And the thing about it working to the benefit of the more wealthy and to the detriment of the poor.
@@loc4725 I wonder why. I guess with the liberal democrat coilition it was pretty clear who was in charge. But with Labour, I'm not sure, why didn't they do something about it. Also, what do you mean by Labour didn't notion? Social housing is a Labour policy, as far as I'm aware.
yeh, it's about investment capital = people with moneys need to store and grow their moneys so they buy the reliable and steadily appreciate on value = feeding the cycle = more people and investment capital firms invest = more the prices grow. This is happening in every country on Earth. Don't forget that this is problem only for the world poor. The world rich (there's 50 humans who own as much as the poor 50% of all humans on Earth combined) - these guys benefit greatly from this trend...!
@@thesudaneseprince9675 The Lib Dems' showed their true colours when they were in coalition I'm afraid. Liberal & Democrat but only on the outside... You're also right about Labour, but politics has changed. There was a time when all generations, both young _and_ old wanted a better country *for everyone* . That's why even though it was the young that mainly benefited social housing became a feature of the British political landscape. But fast forward to today and those younger generations are now the old and they don't have the same values of those that came before. And most importantly they vote. So the problem is twofold: younger generations don't vote in sufficient numbers to matter and the current older generations seem to only think of themselves. And this therefore leads to political parties trying to woo the older, voting generation by giving them fantastic gifts like being able to buy their council home at a massive discount whilst at the same time eschewing the younger, mostly non-voting generation who are left to fend for themselves in an increasingly hostile environment. So to answer your question Labour simply adapted to the times. And their MP's were very happy to go along with it.
Yeah and other people want to settle down in Monaco. Why do people think they (over other people) have a special right to live in the most expensive cities in the world when they cannot afford it. So you want all the luxury, comfort, infrastructures, metro, airports, restaurants, cinemas, sportscenters, swimming halls, etc of expensive cities while the middle class lives far from the city in villages.
@@pjani14 "people of all incomes need to live and work in these cities." NO, they don't, they can like me live outside the city and commute to work to the city. Especially in the last 20 years where public transportations is fast and environmental friendly. And nowadays there is also remote work (Télé travail), so many jobs can be done from home. You are not entitled to city life if you cannot afford to live there.
New money is created when loan is granted. Loans going into real estate means newly created currency goes to real estate. As more currency chases same number of houses, prices go up. Case closed.
I hate NIMBYism. In America, regulations are the reason for housing crisis. We should allow development no matter what locals say: tower blocks next to your house are ugly, but homelessness is uglier.
@@iamnotgonnagiveyoumyname1373 you've got to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. I'm sorry your friends will have some negative affects but this is a massive societal problem, I have no sympathy for 3+ house owners. It'd be like Amazon complaining about tax.
@@iamnotgonnagiveyoumyname1373 Because he is probably an angry teenager who understandably doesnt have a full grasp of things yet, and is scared at stepping into the scary reality of being worse off than his parents. He is obviously ignorant here, but we just need to try talk through and support, explain the economics and not get drawn into the anger.
@@andreasgregorfrank9057 Your mistaken. State dept is accumulated due borrowing at low interest rates and printing money and lending out more money to wealth investors increases inflation, but government bonds are bought by the central banks at low yield keeping inflation down UK 2020 0.85%. If you are saying inflation / borrowing / lending keeps house prices high, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about pal. Ill explain: Their is a high demand in the UK housing sector due to couples starting families in population increases ( High demand and low supply drives up prices ). On top of this, Rich private investors have bided out any first time buyers and have rented them. This in effect leaves houses remaining out of the buying market ever putting more strain on demand as little few their are snatched up, thus driving demand through the roof machining homes for average income people near impossible without going to bank dept. The solutions is simple: Slow down printing money, laws on private investors homes like ( an investor can only buy x amount for any one year ) & government build more homes. This will increase supply and demand drops of thus price of homes become more affordable. Any questions?
Ban all new buy to let, force councils to build a number of new homes, or hold design competitions for new high density patterned housing, like Paris or Edinburgh, there are solutions. It is infuriating that they don't grab the bull by the horns on this one.
@@andreasgregorfrank9057 high levels of capital investment is actually great, but people using it to pay for housing is a terrible waste because housing doesn't produce anything, so instead of building long term growth, it's hollow.
Not quite the Government are always building homes. But when you think of the housing market as a racket you understand why it will never change. People will always need accommodation this is an inflexible commodity and therefore people can be exploited. The truth is people pay sometimes a mortgage for 40 years, to do this they have to get a job. This is how the economy works. Therefore if you could build a house which required only 5years to pay off what would be the incentive to work
The main driver for the increase in house prices since 1990 is historically low interest rates. When I bought my first flat in 1990 mortgage interest rates were about 12% whereas now 2-3%. Therefore a buyer can afford to borrow far more so pushing prices up and so increase the multiple of house price to earnings. If interest rates rise significantly in coming years just watch as house price growth falls or prices drop.
Not entirely, because even though interest rates are low, the bank will still not loan you more than about 4x salary. The low interest rates do help to inflate the price, but it's not the driving force behind the insane increase in prices. Remember, the bottom of the market is always what holds up the rest, and the demand to live in the UK (particularly the south east) boomed from the late 90s onwards when Tony Blair opened the door to mass migration. 30k net turned into 300k net, every single person needing a room to live in. In London, a room alone can rent for £600 to £800 a month (slightly less now due to covid reducing demand), and suddenly a standard 4 bedroom house is grossing £3k a month. Now let's do the maths. £3k a month or £36k a year makes for a value of £720k when you consider a 5% ROI is a good return (and in London you often expect lower returns than that, 2 or 3%, because people want the stability). That value is entirely propped up by the market rate those rooms achieve, and the fact that as long as you advertise at market rate you are practically guaranteed to fill them within a month.
@@broadleyboy2 yes they do, I took out a mortgage last year. They also factor in your spending to make sure you'll be able to make the payments but it's still done on a multiple of your income to determine what you can afford.
@@broadleyboy2 And that is even worse, because their ways of calculating said affordability often deem perfectly capable people = unable to afford. They think they're doing a good service to people, protecting them from unaffordable purchases. As a reality they often entomb these same people's legs into renting ground forever.
Interest rates are currently very low, compared to historical values. I remember a time when they went as high as 17%. The flip side is that interest on savings is extremely low. ☹️
@@stevelam5898 No (though you never know, won't be buying a house for a good 8 years so rate could be anything by then), I just expected it to get a mention
Mortgages have always taken half of someone's take home when they first buy. It's just these boomers and Xs haven't taught millenials this fact / history.
@@danielwebb8402 most people I know can't afford a mortgage. We're forced to rent, and in doing so are most likely paying someone else's mortgage. It's only getting worse and as long as most people below 30 can't afford to buy it'll be a generational problem.
@@dafuzzymonster If you can't afford a mortgage. So instead are paying rent. By definition that means rent < mortgage = you aren't paying someone else's mortgage with your rent
@@danielwebb8402 mortgages are handed out based on credit rating and valuable assets as well as income. Banks are more likely to give out mortgages if you have collateral. For example in my third year of university the house share I was living paid a 1/4 of houses value in rent over the year we stayed there.
@@danielwebb8402 as the company we rented off was a large student housing company I very much doubt the reinvested that money into the house. This is the case in most cities I'm the UK. That and companies buying up affordable housing removing any character from it by gutting it from the inside, and then painting it black/grey and that somehow triples the value.
@@IanMcc1000 So what do you think people should do if they can't get help from their parents? Renting is so expensive it's impossible to save up even though my husband and I both earn an okay salary
UK houses are not sitting empty. Sales & purchases already carry a big sticker around the legal process for both parties involved. You can see from a mile you've never owned one lol
So to summarize, there are 3 causes, government, government and government. Whenever you find market failure, have a close look to see where the government has intervened and there you will find the answer.
You mean the government should get tougher and start buying cheap land from private developers/owners and start building social housings again in cooperaration with the planning authorities to make it effective!
@@rh9596 Nope. I mean the housing shortage is cause by excessive regulation, green belt and planning controls and to solve it you just need to remove some of those controls then the private sector will build enough housing until supply meets demand.
People living with their parents into late 30s or 40s will become the norm, however as a home owner myself I personally think people who own their own property and decide to buy another house solely to just rent out, I've heared of cases where some people own 3-4 other houses solely to rent them out and I think that just takes away an opportunity for a first time buyer
Of course you are correct but this is a country of free enterprise & people lap it up. How can we change that mentality when the controllers of society are that way inclined ?
This is utter bollocks. The reason houses are so expensive is because interest rates are so low. If you cannot get this simple fact into your thinking you have no idea. And to slag off the green belt as environmentally bad is utterly ill informed.
if the 10,000,000 people added to the UK's population is the actual source of the problem, then Boris is not needed, Brexit itself will sort the problem out.
@@spring-heeledjack3340 Until all the British people who live in Europe return (they are doing so as soon as they can) because Brexit has stuffed them up. It's a two-way thing, migration.
The inequality is staggering really, do they realise the damage this is doing? People are just carrying on as normal when all it boils down to is greed.
Agriculture is green. Fields are green. This video is so biased and ignorant. Green doesn't mean "wild forest" - all forests in UK have been managed for agricultural communities for millenia! Green means NOT a horrible city
Of course, like all racists, you've not mentioned where all the tax paid by the increased population has gone. Immigration has added £10,000,000,000.00 as year to UK government tax receipts. Racists ignore that!
@@pauldavis221 im not ignoring anything, I'm just pointing out one of the reasons why housings prices are going up and even if the economy is growing due to immigration that doesn't address the fact that the habitable land in this country is depleting there for lowering supply and raising demand causing housing to go up in price
9:23 "DAMN YOU, THATCHER!!!" Whenever I watch/read about politics/policies of the UK, current big socio-economic issues seem to always be due to the policies made under the Thatcher administration.
Because everything goes up with inflation, including the Governments wages, whilst most people are still stuck earning minimum wage that isn't high enough for the modern world's prices anymore
Same here in Ontario. Where I live, in 2003 a home could be worth $220,000. Now in 2021, it's 1.2 million. .. that's MILLION. Fixer Upper homes are going for over $600,000. Sellers are selling townhouses for $499,000 and walking away with $750,000. That's $250,000 OVER asking price. The price of homes in my area has increased 50% (!!!) in the last year. So now we've got foreign investors living in other countries buying homes and renting them to canadians. Insane.
This explains a thing or two. My town used it have a lot of green areas. Over the past decade, all of them have been filled up with tiny, badly put together houses. No improvements have been made to the road network and as a result the town get's grid locked with traffic. If only those houses were any good. I had a displasure of living in a modern build. The house was not even 5 years old at the time, but there were cracks in the walls and all window frames were loose, like you could grab a closed window and shake it. You could always feel draft going around the frames. Newer ones are even worse. A colleague bought one of them, they had 2 burst pipes and a lot of damage in the first 6 months.
Honestly that disgusts me, I am going to study architecture next year at university, and the construction agency cant even find a balance between sustainability and cost. A Modern house costs a lot less than other types of constructions as the only thing which causes it to be priced up is the price of Steel which is used to make lever arch's, which make it so the roofs are held up without burdening the windows, Modern Houses are honestly a way of people skipping costs and making weaker less sustainable houses, as insulation and cooling is skimped on. Honestly If I had to recommend a house that'd be good for current society, I recommend getting a Victorian times house and just installing an AC Unit. The only thing I can say is, I hate the overpricing of land, as it makes the budget which I can use to design be a lot lower than normal use.
@@calumwatt4360 It may not be, but at least it isn't making the issue worse. In any case, I thought the video was about the unaffordability of houses to purchase, are you a bit confused?
@@1CounterTerrorist No rent controls mean that landlords can charge essentially whatever they like. Given the fact that there is so little house building going on and people have less and less choice, more and more people are forced to pay higher and higher rents just to keep a roof over their heads (just have a look at London). This makes it extremely profitable to be a buy-to-let landlord, meaning those with the means increasingly invest in housing a safe investment option: essentially because you are getting someone much poorer than you to pay for your house! Introducing rent controls means you can massively disinsentivise this sort of anti-social behaviour by making landlordism much less profitable and more risky. More landlords will be forced to sell up, and if you couple of this with a right-to-buy scheme for private tenants, allowing the people who have been exploited like this for years to actually buy the homes they have paid for - that will put a considerable dent in the housing crisis and end one of the most insidious means of exploitation in the contemporary economy.
They need to redevelop existing buildings especially in decimated communities. It's expensive in the sort term but better for growing communities! Also what about flat pack social housing? There's some great companies out there who make nice flat pack homes and it could be mega cheap on a grand scale. Plus depending on the foundations they could build on brown sites
ngl if I hear 'redevelopment' or 'regeneration' , it makes alarm bells ring. it usually ends up meaning kicking out the poor people, throwing in 1 community centre and 4/100 'affordable' houses/ social housing. reeks of gentrification :(
@@alexreeves3817 The government are competent, its just that their interests arent aligned with the interest of the lower classes. They are aligned with the interests, of the monarchy. Wealth management is what they deal in and the hive mind mentality kicks in. The lower classes are just drones, which are dispensable, however the closer you get to the queen and the more importance you have. And anyone who is wealthy is basically considered royalty.
There are too many people crammed into a too small area of land. More people = more housing demand, but supply cannot increase because there is not enough spare land to build on.
I noticed you didnt include the mass immigration over the last 10 or 20 years. Importing people at a rate of up to 400k per year, one of the biggest factor. Also the amount of foreign money invested In housing in this country. Big cities like London and Manchester are most affected.Control the rate of immigration and limit sales to people who dont live here. Big step in the right direction
@@marvinrascal3376 you'll get use to it. This channel leans left quite considerably so issues like this are seldom raised. Still like the channel and the content. Gives a good view from the lefts perspective however they often leave out key facts such as this one
@@jamieimbusch this channel started out as more central. Hadn't seen it for ages - popped up in my suggested. Had a look at the video list and can confirm with what you're saying. Shame.
There is no regulation in hosuing the UK is a third world shit hole where corruption is everywhere now just after the Russia war they are sanctioning Russian millionaires and looking into money laundering this country is a JOKE!
From the Netherlands. My country hasn't fixed the issue. Buying a house is currently only for the richer people and it is getting more and more extreme.
I like how its a combination of labour and tory policies that have caused this, neither seemed to have public interest in mind at any point. I think should have a tournament of CIV5 or 6 and whoever wins an economic victory should get to run the country :)
A Civ tourney sounds like a much better idea than letting the Great British public vote. We can’t tell our arse from our elbow and wouldn’t know a beneficial policy if it smacked us in the face.
We need to tackle the landlord industry, no one needs more than 2, 3 houses. We need much higher tax after that, which would discourage it. Being a landlord creates absolutely no wealth for the country as a business and should be slowly vanished.
Lots written on this and yes, I was going to suggest LVT too. Interestingly enough in economics taxing land is seen as both the most efficient and least damaging / distorting way of raising revenue for government.
Sure, while were at it, lets expropriate the means of production - because company owners aren't *really* adding value to the economy and raise the annual income tax to 100% for income over 725000£, because no one *really* needs more than a million dollars.
They are taxed - Higher stamp duty than owner occupier - Can only claim interest rate relief at basic rate. So can actually lose money on a rental but still pay income tax - Pay capital gains tax when sell Is your counter factual - Less landlords - But obviously the same number of houses will be built. Just sold at a lower price.
I would disagree, my parents buy dilapidated houses, do them up, and then rent them out - I feel like that's doing a service as a landlord and how a landlord should be (though I might be a bit biased!) They're not rich, they were basically cheated out of their pensions and needed a bit extra revenue, and do a good job of it at that. What we need to be working against is landlords that consistently offer subpar service, force people to live in squalor, and otherwise price lock people out of basic accomodation. Basically, don't be punishing good people for the actions of some right dickheads.
This video literally skillfully omitted the main cause of insane housing prices = opportunists and investment capital (investors pour money into the housing market of every stable country on earth! making the prices unaffordable for the working class!!!)
A lot of the housing market is really logjammed. I lived in an ex-council block near Central London comprising of 50 flats. Half were social flats and lots of those were 2 and 3 bedroom flats with just one tenant living there, often for decades. I knew an older lady in a three bedroom corner flat (triple aspect!) There should be big incentives for these people to downsize to one bedroom flats. Same for those owning bigger flats who want to downsize - stamp duty exemption for downsizing.
One problem is indeed investors as property yields higher returns than shares. Also formerly working as a Mortgage broker I saw the Buy to Let option became so lucrative and safer than a pension, a whole class of professional small and medium scale private landlords has emerge with portfolios of one house building up to 20 or 30. And today low rent social housing only available to those on housing benefit is being built with the specific purpose of selling to private landlords and investors as a guaranteed investment income. The thing this video fails to address, is a large amount of Conservative Party income comes from the renting industry and associated businesses around it, both directly from party donations through to lucrative board memberships and free shares. There is an incentive to turn us into a renter economy.
Green belts should be replaced by green fingers sticking into the city. Outside the city core building can be done in in certain corridors that stick into the green areas, and the green area between these building corridors remain protected. The city will have the shape of the sun in a child's drawing. This means that the city can grow, and at the same time green space is easily accessible for everybody.
Ignore the fact immigration has sky rocketed since 1997 with 700k entering the country. And they need to be housed somewhere, demand increases and so does price
Of course, like all racists, you've not mentioned where all the tax paid by the increased population has gone. Immigration has added £10,000,000,000.00 as year to UK government tax receipts. Racists ignore that!
@@pauldavis221 Did I mention race in what I said, Nope I'm talking about all migration whether they are white black brown asian.... Everything, I couldn't care less about race, whether your from Poland or Pakistan, migration needs lowering immediately to sustainable levels whereby people can assimilate to British culture. I like how you assume I'm talking about a particular race, it's almost like you are are being racist🧐 ( You leftists want to bring race into everything I swear to god )
Very glad you explained how this exacerbates wealth inequality! :) You forgot to mention in that section the quite important factor that is that the lower your income the higher percentage of that income is spent just living and so the lower the percentage that can be saved. That is to say not only is a house in your percentile more times your annual income but it is many, many more times your disposable income because food, shelter and utilities are a far higher proportion of your income (often reaching or even exceeding 100%).
Not enough money? Id also be interested to know how many new homes could of been built (not these poor quality and overpriced new builds) with the same amount of money wasted on the track and trace app
Oddly enough there's a few companies that do "flat pack homes" which on a large scale could be built faster and cheaper than the current style if new builds, it'd look better, be longer lasting, and on top of all of that in theory they could be built on brown sites too which would massively increase the amount of affordable housing in the UK in a very short amount of time.
Not a single mention of residential properties being bought up as investments or to become rental properties. I can't help but think that is a massive part of the problem that this video completely missed.
Your point on “Intensive arable agriculture” is just bizarre and not really relevant. If you want to take any food out of the ground it’s going to have some kind of impact on the environment, if it’s done intensively then it’s done efficiently. What you planning to eat in your new home? Air?
Not at all. He makes the point that one of the reason green belt policies are seen as a good thing is preserving the natural enviroment, however because the land can still be used for farming which directly harms the enviroment, preserving it as a green belt space fails to protect it. I agree with this, as although i was not living in a green belt space, I lived nextdoor to a large farm field, which for months was just a depressing area of dry dirt. I think that green belt spaces should be exempt from such farming practices, as despite what you seem to think most people don't actually go picking wild berries for sustinence, and in reality 80% of the food on British plates is imported, so not having a local field of wheat isn't going to directly impact most peoples food sources.
there are millions of empty houses but they're more expensive than they're worth & they're in the wrong places since Thatcher crashed the labouring industries, most notably coal mining but many others too
@@alanhat5252 to add to that, the quality of new builds are crap, awfully planned by the construction companies, crampt, bad interior layout no planned storage spaces like cupboards for belongings ( think you Xmas decorations or closets) and lots of dead spaces, poorly constructed, building in flood areas. Basically I wouldn't buy a new home in the uk. They're too expensive for a poorly planned ugly product.
One main reason it's gotten so bad, IMO, is individuals owning multiple homes in order to rent them out for extortionate amounts. I live in a developing town where there's always at least one massive housing development being built somewhere, and yet the price for a 1 bedroom starter home is £200,000. If you're fortunate enough to be able to afford the minimum 5% deposit of £10k, monthly mortgage repayments seem to average £250pm, while the cost for renting that same property is regularly around £500. There used to be a woman I worked with who herself owned 3 additional 1-2 bed homes besides the one she lived in, 2 of which she bought within the 2 years I worked with her. She knew I still lived with my parents and aspired to own my own home, and one day, around the time of the Brexit referendum, told me that "you'll find it a lot easier to buy a home if it passes, there won't be all those immigrants taking up social housing and buying up our stock". I damn near had to bite my tongue off to stop myself from losing my temper with her biggoted attitude, and telling her "No, the reason I can't buy a home is because people like YOU, a middleclass woman in her late 50's who's children have all grown up and left home, own 3 more homes than you need in order to bring in a secondary income that rivals what you earn here in your day job." She saw property investment as the safest option around, and so bought one home with her inheritence when her parents died, and another one she put down a large amount by emptying her pension prematurely. But while it may provide her with a secure place to invest her money, it completely decimates any opportunities for young FTBs like myself. Not only this, but there's a large amount of housing in my town bought by people who work within London, as the price to buy here is substantially lower than it is in the capital, while only being 45 minutes commute away by train. Solutions I'd like to see, although probably not feasable and potentially bordering on draconian, would be placing a hard limit on individuals to only be allowed to own a single home, or to not own any housing that they themselves don't live in for at least 80% of the year, or to limit the area someone can buy to within 30 miles of their primary place of work.
Surprised cheap borrowing rates wasn’t mentioned here… borrowing £200k @ 2% now costs about £800/month, whereas borrowing the same amount at 10% in the 90’s would’ve been £1800/month…
Renting properties and ownership of rented property should be properly controlled so many own multiple homes just to rent out which is just paying someone's morgage but raising the cost of housing meaning more can't afford houses
While this video does touch on some issues on this topic it also completely ignores the positive impact that low interest rates has on property in the uk. Due to low interests rates buying a house in the uk is actually comparatively very affordable at the moment especially when you look at interest rates in the 80s for example
I really appreciate how clear and accessible all of TLDR's explainer videos are. Articles and videos you can actually understand on these seriously complicated topics (without doing loads of confused googling) are so hard to come by - a solutions video would be great!
the solution is to close the border. the uk has 1.4million immigrants per year who all take a house each. Native brits have negative birth rates, this means there is negative demand for housing.
@@treeroots1309 Yes, Housing is entirely supply and demand. if there are 1 house per person there is 0 primary demand, only demand from second home buyers. British people only have 1.8 children, they need 2.1 just to keep replacing people. Over time and with constant house building rates the price of housing will go down, existing property is worth less if there is no one to buy it. Instead the govt imports 1m + people each year who buy/rent the houses keeping prices rising. Everywhere else in europe housing is free or being destroyed because there are no people to live in them or buy them. *except places importing millions of 3rd worlders and eastern euros
Housing should be a human right. Every working man and woman should deserve a house. I don't care if you work in Mcdonalds, your a bin man, a mechanic, a waitress, a policeman, a lawyer.... You deserve a basic house. Let's say a 1-2bedroom small house with basic amenities, that's all we need. We don't need a 4 bedroom detached mansion with a 2 car garage a swimming pool and a spectacular view.
That is a good solution but unfortunately the born with a silver spoon shoved up their ass rich will always throw a tantrum when the Middle and Lower class' attempts to exist get it the way of their "right" to use 3 times as many resources as everyone else does. I mean.. how inconsiderate is it of us normal people to get in the way of all of their fun by existing and wanting to do so comfortably?
As one of the aforementioned poor people who can't afford a house, supposedly because of that inconvenient thing called the countryside, am I the only person who's deeply disturbed by the fact that apparently only 13% of this country is not a concrete jungle, and that even one third of that is farmland? Clearly the thing we need most desperately in this country is less people, not more houses.
£104 pound for a house is cheap! 1:26
Gimme two! ;)
I think he me- oh it's a joke
bugger I paid too way too much for mine.
@@trippymchippy8586 "Gimme 15 motherfucker!" Big Smoke
At 1:44 the house costs £10k more than advertised on the sign! They really did rush this one out...
When you are German and knows how bad the housing crisis is over here and still get referenced as a better case. It must be really horrible on the island.
You should take a look at the quality of the new builds, it's a joke.
I mean, I wouldnt say that its a good comparison. Germany has a lower number of houses in total because of our prevsilant renting culture, so a 3% rise is less than a 2% rise in the UK
Families are moving to poorer parts of the UK to buy homes, because they can't afford to live in the places they grew up in.
Where I live in Swansea the average working family (both parents working) makes £33,000 a year. And a 3bed house will cost you about £85,000 in a bad neighborhood, £120,000 in an average neighborhood, and £180,000+ in a posh neighborhood. This is extremely good value. About as low as it gets in a city, outside Scotland.
If you go two hours up the motorway to Bristol 1 bedroom flats start at about £120,000, and three bedroom houses are £250,000+.
The closer you get to London, the more absurd it gets. Want to live in central London? I hope you have £500,000 for a studio apartment.
If you're renting for too long, you become stuck.
@@joshuaparrott2458 Except not, housing is not the only investment. It is even shown that you can earn more money through smart stock or ETF investments. We also have a lot more renter protection and regulation than countries in the anglo sphere and it only got bad in the biggest cities, when regulations were abolished and social housing sold in the early 2000s. Vienna is the perfect example how you can have a stable and affordable living expenses with your population being almost only renters
I live in a large city and the amount of empty and unused properties is unreal, this should be made illegal.
Which city?
@@jm-je4tl i live in birmingham and there are parts of 'brum' with properties that have been empty for ages yet there are homeless people living on the streets.
@@elliotspencer2648 You talking about Selly oak. There are about 10 properties on each street there for let, but lying empty
"How many crises do you have?"
Britain : Yes
"is it a bug or a feature of your system"
Britain: Yes
@@alexreeves3817 16x the median income
And this is the true reason you'll never own a house.
One of the _crises_ is clearly a crisis in spelling. ;)
Brexit was the best idea ever. At least all those people wont be able to move out of Britain! (Those landlords and huge hedge funds probably)
I’m living in London. Every time I go house browsing, I can only cry, because houses are generally in the 400K to 1M range. The cheapest houses are more than 10X my annual salary. Even renting is a extremely unreasonable, I have to give up about 60% of my salary on the rent alone, only for a basic tiny studio apartment.
yeah man. I moved up north 2 years ago. Instead of paying 650 (bills included) for a room in a share house, me and a mate pay 500 rent (around 700 with bills) for a 2 bed house. So I pay 350 and there's just us two in the house.
1M only in London ? In villages in Luxembourg houses are already 1.4M.
And in the city between 3M to 7M average for houses depending on area of the city
1) Who forces you to live in London ?
2) Who forces you to live in the UK ?
Besides yourself, nobody
It's hard I hear you. Just gotta try and make more money.
@@THEREALZENFORCE My job is in London, and I don’t have a Visa. I only just started working as well, so I don’t really have the ability to just pack my bags and leave just yet. There is a potential that my job might become remote at some point, which would open me up to more options.
quote - Why Are Houses Unaffordable in Britain?
To ensure more people rent to keep the haves having more than the have nots. The entire system needs changing!!!
But it won't change sadly 😭
I'm of the older generation living in a flat long since paid off, but I'm feeling anything but smug, instead I'm very angry.
I bought my London flat on my own when I was a primary school teacher and I was able to afford it. Now, two teachers would not be able to afford it. Along with this is the degrading of language associated with housing : every new development is "luxury", "Manhattan Style", "boutique", "designer" (particulary ridiculous as every building is designed) etc. Then we are told that in every development there must be a number of "affordable" flats. Meaningless, because a person earning the average wage has no chance whatsoever of being able to "afford" one, and even at that price, it seems that the number of "affordable" flats in a development has been allowed to shrink.
The amount of social housing in London has dramatically fallen since my purchase, and many people who had lived in an area all their lives have been forced to relocate away from friends and support networks. It's all so unfair, but I see no chance of change because those in power are all too happy to let this continue, although they may shed crocodile tears from time to time.
Nah even some people with "good" salaries ("£45K+") would still not be able to afford a home in some parts of the country which is sad.
Same development in Germany.
The result of foreign investment in the UK and also banks generating digital cash for mortgages with no back-up. In reality banks should destroy every time there is a repayment to each digitally created loan and keep interest. But they obviosuly don’t do this. This system increased the affordability of home buying in the last 30 years coupled with foreign investment. If everyone actually sold their houses and decided to take cash and move abroad, the system would break down, but they know clearly people wouldnt do this so it is a perfect place to hide inflation due to digitally generated cash. Another example is the stock market. So in summary 2-3 % pay rise you get (if that...) every year based on Retail Price Index, they should factor in this HIDDEN inflation in housing market. People now have to take mortgages as couples rather singles as they did 10-20 years ago. Granted the interest rate in 1990 was 15% and probably you had to pay similar monthly payments. They managed to offset this price increase by reducing the interest rates, but how much further can they do this ? Surely you cannot have negative interest rates. The whole system is broken and in the future we will need to have 100 year mortgages to pass affordability...
I worked on some developments in London, I forget where but I walked past it when I was there once, an old cinema turned into ridiculously expensive apartments, right across the road were council like flats. I believe there was a big uproar about it all and rightly so, a surprising amount of developments in London are aimed at the foreign wealthy markets.
@@Chris-jo1zr sad,sad
You've forgot to include the problem of foreign investors buying up properties they have no intention of living in, often to launder money.
This is such a tiny, tiny percentage yet I always see Socialists bringing this up, but when health tourism or illegal immigration is brought up, you're told to shut up, as it's only a tiny minority of people who fit that bill.
You mean like the Brits do in other countries.
@@DanSands1 Exactly
@@tomralph8540 in America it’s really, REALLY bad. UK just doesn’t build enough houses. In America also whole neighbourhoods are built for Airbnb.
Health tourism is deceptive way to put it as UK nationals had ability to health tour other countries. Secondly, what's the fucking problem if somebody has their life saved by the NHS, we pay the NHS a relative pittance anyways and it does fairly well!
And as for illegal immigration the clue is in the first word: ILLEGAL.
Nice attempt at wHtabboutism
Personal property is stability and freedom. This monopolisation of property by a handful of rich investors, landlords and corporations will make the average person less stable, less free and more powerless than ever before. If this goes any further, we will need a revolution, there can be no other way.
You will own nothing and be happy
Voting for Leftists caused this problem, and even after a revolution there will be Leftists eager to implement the same "caring" (read: stupid) policies that caused the problem in the first place.
@@suserman7775 Explain this please
@@suserman7775 We haven’t had a leftist party since 2010 and even then, how “leftist” they really were is disputable
@@oneillnandie7999 Doesn't matter what party the current PM is in. News media have too many citizens "believe" that moving away from Leftist ideals is "mean". So basically the problem can't be solved with common sense.
Restructure the green belt? MEAN !
Reduce regulation to make new housing builds more doable? MEAN !
The Leftist philosophy, of "caring", is only about superficially showing there is care. If consequences lead to more hardship, well that's okay, we'll care about you at that time then.
The Left is quite content with giving a man a fish, if said man promises not to learn how to fish.
Of course a video on the possible solutions is needed.... Was actually hoping that you would cover the topic in a bit more detail.
Btw I think another reason for the housing shortage and sudden increase in prices this year was the stamp duty holiday, low interest rates and most importantly the practice of banks giving interest only mortgage due to which people who already home owners are buying a second property to let out, As the rents cover the mortgage repayment with neat a couple hundred pounds in profit. Thus increasing the house prices unrealistically.
Also 2nd houses and foreign purchase
Under Thatcher we also had the deregulation of the banks and with that, under John Major the start of Buy to Let which really took off under Tony Blair, including himself. This created additional demand for house purchasing. Then of course in the last year with have had Sunak's special house price hike of over 10%. The interest only mortgage is the second speculative stage by the banks in Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis which then slips into the third Ponzi stage and an inevitable crash. Politicians seem to become increasingly incompetent with each passing decade, and we already know that this is only going to end in tears.
i concur
According to an article in the Guardian in 2017, 1 in 10 UK adults owned a second home whilst simultaneously 4 in 10 UK adults owned no property whatsoever. And of that half (52%) of all the assets held in additional properties is held by the baby boomers, born 1946-65, and a further quarter (25%) by generation X, born 1966-80.
There isn’t a lack of properties in this country. There are enough house for every homeless person and every single person or family to live. The problem is the distribution of housing, both in terms of singular individuals owning multiple properties as well as the fact that people want to live in specific areas and not all houses are where the majority of people desire to live.
Something needs doing about it but I can’t see this government or the opposition doing anything about it anytime soon.
@@arghjayem Sure, there are enough properties, except a large chunk of them are rented out. So are you saying we should somehow confiscate those properties and give them to the person currently renting?
One of the biggest issues for young people right now. Good Stuff.
Young people?!
I'm 43, earn about the national average, but because I'm single and rent, there's no way I'll ever be able to afford a deposit, let alone be able to move somewhere bigger than the studio I'm in unless I lipsticks and move somewhere cheaper where, as per, there's less jobs and worse salaries.
@@peterclarke7006 it generally affects young people more
@Henry Gill-Pratt uh no. People in the countryside oppose any and all development. This country is entrenched in the "I've got mine so you can f*ck off mentality"
The wider issue here is why the desire to own. Consistently my non real estate portfolio has out preformed the housing I own, by some considerable margin. Anyone with a compounding clue can tell you 5% a year since 1993 will kill any house gain in any area in the UK. The UK has this insane desire to want to own.
I own for diversification it's easier to dump property into my daughters trusts than other assets but if you don't need to own then borrow to invest elsewhere. You won't listen no-one will. Non residential outpacers about 60,000 per million per year.
@@JakeyG-eq1un It affects young people the least other than those who already have houses. This video totally missed a key point that the government has factored in, birth rate, if it's below 2 the population is shrinking, it's currently 1.6 per woman so for young people this opens up a massive opportunity in 10-20 years.
For a house to increase more than the annual wages of its owner is insanity!
Buy one as soon as you can even if it means living with your mum and dad until you are 28. Just save up and don't be a rent serf
@@reheyesd8666 how about there be BOTH options. Social housing should of stayed at a certain percentage of that of private developments. But it didn't, people in the 80's brought up their council homes in their droves but the governments since then never reinvested that money into more social housing. Leading to a supply and demand issue. You have high demand but low supply, meaning the houses that being built become more expensive. And the houses being built are private leading to insane mortgage costs or high rent costs from a private landlord.
If we had had a steady supply of BOTH social and private developments there wouldn't be this crisis. The right to buy scheme was a good one in principle but in practise it was a long term disaster and totally mismanged by all preceeding governments.
All my neighbours live in council houses and refuse to buy them for extremely cheap price because anything happens they call the number an council solves it. While anything happens to my house that I'll be paying off for next 25 years, I pay for it. The country is full of leeches and crooks who exploit the system whether rich or poor
@@raukoring What you are explaining there is a wage issue. Those people have become comfortable paying rent and more than likely couldn't afford to buy those houses and pay for the up keep themselves. Those people are probably living pay check to pay check and you expect them to take out a mortgage? When more than likely their jobs are not secure enough and their pay isn't high enough. This is what people say about wage stagnation. Prices for everything have continued to rise but wages haven't kept up at the same pace. Capitalism and consumerism 1 O 1.
@@Fezzy976 my neighbour can buy his council house for 40K. the same house I bought for 145K. They're exactly the same houses mirror attached to each other. I'm a non skilled warehouse worker, pay my taxes NI, never asked for any benefits even when I was eligible because I don't consider that my money, I didn't earn them and as I'm not a cripple and can earn my money I save what I can and do overtimes. What I'm saying is I paid 145K+ interest while the neighbour refuse to pay 40K cuz if his boiler goes down, he calls the number and they bring a new one. If my boiler goes down, my bank account looses £2.000. if his roof breaks down, he calls the number. If my roof breaks down, I use all my savings/take a loan. I don't care he can't save his money. Other neighbour who works part time, spends evenings in jacuzzi in his council backyard with his unemployed wife while I'm in work thinking how can I support my future child while this guy has three kids I've no idea where he gets money for them from his part time unskilled job. Other neighbour living with his "ex" wife and new born, while officially renting other house. It's worth for him to send £250 every month to some people who put him on their rent so that his wife can be claiming single unemployed mother money living on her own.. while he lives with her. I could go on. Just saying. Tons of leeches here. Would be awesome to loose both the thieves from top AND from bottom
I want a whole series on this. Including debating right to buy, and the impact of low interest rates.
Low interest rates are designed to generate tax without actively putting tax up. If interest rates were high everyone would save in their bank and not spend their money thus not stimulating the economy. If you want interest rates higher then expect tax rates higher which is unpopular in conservative government especially since the main target for tax is now the extremely wealthy. The simple issue is that no one wants to build houses. It wouldn't matter for low interests if a lower percentage of overall houses were renting. However local governments don't like that because it brings their land value down especially if the external estates are incredibly successful which they will be because of low mortgage rates.
Right to buy was the problem. Sell low with no penalties to then sell on cashing in on that profit BUT WORSE don’t replace stock. I can say that as a) grandparents and aunts had houses in East London, grandparents wouldn’t buy despite children trying to buy on their behalf but aunts did but however stayed until passing away. B) I looked to buy with my fiancée between 1986-1988 and all were ex council and priced the same as non ex council. West London then Essex. We would turn up for a viewing to be told ‘sold’. Mental. My daughter has a part buy part buy rent property, she’s disabled and works, bought 2010. System is broken. My sister joined the buy for profit game and bugged the life out of me. In 33 years we have moved once. A house should be for living in, not short term profit. My opinion, I won’t reply or engage.
I live in a garage which I've worked on myself and I pay £60 a month in rent, I've spent about £2000 to make it livable. I dont have running water or electricity, but I have alternatives, but the fact is it wouldnt be hard for the council to connect this if they wanted to, however they wont because the houing market is a racket. Consider how many years a mortgage takes to pay off and you'll understand why no politician wants to allow people to build their own homes. You have to work at least 40 hours a week to afford to make payments, and you have to work for around 40 years to clear the mortgage. People are a resource which is simply too valuable and the housing market and the motor industry is the key to keeping peole in the rat race.
Building more houses is not the solution. I live in britain and they are always building more houses. The fact is there is too much money to be made in construction.
Heres a breakdown of salaries per hour and jobs on a construction site.
Labourer £9
Forklift £14-18
Dumper £15
Excavator £20 +
Manager/forman £25+
Bricklayer £20+
Carpenter £20+
Electrician £20+
These are just some to name a few but should give you an idea of what to expect and you have to add to the health and safety inspector, slingers etc etc.
Construction always run over budget costs are cut as much as possible, contractors cut corners so they can bill for more hours etc etc, list of problems go on. What should essentially cost around £50k costs the end buyer £100 because of inflation, and I don't mean standard economic inflation, I mean the fact that these people are straight up willing to sell you plasterboard homes for the price of a stone house.
The houses are of poor quality and many new builds fail inspections upon completion.
The solution is to let people build their own homes but corruption is never going to let that happen.
This channel seems to have a left wing ideology (which historically harms the poorest the most) and are clearly economically illiterate, so not the best creators to ask to create such a series. Try reasonTV or reading Thomas Sowell’s book “housing book and bust” which is brilliant (and available as audio)
@@jameslincs if you believe pure capitalistic views then you want an economy to collapse under its own pressure.
Why even live in London if you're earning under 50k? Literally working to survive. What a waste of life.
and theres the solution. Move out of London, live in less competitive areas, find your own stomping ground. Prettysimple.
"Britains housing crisis explained": GREED!!
We already don't have enough green belt areas. We also do need to farm some of our food. You can't just build houses everywhere.
Hate to admit it, but fair point.
Socialists won't stop until every inch of Britain is made up of grey, concrete apartment blocks.
You are right. The problem in England is that people build horizontally instead of vertically.
what makes the whole thing worse is that landlords are buying up what few "affordable" houses/flats that young couples would potentially be able to afford and then renting them out way over priced.
Doesn't alter the numbers of houses tho. Just who owns or occupies.
And not repairing overtime
That is true, it's happening throughout Greater Manchester. The rents are ridiculous but demand is high, so we end up paying two thirds of our salaries on rent, unless you are fortunate to get somewhere, at slightly more reasonable rent! Even though 1500 is common monthly rent, that does not guarantee we won't be begging and chasing for basic maintenance work to be done. Greedy, immoral landlord and agents are aplenty!
Only way I get a house is when my mother and father pass away, it’s messed up to say the least.
Assuming you got siblings, how does that work out with them?
Better get busy greasing the stairs...( and ungrease them when you move in ).
That's the other thing that wasn't mentioned in the video, that a lot more people who own their own house who are obviously middle-aged-retired are living much longer, which a) delays the availability of existing houses coming free for people in their 20s/30s and b) means that the house prices keeps rising for the extra 15-20 years they live in it. Plus C) just cause you are lucky to have a house become available that someone who was in their 80s/90s even lived in. Chances are they wouldn't have done much to it for decades since retiring, so their is the added cost of doing it up so upgrade and modernize it properly.
My Parents are pretty old now and well into retirement, but are both healthy and spritely still could easily last another 10-15 years, so it won't be of any real benefit to me by the age I'll be as and when that happens, more of a random 'bonus' in the 2nd half of my life. So I may end up selling it and putting the money into savings/investments/pension plan for when I get too old to work anymore.
and it's not like anyone is chucking £50-60k a year jobs at people in their 20-30s either to allow them to get on the ladder, so it's either lots of debt in one go, or somehow budget and worry about every penny for 20-25 years and have no life enjoyment. (and who wants to make that kind of commitment at 21)
No you won’t, the state will seize it for their care. Unlucky bro, it’s the renting life for us.
The people with parents that also had to rent won't be getting a house at all unless people like you rent it to them. And yet you complain about your life..
Yes please make one about the solutions! one of the more interesting videos I’ve seen from TLDR in the last months. I’m a long term subscriber!
the solution is alternative accommodation. I live in a garage and whilst it doesnt have electricity or water the council could connect that if they wanted to. But they wont because its not in their interest to allow me to afford to live without having to work.
You missed out all the demand side factors pushing prices up such as how housing is taxed, the financial credit system, domestic (landlords), corporations, and wealthy foreign investors buying up housing (especially in London) etc. It's not all about supply and just building wherever we can, its as much a distribution crisis as it is a supply one.
I wasn't looking at the screen when you said the price of a house was £104 and I was like ????? until I looked up and realised it was £104k and the audio is just wrong lmao
I would like a video on possible solutions to the housing crisis
This!
Restriction on owning second homes. Rent caps. Lowering the tax threshold for stamp duty. Stopping foreign ownership.
@@jeremybiggs8413 rent caps can make the problem worse long term . rent control has already been studied to have a negative effect on long term housing supply
Get rid of the right to buy policy and prevent foreign investors from owning homes
Pray that pod sleeping as seen in San Francisco, where you rent a bed to sleep in, with dozens of other people and no space to yourself, is not presented as the solution and does not start creeping into our island.
I don't know if that would be in line with the laws here but you know our future is absolutely bleak, miserable, and in poverty if it gets established here.
I can't even imagine how lucky people who expect to inherit a home from their parents must feel, while trying to be a first-time owner in your family is like trying to climb mount fuji with a broken leg
I'm dreading it, what my mother inherited is worth a lot of money but the houses and few old farm buildings are in ruins. She had to pay £100,000 plus just in taxes to keep living in the same place she always has lived, by the time it gets to me and my brother the only way to pay the tax would be to sell the lot which is not something we want to do... My grandad bought it in the 50s for a few hundred quid to farm the land and in the coming decades it'll all be gone thanks to the appalling tax system we have, you're even taxed in death
I hear you. All my family are either living in a housing association area (my grandparents) or council house (my mother.)
I knew growing up hearing about how much they wished they could have afforded a home of their own. And how my mother feels guilty that she is unable to leave anything to me. This made owning my own home a dream of mine. A place I could look after my grandparents and my mum whenever the time comes.
Unfortunately it is starting to look like just that - an unattainable dream. I've saved and worked since I was 17 y/o (now 23), I just don't see the point of trying anymore.
What a time to be alive ay.
Inheritance is a gamble because of social care. The average person without a savvy accountant cannot, if they even wanted to, avoid care costs for elderly parents. Our bill, a charge on ma in laws house, was £130K. My disabled sister aged 56 has had a charge put on her house for the cost of a stair lift and wet room. This will only increase so inheritance is not to be relied upon,
@@freyachristina1340 you're only 23 don't give up, you can do it. Focus on increasing you salary and looking in cheaper areas
@@freyachristina1340 33 years old, me and my partner are in the process of buying our own home.
Don't give up. Your income will grow, you're still young.
Would love a solutions video!
Increase building social housing. Pay for it by investing (or increased targeted taxing haha) in large scale multiple housing developers. So while the crisis lasts the government gets more income through the latter to build more social housing. Eventually the ROI on these investments should go down, which means the increase in social housing has had the proper effect.
Easy to have a global project homes for all we have means and technology! but toxic oil banking people in power of us and would not make money then loss power! We have the technology and fiscal modelling for green homes for all. 1980 worked on a theoretical project greening London homes for all! but we have a toxic system mmmm time for global change
@@bosoerjadi2838 Er no. The problems created by government is not solved by more government.
End the state. Without state violence there's no more bribes, delays waiting for third party permission, no support for land ownership or unilateral contracts, finance not provided by QE.
@@ConsumerWatchdogUK Erm.. why not?
The key thing with problems created by the government is not that it has been created by the government but how it has been created by the government.
OK so, I think there's been a little bit of oversimplification of the greenbelts here.
Most people know it's farms, we like farms, we'd prefer to still have them in the fertile areas around which our cities were historically built.
Completely agree - although farms aren't lush green forests bursting with ecodiversity, they are useful for growing food and as you say are much more attractive than having a load of des reses or apartment block 2 inches from your front door.
I didn't know it was mostly farms, I thought there were some farms and country parks myself.
It's also good for food security as well and cuts down on emissions related to importing food (which is the alternative).
@@randellster food security is important. You never know what could happen
@@andreaslind6338 More of the land in the north is less arable and more grazing or forest. Most of the green belt around Manchester are woods, meadows and moorland.
We need to put more emphasis on restoring empty and abandoned properties, rather than building new houses.
There isn't as many as you think. We need a lot more than that.
@@thomasczthomash1859 plenty up north, Wales and Scottish borders. Not included is also second homes and empty rentals. Buy-to-rent will earn more through rent than their mortgage and upkeep, maintaining higher rents than mortgages.
@@AWest-ns3dl While most of our new stock is lapped up by BTL landlords, I'm afraid no amount of refurbished abandoned properties will do it.
The BTL landlords are called "investors" but in reality they, like vampires, are sucking housing away from those who should be able to buy it -- but can't -- their money availability does not depend on house prices much, as they pay off their mortgages with someone else's broken hope money. First time buyers, however, don't have unlimited resources. And all these ideas, like help to buy, or allowing to use "the bank of mum and dad" (even this is attacked by some banks who demand to see the own income source from FTB's and call it "responsible lending"), or offering 30-40 years mortgages (sad and disgusting travesty sucking money from unhappy poor people their entire working life with ridiculous amount of interest to pay for it) -- they only try to cater to existing unfair "market" conditions.
The biggest step we can take against the crisis? Voting out the party that is purposely not trying to fix it, but enacting just enough superficial policies to make it look like they're not completely ignoring it
In short don't vote for the conservative party.
In the last 10 years they effectively cut the NHS budget by 20%. This means less nurses and less doctors.
@@paxundpeace9970 Wrong, large scale immigration caused by Labour party policy caused the majority of the housing crisis. Why would voting for the same failed policies make it better? Not that the Tories have done anything to sort out immigration.
So, instead we should do nothing other than keep voting tory, a party that deliberately skews housing policy to pre-existing homeowners because they know that's their core voted demographic?
Good solution! Well done, you've solved it 😂👍
@@mikefish8226 You did even watched the video
Since Theatcher social housing units decreased from 7 million to less then 2 millions.
@Luís Andrade When labour was in power more housing was built.
The solution is to make rental properties a bad investment. There are enough homes, they are just not owned by the people living in them. You can see this easily enough because while house prices may double, the amount of homeless doesn't double.
Tax residential land which isn't your primary residence at an enormous rate. Make holding land as attractive as hot sick. Gear up the government to buy a new set of social housing stock for the people who do need to rent when properties get dumped to market.
Ah yes, because when you can't afford a place of your own you must automatically end up on the street rather than suffering other forms of reduced living standards such as being forced to live with parents until you're 30 or live in a house share for an amount of money that should normally be able to afford you an entire house to yourself.
Rented or owned, there are not enough properties to house the current UK population. Simple as that.
@@Hashterix "there are not enough properties to house the current UK population" then where the fock are they living in? Their shoes? Unless half the UK is homeless and i haven't noticed, there's enough roofs to cover us all. Problem is who owns the houses? My landlord owns 6 of them, 2 inherited and the rest mortgaged and he's a small fry i reckon.
Rory is right taxation on rental homes should be progressive until your third property is no longer profitable to rent. Your free capitalism will make the majority of the population unfree. No one needs more than 3 houses.
@@Hashterix totally incorrect. There are more than enough houses out there for everyone in the UK. It's jist that most houses are owned by a few. Be it landlords or large companies.
The government could easily regulate this by progressive taxation and by building affordable houses that only first-time buyers can purchase with no sale or rent clause for a number of years.
Of course this will never happen as the interest is not to help the young generation but to fleech the people.
@@mdo stupid argument. Yes there are enough, there are enough houses in the world to house everyone. In fact, there are hundreds of millions of empty properties!! Can you believe it?! Problem solved!
No. It's not that simple and we understand the world doesn't work like a child thinks it does, do we. Those houses are not where the population is. The demand is high in specific areas. What's your solution? We move thousands of people to live in derelict mining towns that have lots of empty houses but no jobs? Or perhaps we should move all the homeless into the millions of empty properties in China. Oh, how easy and simple of a solution 👏👏👏
It's supply and demand, it always has been and it always will be.
Also, just to highlight how disengaged you are from reality, those schemes you suggested do actually exist, and they do not help whatsoever, they only push prices even higher because the DEMAND is so high anyone who wants to buy has to stretch themselves financially to their limit because if they don't then the next person does.
@@alexc7367 oh yes, you're right, because nobody needs a house do they, everyone can just live in a bedroom and they can share a kitchen and bathroom; heck, they can even share a bedroom!
How do you determine there are not enough houses? How about the fact you cannot afford it because there's always someone ready to fill any space that comes up and keeps the market inflated. You go where there is more supply and less demand and houses get cheaper, that is a fact.
If a landlord owns a house does that mean nobody lives in it?? No, it means it's more likely to be lived in as efficiently as possible, as in nobody is going to pay extra for space they don't need.
All my peers, ALL of them, lived with their parents until age 27+. And you are telling me that there is enough housing. Go pull that rod out of your arse.
Forgot the effect of a net 250K immigrants arriving each year.
it was not ''forgotten'', it was intentional
@@mafismathis8012 probably
meanwhile germany with net immigration of 2 million coping better than the Uk... how bizzare
That sounds like a lot but that is only 0.38% of the UK population each year. Consider as well many immigrants tend to live in 'denser' housing structures (i.e. HMOs or smaller houses with many residents generally). I am not for nor against immigration but you need to put the numbers in perspective.
Doesn't matter if it's immigration, ex pats, birth rates. We are an island country. England is running out of fresh water. We don't make our own food and if finance sector move out of London are economy is exposed for the fraud it is. Were walking off a cliff.
I was forced to buy a house in Winchester in 2017 because of my new born at the time , buying that house was the biggest mistake of my life ! The house was overpriced and small ! Luckily I just sold that house and we are moving to Auvergne in France we bought a farm house for 35k with 250 sqm2 and 1 acre of land . What we bought in France the equivalent in Winchester is probably worth 1 or 2m £. House prices in the UK makes no sense at all
@@robfodder5575 I'm French and My wife is English because we are married she has double nationality ! I mean if you want to buy a property in France and beat the 90 day rule it's probably best if you invest in a flat cheaper and you can rent it out in the summer and enjoy in the winter for ski season
As someone who moved to the UK recently, the housing situation is intolerable. The British live in crappy houses and most don't even realise it because they've never lived abroad. You tell them it's because of the Green Belt and they don't understand or care. Extremely frustrating.
You know what I do if I find a foreign country intolerable? I go home. Obvious, no?
And it's not because of the Green Belt, it's because of mass immigration pushing down working class wages and pushing up house prices. Simple supply and demand.
@@edwardkenworthy7013 it's both mass immigration and the green belt. Mass immigration increases demand for houses while the green belt reduces supply. You can have one policy or another, but not both. The state is artificially increasing house prices, in other words, which benefits the wealthy and home owners at the expense of everyone else.
@@chemicalwasted3450 First, the Green Belt doesn't reduce supply, but it does limit growth, and that's a good thing: this is a green and pleasant land, not a concreted over land.
Second, immigration also suppresses working class wages making it even harder for them to afford to buy a house.
In other word you are part of the problem and if you find it intolerable you could help solve two problems in one go.
@@edwardkenworthy7013 You can keep the land green but it will cost you millions in increased home prices; everything in life is a trade off. As for mass immigration, nothing is stopping the working classes from voting a right wing party into power except their own lack of political will.
I know the used car market wasn't exactly a crisis but it was a major concern for many of us. Dealerships were buying cars back at higher than the customer paid so they could flip them for a lot more
That's price gouging, wtf
They're just inflationary pressures.
@@stevelam5898 No, that's called price gouging
It's a shortage so some of it is expected and some of it is taking advantage of people
You've missed the absolute biggest driver of house price increase: interest rates.
With rates falling so low, it makes monthly payments lower, driving up prices. This comes at the expense of higher initial capital requirement, causing that divide.
This is mostly true, although interest rates only matter if supply is limited. If supply is limited house prices get bid up to a point where it is marginally affordable - which is determined by monthly repayments and thus interest rates. If the market were well supplied then the price would not get pushed up to the edge of affordability
This doesn't make much sense, actually. You are suggesting that borrowing costs are so low that the housing market is flooded with more buyers than sellers. That's not the case for even a 4% SVR keeps most people off the housing ladder...mortgages have to be maintained and the reality is most people are struggling. So, what might be closer to the truth is that whilst prices have been rising (for years), real wages have been trending downwards (for years). What everyone is seeing now is the gap between prices and the inability of working people to keep up. In actual fact, when no one can afford to buy, there is no housing market; maybe that is the real crisis.
@@GRYL180 rates are 1.45% for a mortgage (at least where i live in europe)... so yeah it is rates. If you have a somewhat decent jobs you can easily borrow 200-300k. Add savings and parents lending a helping hand and you have a recipe for everyone to fomo buy.
bingo. and the FED is to blame. every central bank follows their lead - watch "The power of the fed" by PBS - it's really great / scary.
@@__Wanderer Exactly. When I bought my first place in 1990 I was paying over 12% mortgage interest. If I was looking now, with 2/3% interest rates and similar income I could afford to bid far higher on the same property so pushing prices up significantly.
You ignored the Bank of England's money printing which causes inflation.
Shhhh! Don't talk about about systemic capitalist WELFARE for CAPITALISM.
Really the ECB and BOE have been printing stupid amounts of money none stop since the 2008 financial crash and inflation has struggled to get anywhere near the 2% target until recently
Imagine how quickly interest rates would go up if house prices were counted as inflation....
Most mortgage companies require a blood sacrifice, before they’ll even look at your application.
I saw a great tweet from someone who said 'The bank says I can't afford afford $900 a month for a mortgage, so I pay $1400 a month in rent instead'. I think that beautifully sums up the issue.
@@mitsterful What the bank is actually saying is because the buyer doesn't have the necessary cash to convert to equity that the risk level is too high to lend against. Banks are not charities and high risk lending on a wide scale in the housing market partly resulted in the 2008 economic crash. The rental risk isn't necessarily owned by a bank but the landlord who is responsible and therefore offsets his/her own risk on a case by case basis. Ultimately another bank may be in the equation but they don't have sole ownership of the risk and therefore it is safer.
@@mitsterful The person probably couldn't afford $900 per month, which is why the $1400 they are paying in rent unsustainable. Assuming they can't find a cheaper property (unlikely) wouldn't be suprised if they have to get a flat mate or move back in with parents.
My plan is to have kids so I can offer them up to our great housing gods! Haha
@@tomtimtomtim You make a good point. However, it still highlights an issue that people pay more for rent than they would a mortgage, making it harder to save for a deposit on a house and being stuck in a renting cycle. People are being told their finances are too risky because they don't have enough, or they're too unstable, so they have to rent instead which costs more and is worse for stability anyway.
It's also worth mentioning house price increases due to historically low interest rates since the financial crisis.
no, its simply this, the greatest gen found oil energy, they used the oil to take over the world and multiply like rabbits on heat, then the boomers they bred were the first here, they took everything, then their kids had nothing, the end.
I think it’s safe to say those rates are being rectified fairly quickly…
Nowhere does he raise the question of the effect of mass migration. I can't help thinking if you import a population explosion it will exacerbate such problems.
Had to scroll way down the comments to see this elephant in the room. Mass immigration without infrastructure scaling is wreaking untold misery on many fronts.
UK is not the only country that has seen mass migration, yet it's the country that can't handle it in reasonable way. Migration is a contributing factor but there are other bigger reasons like land ownership and building approvals mentioned in video. Elsewhere an ordinary citizen can buy plot of land fairly easily and build house on it, hence why in certain countries self-build dominates the market. UK rather prefers stuffing pockets of big developers with money.
Another stupid idea that I can't understand is the land lease business in UK. You can own a house or flat but you don't own land that it stands on byt rather pay some lord or some big corporation to use that land. Insane!
Also he did not mention how much corruption money UK imported too. Ask your queen after WW2 when they asked for labour
@@FreeeeFall this isnt en elephant at all. all countries have immigration yet they are managing this better than the uk
Add the returning British people giving up living in Europe because Brexit has made their lives impossible.
there isent a housing crisis the problem is most of the new houses that are being built are unobtainable for first time buyers or for working class people and there isent enough low cost housing yet government still build new houses that are expensive and hardy anyone can afford
If hardly anyone can afford them, how do they sell them? Or are they sat empty?
Isn't that what they said?
@@danielwebb8402 there are millions of empty houses that are either too expensive or in the wrong place
@@danielwebb8402 ill give you an example - were i live there is 141 new homes being built all of which are between 294k and 435k to buy - there are 19 affordable housing aswell how is that fair . for the houses ur gunna need at least 45k deposit minimum . the average salary for people in that are isent even 45k if we take the rule of thumb 20% of income thats 5 years just for the deposit ur looking about 30 - 40 years before you own the house its ridiculous
@@kirkwilson72
Agree deposits is the problem / pinch point today. Not the monthly mortgage payments.
You can, and should be, able to get 95% mortgages. So you'd need 15k for a 300k property. Or 5k a year / 400 a month saving for 3 years. That doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Having a 90% LTV for first time buyers is a large hurdle. Completely agree.
How many homes out of those 141 do you think is "fair" for them to sell at a loss / less than they could? Why is it their job to be a charity? I don't understand why they have to sell any at a government prescribed cost.
Don't have the data, but I'm positive that Help-to-Buy s driving prices up.
every little government initiative to boost purchases drives prices up lol
I kinda see what you're saying. Because the goverment is helping, developers put the price up a bit. Yeah, needs data, but makes sense
@@nathanwaight Shared ownership schemes is just a scam for people who can't do maths.
@@nathanwaight Nah, central banks cause bubbles (the rest are simply scams).
A very 'Politically Correct' version of the UK Housing Crisis
whats the politically incorrect detail they missed?
@@Snugggg there’s more vacant homes than homeless people. Property developers own the land and have planning permission to build around 1,000,000 new houses but don’t so the prices continue to rise. An increasing number of homes are being bought by landlords, including about 40% of all the social/ counsel houses that were sold off. I think there’s a few more details but I can’t remember them right now.
There's also the housing market in London, which has had a knock on effect nationally. Desirable properties in the centre of town have been bought up by Oligarchs, Sheikhs and International Property Investment Syndicates over a number of years. This has fuelled a boom, driving up prices for everyone across the whole city.
The Covid Lockdown has seen an exodus of Londoners to the regions, able to cash in on the value of their sold London homes, in turn driving up the cost of housing in the places they move to.
At a time when the economy is on its knees, Estate Agents are quietly having a party. Some people are saying that this will inevitably lead to a burst bubble, but I suspect that the price of property might just remain out of reach for most, as long as the population continues to increase, in proportion to the number of houses being built.
@@Snugggg Mass immigration and white flight.
You also missed the fact that in last 20 years immigration has increased by over 7 million thanks to Tony Blair open door policy. This has also had an impact with more people buying with less housing available.
Of course, like all racists, you've not mentioned where all the tax paid by the increased population has gone. Immigration has added £10,000,000,000.00 as year to UK government tax receipts. Racists ignore that!
Those people pay taxes like british born citizens and the population has increased anyway, so it would've went up anyway
@@agataartwork9097 supply and demand, it's an uncomfortable truth but it's true. Your emigration is a tiny contributing factor of the housing crisis. The fact that You are willing to provide relatively (assumption) cheap labour also contributes to lower wages. I mean why did you emigrate in the first place? I bet it wasn't for the weather. (For the record I would do the same in your shoes)
Don't be so naive to think all natives have stable families, my family aren't there for me and never were. I was on my own from day 1. In fact there's many, many dysfunctional families, just go to Blackpool or Neath.
I'm self employed and work 2 jobs for a better future for my son. No one except top 10% of earners have it easy.
I don't hate immigrants by the way, I blame ridiculous regulations, greed, and the government for the state of things not the immigrants.
Enjoy your stay, and congratulations that you're looking to own.
I don't want to be hasty, but the thing about increased profits from a dominated developing market and a decrease in social housing sounds like intentional conservative policies to me... And the thing about it working to the benefit of the more wealthy and to the detriment of the poor.
And yet both Labour & the Liberal Democrats did nothing to even attempt to fix the issue.
@@loc4725 I wonder why. I guess with the liberal democrat coilition it was pretty clear who was in charge. But with Labour, I'm not sure, why didn't they do something about it. Also, what do you mean by Labour didn't notion? Social housing is a Labour policy, as far as I'm aware.
@@thesudaneseprince9675 No one can get social homes, and they are crazy expensive now anyway
yeh, it's about investment capital = people with moneys need to store and grow their moneys so they buy the reliable and steadily appreciate on value = feeding the cycle = more people and investment capital firms invest = more the prices grow. This is happening in every country on Earth. Don't forget that this is problem only for the world poor. The world rich (there's 50 humans who own as much as the poor 50% of all humans on Earth combined) - these guys benefit greatly from this trend...!
@@thesudaneseprince9675 The Lib Dems' showed their true colours when they were in coalition I'm afraid. Liberal & Democrat but only on the outside...
You're also right about Labour, but politics has changed. There was a time when all generations, both young _and_ old wanted a better country *for everyone* . That's why even though it was the young that mainly benefited social housing became a feature of the British political landscape. But fast forward to today and those younger generations are now the old and they don't have the same values of those that came before. And most importantly they vote.
So the problem is twofold: younger generations don't vote in sufficient numbers to matter and the current older generations seem to only think of themselves. And this therefore leads to political parties trying to woo the older, voting generation by giving them fantastic gifts like being able to buy their council home at a massive discount whilst at the same time eschewing the younger, mostly non-voting generation who are left to fend for themselves in an increasingly hostile environment.
So to answer your question Labour simply adapted to the times. And their MP's were very happy to go along with it.
In Brussels, there is a similar problem, exacerbated by the fact that the city's periphery is in three different federal regions
Ah, Belgium
@@NAYRUthunder99 Love Belgium
Yeah and other people want to settle down in Monaco.
Why do people think they (over other people) have a special right to live in the most expensive cities in the world when they cannot afford it.
So you want all the luxury, comfort, infrastructures, metro, airports, restaurants, cinemas, sportscenters, swimming halls, etc of expensive cities while the middle class lives far from the city in villages.
@@THEREALZENFORCE people of all incomes need to live and work in these cities.
@@pjani14 "people of all incomes need to live and work in these cities."
NO, they don't, they can like me live outside the city and commute to work to the city. Especially in the last 20 years where public transportations is fast and environmental friendly. And nowadays there is also remote work (Télé travail), so many jobs can be done from home.
You are not entitled to city life if you cannot afford to live there.
New money is created when loan is granted. Loans going into real estate means newly created currency goes to real estate. As more currency chases same number of houses, prices go up. Case closed.
thank you
Yes. Good summary. 👍
it's really frustrating how those owning fancy houses can prevent new developments because it would devalue their property
I hate NIMBYism. In America, regulations are the reason for housing crisis. We should allow development no matter what locals say: tower blocks next to your house are ugly, but homelessness is uglier.
It's not just that though, there's no point building houses and not building schools, supermarkets etc
Take down the landlord industry. Make heavy taxes on people who own more than 3 houses
stop printing money
@@iamnotgonnagiveyoumyname1373 why not land value tax, seems better
@@iamnotgonnagiveyoumyname1373 you've got to crack a few eggs to make an omelette.
I'm sorry your friends will have some negative affects but this is a massive societal problem, I have no sympathy for 3+ house owners. It'd be like Amazon complaining about tax.
@@iamnotgonnagiveyoumyname1373 Because he is probably an angry teenager who understandably doesnt have a full grasp of things yet, and is scared at stepping into the scary reality of being worse off than his parents.
He is obviously ignorant here, but we just need to try talk through and support, explain the economics and not get drawn into the anger.
Hope you don't have a pension then, as pension companies are very big landlords
Two reasons:
- Government not building enough homes leading to high demand
- Private investors buying real estate thus driving prices up ever higher.
@@andreasgregorfrank9057 Your mistaken. State dept is accumulated due borrowing at low interest rates and printing money and lending out more money to wealth investors increases inflation, but government bonds are bought by the central banks at low yield keeping inflation down UK 2020 0.85%. If you are saying inflation / borrowing / lending keeps house prices high, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about pal.
Ill explain: Their is a high demand in the UK housing sector due to couples starting families in population increases ( High demand and low supply drives up prices ). On top of this, Rich private investors have bided out any first time buyers and have rented them. This in effect leaves houses remaining out of the buying market ever putting more strain on demand as little few their are snatched up, thus driving demand through the roof machining homes for average income people near impossible without going to bank dept.
The solutions is simple: Slow down printing money, laws on private investors homes like ( an investor can only buy x amount for any one year ) & government build more homes. This will increase supply and demand drops of thus price of homes become more affordable.
Any questions?
Ban all new buy to let, force councils to build a number of new homes, or hold design competitions for new high density patterned housing, like Paris or Edinburgh, there are solutions. It is infuriating that they don't grab the bull by the horns on this one.
@@andreasgregorfrank9057 high levels of capital investment is actually great, but people using it to pay for housing is a terrible waste because housing doesn't produce anything, so instead of building long term growth, it's hollow.
Not quite the Government are always building homes. But when you think of the housing market as a racket you understand why it will never change. People will always need accommodation this is an inflexible commodity and therefore people can be exploited. The truth is people pay sometimes a mortgage for 40 years, to do this they have to get a job. This is how the economy works. Therefore if you could build a house which required only 5years to pay off what would be the incentive to work
The main driver for the increase in house prices since 1990 is historically low interest rates. When I bought my first flat in 1990 mortgage interest rates were about 12% whereas now 2-3%. Therefore a buyer can afford to borrow far more so pushing prices up and so increase the multiple of house price to earnings. If interest rates rise significantly in coming years just watch as house price growth falls or prices drop.
Not entirely, because even though interest rates are low, the bank will still not loan you more than about 4x salary. The low interest rates do help to inflate the price, but it's not the driving force behind the insane increase in prices. Remember, the bottom of the market is always what holds up the rest, and the demand to live in the UK (particularly the south east) boomed from the late 90s onwards when Tony Blair opened the door to mass migration. 30k net turned into 300k net, every single person needing a room to live in. In London, a room alone can rent for £600 to £800 a month (slightly less now due to covid reducing demand), and suddenly a standard 4 bedroom house is grossing £3k a month.
Now let's do the maths. £3k a month or £36k a year makes for a value of £720k when you consider a 5% ROI is a good return (and in London you often expect lower returns than that, 2 or 3%, because people want the stability). That value is entirely propped up by the market rate those rooms achieve, and the fact that as long as you advertise at market rate you are practically guaranteed to fill them within a month.
@@Hashterix
Many lenders don’t work on income multiples anymore. They look at “affordability”
@@broadleyboy2 yes they do, I took out a mortgage last year. They also factor in your spending to make sure you'll be able to make the payments but it's still done on a multiple of your income to determine what you can afford.
@@broadleyboy2 And that is even worse, because their ways of calculating said affordability often deem perfectly capable people = unable to afford.
They think they're doing a good service to people, protecting them from unaffordable purchases. As a reality they often entomb these same people's legs into renting ground forever.
No mention of interest rates, which even the Band of England has identified as a major cause?
Interest rates are currently very low, compared to historical values.
I remember a time when they went as high as 17%.
The flip side is that interest on savings is extremely low. ☹️
Yes!
@@harrybarrow6222 thing is on the 70's housing was reasonable but food was costly . Just swapped what cost more tbh
Are you waiting for a 20% basic rate to buy?
@@stevelam5898 No (though you never know, won't be buying a house for a good 8 years so rate could be anything by then), I just expected it to get a mention
What really pisses me off is the fact that alot of boomers were basically given council houses in the 80s and now they take more than half my salary.
Mortgages have always taken half of someone's take home when they first buy. It's just these boomers and Xs haven't taught millenials this fact / history.
@@danielwebb8402 most people I know can't afford a mortgage. We're forced to rent, and in doing so are most likely paying someone else's mortgage. It's only getting worse and as long as most people below 30 can't afford to buy it'll be a generational problem.
@@dafuzzymonster
If you can't afford a mortgage.
So instead are paying rent. By definition that means rent < mortgage = you aren't paying someone else's mortgage with your rent
@@danielwebb8402 mortgages are handed out based on credit rating and valuable assets as well as income. Banks are more likely to give out mortgages if you have collateral. For example in my third year of university the house share I was living paid a 1/4 of houses value in rent over the year we stayed there.
@@danielwebb8402 as the company we rented off was a large student housing company I very much doubt the reinvested that money into the house. This is the case in most cities I'm the UK. That and companies buying up affordable housing removing any character from it by gutting it from the inside, and then painting it black/grey and that somehow triples the value.
0% deposit and no stamp duty would be a massive help for first time buyers
Except that this would just inflate the market even more.
@@IanMcc1000 So what do you think people should do if they can't get help from their parents? Renting is so expensive it's impossible to save up even though my husband and I both earn an okay salary
@@AnikoVargaMakeup I don't have a solution for individuals and i really don't envy your situation. The system is pretty much broken now.
The only thing I can recommend is keep a squeak clean credit rating and hope for a crash a-la 2007/2008 but worse.
Also a third of the country is owned by the Aristocracy, something a fair few countries got rid of ages ago.
empty homes tax, expanded state housing, housing sale tax, these are some i thought up
UK houses are not sitting empty. Sales & purchases already carry a big sticker around the legal process for both parties involved. You can see from a mile you've never owned one lol
@@pawwilon i own 12 homes
bro like i am a landlord by occupation and i find these solutions not looking at my own benifit
So to summarize, there are 3 causes, government, government and government. Whenever you find market failure, have a close look to see where the government has intervened and there you will find the answer.
You mean the government should get tougher and start buying cheap land from private developers/owners and start building social housings again in cooperaration with the planning authorities to make it effective!
@@rh9596 Nope. I mean the housing shortage is cause by excessive regulation, green belt and planning controls and to solve it you just need to remove some of those controls then the private sector will build enough housing until supply meets demand.
People living with their parents into late 30s or 40s will become the norm, however as a home owner myself I personally think people who own their own property and decide to buy another house solely to just rent out, I've heared of cases where some people own 3-4 other houses solely to rent them out and I think that just takes away an opportunity for a first time buyer
Of course you are correct but this is a country of free enterprise & people lap it up. How can we change that mentality when the controllers of society are that way inclined ?
That's capitalism just don't be poor simple solution
@Jord Rich : like in the French movie Tanguy :-)
This is utter bollocks. The reason houses are so expensive is because interest rates are so low. If you cannot get this simple fact into your thinking you have no idea. And to slag off the green belt as environmentally bad is utterly ill informed.
To me the greenbelt also keeps areas looking nice. I don't want concrete everywhere
Not to worry - I'm sure Boris will sort it out... Especially now that you don't have the Europeans over your head. Right?
if the 10,000,000 people added to the UK's population is the actual source of the problem, then Boris is not needed, Brexit itself will sort the problem out.
@@spring-heeledjack3340 Until all the British people who live in Europe return (they are doing so as soon as they can) because Brexit has stuffed them up. It's a two-way thing, migration.
The inequality is staggering really, do they realise the damage this is doing? People are just carrying on as normal when all it boils down to is greed.
Agriculture is green. Fields are green. This video is so biased and ignorant. Green doesn't mean "wild forest" - all forests in UK have been managed for agricultural communities for millenia! Green means NOT a horrible city
:)
You forgot to mention the rising UK population and mass immigration as contributing points on why houses have gone up in price
Of course, like all racists, you've not mentioned where all the tax paid by the increased population has gone. Immigration has added £10,000,000,000.00 as year to UK government tax receipts. Racists ignore that!
@@pauldavis221 im not ignoring anything, I'm just pointing out one of the reasons why housings prices are going up and even if the economy is growing due to immigration that doesn't address the fact that the habitable land in this country is depleting there for lowering supply and raising demand causing housing to go up in price
9:23 "DAMN YOU, THATCHER!!!"
Whenever I watch/read about politics/policies of the UK, current big socio-economic issues seem to always be due to the policies made under the Thatcher administration.
The primary driver of high house prices is “access to capital”… end of story. It’s a common misconception.
It’s not so much supply and demand.
Yes, you can expect that when central banks are printing like there is no tomorrow.
1. Real estate speculators.
2. House flippers.
3. Greedy landlords.
Because everything goes up with inflation, including the Governments wages, whilst most people are still stuck earning minimum wage that isn't high enough for the modern world's prices anymore
Same here in Ontario. Where I live, in 2003 a home could be worth $220,000. Now in 2021, it's 1.2 million. .. that's MILLION. Fixer Upper homes are going for over $600,000. Sellers are selling townhouses for $499,000 and walking away with $750,000. That's $250,000 OVER asking price. The price of homes in my area has increased 50% (!!!) in the last year. So now we've got foreign investors living in other countries buying homes and renting them to canadians. Insane.
This sounds good! In Sydney it's 20 times the average income.
This explains a thing or two. My town used it have a lot of green areas. Over the past decade, all of them have been filled up with tiny, badly put together houses. No improvements have been made to the road network and as a result the town get's grid locked with traffic. If only those houses were any good. I had a displasure of living in a modern build. The house was not even 5 years old at the time, but there were cracks in the walls and all window frames were loose, like you could grab a closed window and shake it. You could always feel draft going around the frames. Newer ones are even worse. A colleague bought one of them, they had 2 burst pipes and a lot of damage in the first 6 months.
Honestly that disgusts me, I am going to study architecture next year at university, and the construction agency cant even find a balance between sustainability and cost. A Modern house costs a lot less than other types of constructions as the only thing which causes it to be priced up is the price of Steel which is used to make lever arch's, which make it so the roofs are held up without burdening the windows, Modern Houses are honestly a way of people skipping costs and making weaker less sustainable houses, as insulation and cooling is skimped on. Honestly If I had to recommend a house that'd be good for current society, I recommend getting a Victorian times house and just installing an AC Unit. The only thing I can say is, I hate the overpricing of land, as it makes the budget which I can use to design be a lot lower than normal use.
Two simple solutions: rent controls and a massive programme of social homes building.
FAIL: rent controls reduce incentives for supply of housing for the rental market.
@@1CounterTerrorist Ah yes, I forgot, not having rent controls if working really well to reduce rents at the moment isn't it?
@@calumwatt4360 It may not be, but at least it isn't making the issue worse. In any case, I thought the video was about the unaffordability of houses to purchase, are you a bit confused?
@@1CounterTerrorist No rent controls mean that landlords can charge essentially whatever they like. Given the fact that there is so little house building going on and people have less and less choice, more and more people are forced to pay higher and higher rents just to keep a roof over their heads (just have a look at London).
This makes it extremely profitable to be a buy-to-let landlord, meaning those with the means increasingly invest in housing a safe investment option: essentially because you are getting someone much poorer than you to pay for your house!
Introducing rent controls means you can massively disinsentivise this sort of anti-social behaviour by making landlordism much less profitable and more risky. More landlords will be forced to sell up, and if you couple of this with a right-to-buy scheme for private tenants, allowing the people who have been exploited like this for years to actually buy the homes they have paid for - that will put a considerable dent in the housing crisis and end one of the most insidious means of exploitation in the contemporary economy.
They need to redevelop existing buildings especially in decimated communities. It's expensive in the sort term but better for growing communities! Also what about flat pack social housing? There's some great companies out there who make nice flat pack homes and it could be mega cheap on a grand scale. Plus depending on the foundations they could build on brown sites
ngl if I hear 'redevelopment' or 'regeneration' , it makes alarm bells ring. it usually ends up meaning kicking out the poor people, throwing in 1 community centre and 4/100 'affordable' houses/ social housing. reeks of gentrification :(
@@caaaaats9890 yeah that's a fair point! All we want is a government that is competent and will help the people! Is that too much to ask?! Haha
@@alexreeves3817 The government are competent, its just that their interests arent aligned with the interest of the lower classes. They are aligned with the interests, of the monarchy. Wealth management is what they deal in and the hive mind mentality kicks in. The lower classes are just drones, which are dispensable, however the closer you get to the queen and the more importance you have. And anyone who is wealthy is basically considered royalty.
@@PaulGoux that's a really interesting way of looking at it mate! Thank you
The solution would be is to standardise houses' building specifications against price and region with a fixed profit.
the solution is COMMUNISM ! - take away the extra homes from the rich and give it to the poor.
This could be a good idea Omar
I’d like a follow up video exploring the possibility of solving the problem via eating the rich. Just my modest proposal.
Price controls
There are too many people crammed into a too small area of land. More people = more housing demand, but supply cannot increase because there is not enough spare land to build on.
I noticed you didnt include the mass immigration over the last 10 or 20 years. Importing people at a rate of up to 400k per year, one of the biggest factor. Also the amount of foreign money invested In housing in this country. Big cities like London and Manchester are most affected.Control the rate of immigration and limit sales to people who dont live here. Big step in the right direction
Finally! Been scrolling down the comments and found the thing that no one wants to talk about.
@@marvinrascal3376 you'll get use to it. This channel leans left quite considerably so issues like this are seldom raised. Still like the channel and the content. Gives a good view from the lefts perspective however they often leave out key facts such as this one
@@jamieimbusch this channel started out as more central. Hadn't seen it for ages - popped up in my suggested. Had a look at the video list and can confirm with what you're saying. Shame.
There is no regulation in hosuing the UK is a third world shit hole where corruption is everywhere now just after the Russia war they are sanctioning Russian millionaires and looking into money laundering this country is a JOKE!
Solution: put legal limits on buy to let and mega landlords
From the Netherlands.
My country hasn't fixed the issue. Buying a house is currently only for the richer people and it is getting more and more extreme.
Show me any country in the world where lower than median income can buy a house of western democracies standards ?
I bought a 3 bed flat with a garden for £19k up norf. Leaving London. Best thing I ever did!
how far north did you go lad, fuckin Greenland?
I'm sorry, what? Near Cambridge that amount of money is not enough for a deposit.
@@alexc7367 Tyne and Wear!
@@mdo I know 🙂
I like how its a combination of labour and tory policies that have caused this, neither seemed to have public interest in mind at any point.
I think should have a tournament of CIV5 or 6 and whoever wins an economic victory should get to run the country :)
A Civ tourney sounds like a much better idea than letting the Great British public vote. We can’t tell our arse from our elbow and wouldn’t know a beneficial policy if it smacked us in the face.
The whole housing situation in the UK is so disgustingly fucked up that is not even funny at this point.
We need to tackle the landlord industry, no one needs more than 2, 3 houses. We need much higher tax after that, which would discourage it. Being a landlord creates absolutely no wealth for the country as a business and should be slowly vanished.
Have you heard of Land Value Tax and Georgism in general?
Lots written on this and yes, I was going to suggest LVT too. Interestingly enough in economics taxing land is seen as both the most efficient and least damaging / distorting way of raising revenue for government.
Sure, while were at it, lets expropriate the means of production - because company owners aren't *really* adding value to the economy and raise the annual income tax to 100% for income over 725000£, because no one *really* needs more than a million dollars.
They are taxed
- Higher stamp duty than owner occupier
- Can only claim interest rate relief at basic rate. So can actually lose money on a rental but still pay income tax
- Pay capital gains tax when sell
Is your counter factual
- Less landlords
- But obviously the same number of houses will be built. Just sold at a lower price.
I would disagree, my parents buy dilapidated houses, do them up, and then rent them out - I feel like that's doing a service as a landlord and how a landlord should be (though I might be a bit biased!) They're not rich, they were basically cheated out of their pensions and needed a bit extra revenue, and do a good job of it at that. What we need to be working against is landlords that consistently offer subpar service, force people to live in squalor, and otherwise price lock people out of basic accomodation. Basically, don't be punishing good people for the actions of some right dickheads.
This video literally skillfully omitted the main cause of insane housing prices = opportunists and investment capital (investors pour money into the housing market of every stable country on earth! making the prices unaffordable for the working class!!!)
Decreasing interest rates in a nutshell, yes
A lot of the housing market is really logjammed. I lived in an ex-council block near Central London comprising of 50 flats. Half were social flats and lots of those were 2 and 3 bedroom flats with just one tenant living there, often for decades. I knew an older lady in a three bedroom corner flat (triple aspect!) There should be big incentives for these people to downsize to one bedroom flats. Same for those owning bigger flats who want to downsize - stamp duty exemption for downsizing.
One problem is indeed investors as property yields higher returns than shares. Also formerly working as a Mortgage broker I saw the Buy to Let option became so lucrative and safer than a pension, a whole class of professional small and medium scale private landlords has emerge with portfolios of one house building up to 20 or 30. And today low rent social housing only available to those on housing benefit is being built with the specific purpose of selling to private landlords and investors as a guaranteed investment income.
The thing this video fails to address, is a large amount of Conservative Party income comes from the renting industry and associated businesses around it, both directly from party donations through to lucrative board memberships and free shares. There is an incentive to turn us into a renter economy.
I dowvoted the video. It wasn't good at all.
@@alpachinobarlatino2290 thanks for sharing
Green belts should be replaced by green fingers sticking into the city. Outside the city core building can be done in in certain corridors that stick into the green areas, and the green area between these building corridors remain protected. The city will have the shape of the sun in a child's drawing. This means that the city can grow, and at the same time green space is easily accessible for everybody.
Ignore the fact immigration has sky rocketed since 1997 with 700k entering the country.
And they need to be housed somewhere, demand increases and so does price
Of course, like all racists, you've not mentioned where all the tax paid by the increased population has gone. Immigration has added £10,000,000,000.00 as year to UK government tax receipts. Racists ignore that!
@@pauldavis221 Did I mention race in what I said, Nope
I'm talking about all migration whether they are white black brown asian.... Everything, I couldn't care less about race, whether your from Poland or Pakistan, migration needs lowering immediately to sustainable levels whereby people can assimilate to British culture.
I like how you assume I'm talking about a particular race, it's almost like you are are being racist🧐
( You leftists want to bring race into everything I swear to god )
Very glad you explained how this exacerbates wealth inequality! :)
You forgot to mention in that section the quite important factor that is that the lower your income the higher percentage of that income is spent just living and so the lower the percentage that can be saved. That is to say not only is a house in your percentile more times your annual income but it is many, many more times your disposable income because food, shelter and utilities are a far higher proportion of your income (often reaching or even exceeding 100%).
he did mention, the poor get poorer :)
Too many people buying second houses to let, not enough supply of social and affordable homes and not enough new builds.
There are quite a few noticeable number mistakes in this video. Still a good video.
Not enough money? Id also be interested to know how many new homes could of been built (not these poor quality and overpriced new builds) with the same amount of money wasted on the track and trace app
Oddly enough there's a few companies that do "flat pack homes" which on a large scale could be built faster and cheaper than the current style if new builds, it'd look better, be longer lasting, and on top of all of that in theory they could be built on brown sites too which would massively increase the amount of affordable housing in the UK in a very short amount of time.
Not a single mention of residential properties being bought up as investments or to become rental properties. I can't help but think that is a massive part of the problem that this video completely missed.
Your point on “Intensive arable agriculture” is just bizarre and not really relevant. If you want to take any food out of the ground it’s going to have some kind of impact on the environment, if it’s done intensively then it’s done efficiently. What you planning to eat in your new home? Air?
Not at all. He makes the point that one of the reason green belt policies are seen as a good thing is preserving the natural enviroment, however because the land can still be used for farming which directly harms the enviroment, preserving it as a green belt space fails to protect it.
I agree with this, as although i was not living in a green belt space, I lived nextdoor to a large farm field, which for months was just a depressing area of dry dirt. I think that green belt spaces should be exempt from such farming practices, as despite what you seem to think most people don't actually go picking wild berries for sustinence, and in reality 80% of the food on British plates is imported, so not having a local field of wheat isn't going to directly impact most peoples food sources.
The first time i heard about this I thought that britain has ran out of houses for its people.
there are millions of empty houses but they're more expensive than they're worth & they're in the wrong places since Thatcher crashed the labouring industries, most notably coal mining but many others too
@@alanhat5252 to add to that, the quality of new builds are crap, awfully planned by the construction companies, crampt, bad interior layout no planned storage spaces like cupboards for belongings ( think you Xmas decorations or closets) and lots of dead spaces, poorly constructed, building in flood areas. Basically I wouldn't buy a new home in the uk. They're too expensive for a poorly planned ugly product.
One main reason it's gotten so bad, IMO, is individuals owning multiple homes in order to rent them out for extortionate amounts. I live in a developing town where there's always at least one massive housing development being built somewhere, and yet the price for a 1 bedroom starter home is £200,000. If you're fortunate enough to be able to afford the minimum 5% deposit of £10k, monthly mortgage repayments seem to average £250pm, while the cost for renting that same property is regularly around £500.
There used to be a woman I worked with who herself owned 3 additional 1-2 bed homes besides the one she lived in, 2 of which she bought within the 2 years I worked with her. She knew I still lived with my parents and aspired to own my own home, and one day, around the time of the Brexit referendum, told me that "you'll find it a lot easier to buy a home if it passes, there won't be all those immigrants taking up social housing and buying up our stock". I damn near had to bite my tongue off to stop myself from losing my temper with her biggoted attitude, and telling her "No, the reason I can't buy a home is because people like YOU, a middleclass woman in her late 50's who's children have all grown up and left home, own 3 more homes than you need in order to bring in a secondary income that rivals what you earn here in your day job."
She saw property investment as the safest option around, and so bought one home with her inheritence when her parents died, and another one she put down a large amount by emptying her pension prematurely. But while it may provide her with a secure place to invest her money, it completely decimates any opportunities for young FTBs like myself.
Not only this, but there's a large amount of housing in my town bought by people who work within London, as the price to buy here is substantially lower than it is in the capital, while only being 45 minutes commute away by train.
Solutions I'd like to see, although probably not feasable and potentially bordering on draconian, would be placing a hard limit on individuals to only be allowed to own a single home, or to not own any housing that they themselves don't live in for at least 80% of the year, or to limit the area someone can buy to within 30 miles of their primary place of work.
This is a fantastic and well-sourced video. Great work guys, I learned a ton.
The ‘right to buy’ scheme also meant that any funds raised from the selling of properties could not go to building more housing
Surprised cheap borrowing rates wasn’t mentioned here… borrowing £200k @ 2% now costs about £800/month, whereas borrowing the same amount at 10% in the 90’s would’ve been £1800/month…
Renting properties and ownership of rented property should be properly controlled so many own multiple homes just to rent out which is just paying someone's morgage but raising the cost of housing meaning more can't afford houses
While this video does touch on some issues on this topic it also completely ignores the positive impact that low interest rates has on property in the uk. Due to low interests rates buying a house in the uk is actually comparatively very affordable at the moment especially when you look at interest rates in the 80s for example
@Barnaby Wentworth different metric, what your saying means it’s easier to buy because the deposit required compared to income is lower
I really appreciate how clear and accessible all of TLDR's explainer videos are. Articles and videos you can actually understand on these seriously complicated topics (without doing loads of confused googling) are so hard to come by - a solutions video would be great!
Next up, give us a summary and even your ideas for impossible, ideal, or realistic solutions!
the solution is to close the border. the uk has 1.4million immigrants per year who all take a house each. Native brits have negative birth rates, this means there is negative demand for housing.
@@sarahpeterson2702 lol are u serious...
@@treeroots1309 Yes, Housing is entirely supply and demand. if there are 1 house per person there is 0 primary demand, only demand from second home buyers. British people only have 1.8 children, they need 2.1 just to keep replacing people. Over time and with constant house building rates the price of housing will go down, existing property is worth less if there is no one to buy it. Instead the govt imports 1m + people each year who buy/rent the houses keeping prices rising. Everywhere else in europe housing is free or being destroyed because there are no people to live in them or buy them. *except places importing millions of 3rd worlders and eastern euros
@@sarahpeterson2702 umm ok...
@@sarahpeterson2702 cant really disagree with that
Housing should be a human right. Every working man and woman should deserve a house. I don't care if you work in Mcdonalds, your a bin man, a mechanic, a waitress, a policeman, a lawyer.... You deserve a basic house. Let's say a 1-2bedroom small house with basic amenities, that's all we need. We don't need a 4 bedroom detached mansion with a 2 car garage a swimming pool and a spectacular view.
What about limiting buy to letters or capping holiday homes in an area
it won't work; many MPs own multiple properties, you are essentially killing their living
That is a good solution but unfortunately the born with a silver spoon shoved up their ass rich will always throw a tantrum when the Middle and Lower class' attempts to exist get it the way of their "right" to use 3 times as many resources as everyone else does.
I mean.. how inconsiderate is it of us normal people to get in the way of all of their fun by existing and wanting to do so comfortably?
As one of the aforementioned poor people who can't afford a house, supposedly because of that inconvenient thing called the countryside, am I the only person who's deeply disturbed by the fact that apparently only 13% of this country is not a concrete jungle, and that even one third of that is farmland?
Clearly the thing we need most desperately in this country is less people, not more houses.
I think only 13% is green belt but there is much more countryside that isn't protected in the same way. At least I hope so...