But what will prevent the skyscraper cities becoming simply a collection of stacks of investments owned by overseas landlords extracting the wealth of those people who need to live there? There's zero sign that any government wants to do anything to address that issue.
But why not show us the evidence that backs up his statement and leave us without doubt?
Yes, you're right with your first point, and I had considered the fact that landlords will most likely pass on any more modest tax on to the tenant. That's why we need a more radical solution. Rent controls/caps being a first step, perhaps.
Not necessarily a taxing issue, it's more about the rise of Air BnB and similar.
I don't have a problem with limiting the amount of "rental investment" that an overseas buyer can make. Those are details. The basic problem is lack of properties in the first place, which governments like to try to then "solve" with stupid financial approaches that either subsidises prices or worsens them, but doesn't actually address supply.
I think there is a lot of evidence that price controls don't work (via rent controls). Subsidies don't work (via Help to Buy). Both those are just ways to not to actually address the problem, which is a lack of supply of houses. Just build more houses! Build a million a year for the next 5 years. Think of all the problems it'd solve.
Because it's just a twitter thread, his evidence is in the reports from the Resolution Foundation, which is his organisation. I put a link to one in FYI.
But you're not thinking of the massive problems that can cause, when we usually have developments that concentrate soley on housing, so that local amenities and roads on the outskirts that are already at capacity get overwhelmed. And because of this, locals object to developments and nothing happens for years. And this is on top of the loss of green spaces and damage to the environment.
I'd say that bringing the existing care homes and similar facilities into public ownership and removing the profit from the chain would probably be sufficient as a first step.
I read it and he seems to be making totally different points, mainly about the cost, size and quality of our housing, relative to other countries and nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of the ownership of the properties. We already know British houses are smaller and older than those in the US etc.
Why are they? And to what end? How many private rented homes should there be?
So, build the amenities as well. 300k houses is a small number, maybe 10 to 15x less than the number needed, and chances are many aren't even where people need to be. It is not a serious response to the scale of the problem
If you are going to solve the problem of care for the elderly then let's focus on that, that's big enough all by itself.
By all means let them, as long as they are prepared to commit to a 20 freeze on dividends. I wonder if their shareholders will agree with the price hikes then?
But why would people be able to magically afford new build homes that will be priced at market value?
Are all these fecking bastards (all utility companies) trying to bankrupt us all?! I can barely afford to do anything anymore and I am certainly better at managing money than most.
What's the alternative? Nationalised water? It wouldn't work, the water quality would be worse, the waste dumping just as bad, and the costs even higher thanks to public service waffling and the whole jobs for mates attitude those folk have.
Had me in the first half ngl
SorryHad me in the first half ngl
Of course, Thats how you have the money in Scotland for this....
Exactly. Nationalise services, save money, spend it on folk shagging each other. It's what Churchill would have wanted.
Not to mention in university towns turning houses into house shares or converting them into flats forces families out of city centres
Or to put it another way, we have accrued twice as much debt in the last 14 years than we did in the previous 316.
But you need to account for the ludicrous inflation rate in that time! (That they caused)
fecking labour
Because we build at such a level that prices begin to come down.
Total pie in the sky stuff. Since 2010, about 2,000,000 new homes have been built in the UK. In the same period the average price has increased from £160k to £260k - over 60%. How many millions more will we have to build to get the prices to come down?
Your math doesn’t math.
Thats the thing. After the 2008 debacle, I am not saying that this is happening to the UK, but in the US trust funds are investing in real state by the billions. You can't compete and they have a recurrent revenue at your expenses. That is why not only utilities should be nationalized but the housing.
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More properties than people? The latest statistics I could find was that there was 25m dwellings as of 2022, with a population of 67m.
On top of this, I just heard a sickening statistic. The UK has only 55 billionaires compared to 813 in the US. This inequality shouldn't be allowed to stand.
This added to the ever increasing list of failures.
Everything you can think of has an unintended consequence.
Unless the government builds a few million council houses (where, how are they paid for, what happens to property prices and by extension UK economy) then they fill a need. People must live somewhere and not everybody can buy/wants to buy. If you kill the private rental market there is nowhere for them to go and what does remain multiplies in price.
If your economy crashes when the people hoarding houses are forced to sell them to the people who actually need houses.. maybe it's a pretty shitty economy that needs changing?
