[fooballs]

The key here is demand - with open door immigration from Europe, that demand is ever increasing. People are flocking to the UK, and want somewhere to live. As long as we have that massive population explosion, there's only one way for house prices to go.

If we want to solve the problem, and a whole host of other problems, perhaps we shouldn't have an open door immigration policy.

[garagemc2]

Hmmm I think it's unfair to put the cause purely on immigration. A few other causal factors:

- Anglo Saxon obsession with property. There is a culture of being obsessed with home ownership in Anglo-Saxon countries. Particularly the UK. This pushes people to pay over the top for property and thus increases prices even further.

- Property prices seem to be increasing particularly sharply around London & Brighton. This is because they are wealth creation centres. Well paid jobs, tourism, industry, culture all cause property prices to go up as people want to live there.

- Weather. This one isn't written about so much. But the hypothesis is that people tend to want to live in the South because of better weather. The weather in Kent is far better than is say Yorkshire in terms of net sunlight and average temperatures.

I would be willing to bet that, in the past, property prices would have still sharply increased in certain areas even without high immigration.

[ppointerofact]

restrictions on supply are the most important factor outside central london. There is no reason why sufficient housing could not be built in Kent or Oxfordshire to meet new demand.

[JosephRedfern]

It's not as clear cut as that. I'm not sure if you've seen: https://fullfact.org/factchecks/immigrantion_house_prices-28..., but there isn't a clear correlation between immigration rates and house prices.

Some reports even suggest the opposite, that increases in immigration can REDUCE house prices: "The University of Cambridge study concluded that an immigration inflow equal to 1% of the local initial population leads to a reduction of 1.6% in house prices".

[mwg66]

Thanks, we posted at the same time.

Making unsubstantiated claims such as those of the parent is what drives the anti-EU right in the UK.

At least on HN, show me the numbers.

[fooballs]

The numbers are clear and obvious to those who seek them with a clear head.

More people = more demand for housing = higher prices.

[JosephRedfern]

Yeah, those Cambridge idiots were probably drunk when they conducted their research and produced their report.

You're probably best off just trusting your gut instinct on these things.

[fooballs]

Those Cambridge people depend on immigration to pay their fees. They're hardly unbiased.

Do you really seriously think that an increasing population could ever lead to falling demand for housing? How would that one work?

The charts in their "study" show clearly. Immigration increases, house prices increase.

[mwg66]

Nigel? Is that you?

[mwg66]

Cite them then. You are the one making the claims! Demonstrate your point is based on something other than xenophobic rhetoric!

[mwg66]

Markets are not always linear...

[mwg66]

Please make a citation that it is explicitly EU migration that is the cause of the housing shortage.

[JoeAltmaier]

...or, build more affordable housing? Its not a zero-sum game. Change the rules!

[fooballs]

Building more and more housing isn't sustainable. We are a tiny island with limited land.

A lot of people (Myself included) don't like to live in cities caged up like battery chickens.

[JoeAltmaier]

Still, google satellite view shows that island as substantially undeveloped. You get a narrow view, living in a big city. Start to think the whole country looks like out your window.

[toyg]

Not just that, there are huge amounts of unreclaimed brownfield all around England, waiting to be put to good use. This country used to be the engine of the world, that took a lot of land that is now just rotting away.

And of course, one could also envision policies that actually create attraction centres alternative to London. But surely that's unreasonable to expect.

[EliRivers]

Everywhere has limited land. The question is how close are we to the limit? Given that the UK is, depending on how you count it, on the order of 10% urban, we could hide another city in it without noticing.

[buserror]

I'm an immigrant from france. I bought 2 houses in the UK.

It's not /just/ a question of where to live, it's also a question of someday getting /some/ sort of pension -- it's very likely that pension rates returns are never going to be maintainable for 30 years since the gov can plunder it, and the 'age of retirement' will continue to climb (measured using the age of death of people who retired at 60 or earlier and who are dying now, and thus had a MUCH longer expectancy than us lot who'll have to work til 75 or so..)

So, houses are just investments. When I'll retire, I'll dump them, get the capital and use /that/ to live.

And yes, I know I'm not the 'typical' immigrant, but then again, I am one.

[mrec]

What makes you so confident that the gov can't "plunder" investment properties? It looks like they're finally starting to turn on Buy-To-Let now, and IMHO not before time.

Why do people rob banks? Because that's where the money is. Where's the money in the UK? In property.

As property ownership becomes ever more concentrated, it a) becomes a more tempting target for fiscal raids and b) has fewer votes. There's a US economist whose name I forget who proposes that the big driver of property cycles isn't credit but regulation, as govts deregulate too much then finally swing back when the horrible consequences become electorally inconvenient.

[buserror]

Well they can plunder properties, however, this is not the direction everything seems to be headed; for example, they've just relieved the inheritance tax, they are trying to help people buy property, it would be massively counterproductive to start making owning a property less interesting.

Also, it'd still be a better use of money than a pension that is 1) locked and 2) unusable until perhaps after you are dead... At least you can 1) sell it and buy something else and 2) live in a house and enjoy it.

Mind you, I don't completely understand the drive most people have here to 'buy our own home' - even in their early 20's!- in france, people don't even think about buying anything until they hit 35 or more! People are quite happy to rent a flat for a long while... or forever in many cases.

Also, there the geometry problem: in france, the big majority of 'comfortable' homes are in fact in small apartment blocks, all over the cities. In the UK, you need a 'detached home' otherwise, it's no go. Needless to say, it's not terribly space efficient. Most new properties outside london are smaller and smaller 'semi detached' format that are often smaller in surface than a nice flat!

So i think there's also quite a bit of 'cultural' bias to the property crisis.

[mrec]

I was talking specifically about investment properties, i.e. excluding the primary residence.

I'm not aware of any moves by uk.gov to "help people buy property" to live in. If you mean the so-called "Help to Buy" policy, that IMO had precisely the opposite effect in that it kicked off the latest round of price insanity on the perception that uk.gov would support the bubble with taxpayer money if necessary. It was an extremely cynical and damaging move with no obvious rationale other than the electoral one.

Fully agree that France does housing much better than the UK. Pretty much everyone does housing much better than the UK. We have an anti-market, designed to deliver the smallest possible number of lowest possible quality homes at the highest possible price. Yay.

[jacquesm]

The majority of the immigrants are not exactly in a position to buy houses, they might cause some rent inflation but you can't categorically tie immigration to house price inflation like that.

The better explanation is that real estate is just about the only thing that can boundlessly go up in price without any perceived increase in quality or performance and so it tends to be a sink for surplus wealth generated by a nation. On top of that there are a lot of wealthy people competing with each other for investing in the UK real estate market (and those are not just UK residents) and interest rates are at an historic low which tends to drive up prices.

[ppointerofact]

House prices in the UK, particularly in the south of the country, have been increasing above inflation for several decades. There was only a relatively brief decrease in average values following the financial crisis. This is because the major driver of house price increases in the UK is the limitation of the supply of developable land caused by Britain's inflexible and outdated planning system.

[toyg]

It's just that you can't have your cake and eat it too.

If London must continue being the ever-expanding world-beating hard-rocking sweat-soaking multi-megalopolis, then the surrounding countryside has to give. If the countryside has to be preserved, London must stop attracting people or even incentivize residents to move elsewhere.

I find it incredible that, because nobody can make a choice one way or the other, the rest of the country is forced to pay the price, as money flows to London "home investments" from more useful economic activity, the brain-drain towards the capital continues unabated, and brownfields keep rotting away.

[nextw33k]

> It's just that you can't have your cake and eat it too.

You can build up instead of out.

[jkot]

It will solve itself. In Ireland most immigrants left after crisis and market collapsed.

[logingone]

Looking forward to the referendum...