[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.