| > The money would come from "people's QE" Oh, yet more printy printy. Wonderful. > Would you prefer people didn't have homes? Just say it if that's what you want. No, I wouldn't prefer that. I'd quite like an affordable home of my own at some point before I die, thank you very much. I believe social housing - free from the inflationary incentives of the PRS - has an important role to play in keeping the PRS honest, much like (AUIU) the NHS does a lot to keep the UK's private health sector honest compared to the situation in the US. But after the past few decades I don't trust uk.gov to treat social housing as an asset in the long term. > The financialization of housing exacerbated the problems caused by the shortage of housing, they obviously didn't create them. I don't think that's at all obvious. When some "investors" are buying houses and leaving them empty while they appreciate, that seems to demonstrate that this is at least as much a demand-side problem as a supply-side one. Where I live, new high-rise housing is going up everywhere you look, and prices for a 1-bed are still stuck at around 15x average earnings. I know I sound negative. 20 years of watching this madness unfold will do that to you. I have a kneejerk suspicion of "just build on brownfield land" - it's the housing equivalent of "we'll improve services and reduce taxes by cutting red tape and reducing government waste" - sounds nice, doesn't frighten anyone, but if it were really that easy you'd think it would have actually happened the last 20 times someone said it. |
Of course it frightens people. Owning mortgaged property and watching it fall in value is terrifying. Building a vast amount of housing will do that.
I've watched this madness for 20 years as well and it's painfully clear to me that high house prices was a deliberate choice. The "crisis" made the ultra-wealthy very happy and a large part of middle England were fairly okay with it too.