[vidarh]

My girlfriend shares a 2 bed and pays 850/month for her share. If you want to live in the most attractive places, then sure, you will be bidding against people.

The point, though, was that lower prices are available. If you choose not to take advantage because it's not as convenient as you like, that's a valid choice (though if you opt for several hundred pounds difference a month to avoid calling a removals firm once every few years, I question that choice; been there, done that, it's not that much effort)

To be clear, housing prices in the UK are atrocious, even if it's possible to do better than the person above stated.

Personally I'd favour the government basically forcing prices down by guaranteeing to pour money into added construction until the market crashes. I'm saying that as a homeowner because for most people, me included, it'd be better if the prices come down so we can afford to trade up, and it'd be cheaper to provide for some limited bailouts for people left with mortgages under water, than to continue having this massive drag on the economy because it's now advantageous for developers to sit on land and wait for it to appreciate before building as an exit (e.g. one of the plots near my local station that is finally being built on now was standing empty for over a decade before the owner of the land started doing anything).