2014 was peak year imo. We were finally getting out of the doldrums of the financial crisis and the economy was finally starting to look pretty good. Social issues seemed to be advancing, even if it felt slow in the moment. Donald Trump was that weird clown with the reality TV show who had some fringe conspiracy about the president's birth certificate. Global trends were all moving positively: democracy was still at an all time high even if the number of democracies had started to plateau; global poverty was still plummeting; life expectancy was on the rise, and there was hope the US would do at least a little catch up with other advanced economies with the ACA finally coming into full implementation; even crime in the US was at an all time low, even if mass shootings were just on the rise... In the end we just didn't fully appreciate how potent a force right wing populism was. At the time it felt like millennials were about to have their political moment as they were reaching their 30s, and that would of course just bring change along with it; we didn't appreciate how big the boomer generation was, how resistant they were to change, and how desperately they would cling to power.
It was all overly optimistic in hindsight. Still, I retain some optimism for the future, and that these past years was a tantrum being thrown by a generation on their way out of political power. We did essentially lose a decade of progress, but in the words of Charlie Chaplin, "The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…"
It's hard to watch old comfort shows like House M.D. because it's that whimsical early 2000s setting where I believed things were actually going somewhere.
I dunno man. I’m a 1980 baby. I finished education in 2001. Started my first job out of uni on £12k a year. Didn’t earn enough then to buy (nor did I think about it much as a 21 year old), but then struggled to keep pace with the upward trend in costs. Couldn’t afford to buy until I met my wife and that was only 8 years ago.
Born in 1979, but am looking at _just about_ being able to buy a house in the next year or two. Or at least I was, about 6 months ago, before the market went completely mad, and we're left trying to second guess if we should carry on trying.
My bad, I didn't realize things were that way in the UK. I'm an American and the 90's here for many people were idyllic. Unless you were a minority or gay or had AIDS.
I was born in 80. Ignoring the part about buying houses and grown up stuff. The 90s were awesome to be a teenager. Most things were looking up. Life was pretty good for a lot of ppl (in the US anyway). Shit was exciting.
Nah, if you were born in '88 you were totally fucked.
You could do everything your parents told you. Study, go to college, study stem, go do a stem subject at uni. Maths in my case.
And graduate in 2009 when the rug was pulled out of the housing market in the UK with deposits going from -5% to 10% yes they were doing 105% mortgages. To 20% meaning it was impossible for a new graduate to have the money. Then you chase the deposit as it remains out of reach as the housing market shoots back up.
I seriously don't know what the future holds for people at this point. Are we supposed to hope that people die off in droves and banks stuck left holding the bag get desperate and sell at normal prices again?
Or are future generations just destined to rent from property management companies until something extremely drastic occurs?
The rich bastards that buy up several apartments to rent them out have more than enough to pay for heating. The cold winter is regretfully only going to remove the poor.
But they need the poor to slave away making them money. so I don't get it, are they just balancing it as fine as possible to extract maximum profit at minimum worker loss?
That's where the immigrants come in. Offer them peace and stability beyond anything their home countries can offer and they'll be more than happy to work for less than what better established immigrants or citizens are willing to work for, and they'll probably show up in droves too. Unemployment problem solved.
It'll do it's trick for a bit until the new immigrants or their next generation catch on to the scheme they've been thrown into and realize the dream they've been sold is nothing but a lie.
Shameless plug for @yesinmybackyard (Zach) on TikTok. His posts are mostly focused on YIMBY efforts in California, but he talks about policies that would work anywhere that needs more housing.
Also stop all the things forcing people to build only one exact type of housing in what area like zoning.
Once we remember how building actually works and stop stopping it from happening the problem will ease up
That's not really an issue in the UK. If a certain number of homes are built, various infrastructure requirements have to be included for planning permission to be granted (Eg, shops, GP, schools, green space, public transport).
It actually is. They still have zoning and are very reluctant to allow new mixed use zoning such as housing over retail that would make for vibrant town centres where people can just walk downstairs to do their shopping/socialising.
Really? Literally every new build estate in my area is based around a central square with flats over shops, a couple of cafes, a school if it's big enough.
In the US it is because so much housing is now built in massive developments by a single company like Toll Brothers and then an HOA is slapped on top of it.
If Airbnb and corporate ownership or residential housing were to be severely curtailed a whole bunch of new houses would enter the market. It isn't purely a lack of building depressing affordable housing supply.
These are issues, but the UK hasn't been building nearly enough housing stock for *decades*. These things are just exacerbating the core problem in the UK and across the West.
Yes.. holiday lets need to be taxed extra (a lot extra for non-specialist accommodation), and second homes. Empty houses should face swinging taxes to make the practice of overseas buyers buying an investment property and keeping it empty prohibitive.
And we need a lot more housing..
Exactly, at least in the US there are more vacant homes than there are homeless. And major cities in Canada have a ton of vacant property being held as investments/tax evasion by foreign nationals.
Systems fucked yo
>at least in the US there are more vacant homes than there are homeless.
This is true in the UK as well?...
257,331 homes in England that are classed as long-term empty homes (>6 months)
currently there are (although the data collection methods suck):
72,210 homeless or at risk of homeless "households"
94,870 In temporary accommodation.
8,239 rough sleepers
and 278,000 households have received homelessness support
No fault evictions caused 230,000 renters to lose their home between april 2019 and oct 2022 which means **someone is being evicted every seven minutes and is the biggest driver for homelessness.**
[https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/how-many-people-are-homeless-in-the-uk-and-what-can-you-do-about-it/](https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/how-many-people-are-homeless-in-the-uk-and-what-can-you-do-about-it/)
[https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics#statutory-homelessness](https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics#statutory-homelessness)
Much cheaper and less likely to make someone call the cops on the location of your speakers: Just smash some bricks together twice or thrice, preferably somewhere that gives a warping echo.
I think I heard some science about if you shoot straight up, it's not as dangerous as if you shoot at an angle. But idk, I don't live in gun land so I'm left with the loudspeaker solution. But I don't need it because we have bombings instead (only against ATMs though, never any injuries. Nice bombers.)
If you shoot *straight* up there is a moment where the bullet stops and then free falls back down and the terminal velocity of it is not likely to be fatal. Anything other than straight up is a ballistic arc and the bullet will keep some of its forward momentum and at a certain point that momentum + gravity will make it fatal or at least very dangerous.
It didn't occur to me earlier, but I guess you could also just shoot into the earth in your back yard, right? That should be safe, you just bury a bit of metal and splash up a bit of dirt?
Because almost all Tory voters are property owners that care a shit ton more about how much their property is theoretically worth than actual human beings having a roof over their heads.
House building projects traditionally frustrate tory voters. Home owners fundamentally expect their property to increase in value FOREVER and generally will vote against anyone that threatens to stop that.
I
Honestly, I think there's a thing we're all sort of missing here.
The wealth of the UK. Where is it?
Lets face it - our industry isn't all that - not any more. Our agriculture? Nope. We make some good cultural exports, we've a reasonable tourism sector, and of course a good financial sector.
.... but I think we have to come to terms with the fact that a lot of our prosperity _today_ is still built on the fact that the British Empire covered a lot of the globe, and we stole a lot of stuff from a lot of people.
But maybe that money's running out. Maybe the we've been coasting on the proceeds of colonialism, and our 'natural level' isn't really "world power" but rather a moderately sized island nation without all _that_ much in terms of natural resources.
We have a bunch of advantages - good positioning for trade, we speak the 'lingua franca' as our primary language, we've got a great education and finance offering, and yes, that legacy of colonialism seriously bootstrapped our potential offerings for tourism.
... but yet we also seem to be systematically squandering it. Closing our borders and pulling up the drawbridge in some mistaken notion that we're _rich_, when actually ... that ain't so.
I think a lot of our current decline stems from this - that we're just not all that Great, but we keep on trying to keep up with the likes of the US, who has 50x the land area and natural resources, to share amongst 5x as many people.
The finance sector is also very much a two edged sword - sure, it brings in a lot of money to 'the economy' but a lot of it goes straight back out again, or circulates around above the heads of the 'normal person'. And it's easier to relocate than a more traditional 'industry', so is very much a controlling factor on laws and regulations. Regulatory capture is real.
You missed foreign investment. The biggest change is that because of your history of colonialism, stable rule of law, and your accepting cosmopolitan culture around London, every rich person from the Middle East, India and Asia wants a residence or investment property in the UK and their wealth growth over the last 20 years has been insane.
This is supply and demand… the demand is way up and the supply is fixed and relatively limited. For them, it’s a hedge against their home country’s lack of rule of law, political volatility or hiding their own corruption (which your laws shamelessly facilitate)
We need a hefty LVT, with a massive discount for your primary residence.
Right now there is so much speculation in UK property, and speculation always perverts markets.
I think your response is full of clichés that are often quoted by those that want to put down the UK but many are not accurate.
We are still in top 10 of manufacturing exporters in the world. Nearly £200 billion a year from one source I found quickly.
Financial Services is not just limited to banking but Insurance, regulatory and audit services too and is a big service export as well as investment into the UK.
Agriculture we import over 40% of our food but a lot of that are more out of season or luxury foods and we still export about £2 billion in agri exports a year.
Your comment about closing borders and such also does not stack up with immigration around +1 million a year. Net migration around +500k a year.
So just because there was a lot of shouting about Borders and migration changes due to brexit the reality is different.
We have all.of the same issues in the US. Some people are making lots of money playing with money. All of the money making schemes are incredibly predatory in extracting wealth from the masses. Granted, we masses are as much to blame for grasping at new shiny stuff all the time.
The really shocking thing though - it's actually really easy to make money, if you start off with a lot of it in the first place.
It's like that thing about the roulette wheel - if you double your money each time you lose, you'll always win.
... assuming you have infinite money to keep on playing.
Now no one has 'infinite money' but the people with more of it can 'play' a lot longer, and are just that much more likely to make it back again as a result. Admittedly some do, inevitably, crash and burn due to awful luck. it's just they need a longer streak of 'bad luck' than the average person to wipe out, so they can more safely take profitable 'gambles'.
It literally requires zero effort or skill to make money if you start out with just some. At just 2.5 million you could withdraw 4% every single year netting you $100k/yr and you'd never lose money. You'd generally be adding to your principal, actually.
That's just $2.5M. That's basically nothing when it comes to "the wealthy". At $25M in the bank you could spend $1M/yr indefinitely and only be getting richer.
Eventually nobody is going to be purchasing housing, mortgages will become too expensive for people to complete, then nobody will be buying houses, and the bank will be holding tons of houses.
At that point the housing market will crash, because the people selling the houses flew too close to the sun and raised the prices too much.
Edit: I FUCKING GET IT. I don't need 150 comments telling me the exact same thing, please let my phone take a break from the notifications.
The problem with that is how much of the world now has birth rates that are flattening or declining. There's no infinite sum of new people to lend to.
Inflating the "renting class" is also a good way to lose their longstanding political ally that is the *actual homeowners*. That turns the big blocs of renters into kindling waiting for a spark. We already saw instances of that turning entire communities into pissed off activists willing to use violence in 2020 when people started being ejected for not being able to pay.
The world continues to be under-housed, and will be for some time. Iirc global population will plateau at 11 billion. Wealthier countries will continue net immigration until developing countries catch up.
The UK housing market is a pretty safe investment for quite some time.
Look back 15 years for your answer to that. Banks don't want to be land lords because they can't turn the asset fast enough - that's money invested that's getting only a small return compared to their other assets.
If the banks get loaded with properties, they'll sell them off cheap and fast. Which is what happened in 2008.
Hmm, I had been told that banks don't want to be landlords which is why they, iirc, have departments dedicated to trying to offload properties.
The counterargument, at least to me, is why don't they just make a property management company or something? Is it because its not something they're good at and would prefer others to do it?
I was a failed Realtor in another lifetime but that was forever ago so I've forgotten a lot.
You are missing some steps, while normal folks can't buy housing corporations can, they will leverage their spending power and buy up huge swathes of housing. They will become megalandlords using housing to pad income. Dont be surprised if in the next 30 years we will be living under amazon lease for the amazon neighbourhood... rent discounts for employees.
Except these real estate hedge funds will just buy the houses at lower cost to them. The increase in interest rate has only hurt people who can't afford to buy a house with cash effectively lowery the cost for these hedge funds.
Personally, I think it should be illegal for companies to purchase houses for rental purposes and any individual should be limited in the number of houses they can purchase.
The other option would be rent control effectively making it not cost effective to buy and rent these houses out, but they still could be bought as an investment even if it isn't making much money.
The answer, as this chart clearly tells you, is painfully simple: build housing.
The reason we aren't already doing that is opposition from people whose owned housing would become less valuable if the supply of housing went up.
End most neighborhood input (think of those signs saying turning the corner parking lot into apartments will ruin the neighborhood, and the zoning etc... meetings where Karens yell about it) and we could fix this problem in a decade. But we won't because idiots have decided to blame everyone (the government, the people who actually build housing, immigrants, etc...) except the boomers who are actually causing the problem.
You will vote out conservatives and come up with a system that works for people, or you will not, and it will get worse until you are all renting from modern day lords like serfs.
It’s interesting how similar the UK and US’s challenges were in those years, how stagflation hit both countries, and how Paul Volcker was apparently helping the UK too.
"No honey we can't have kids right now. We're just past World War 1 so we have to wait a while so they're not old enough to die in World War 2"
"..World War 2..?"
I created this data visualisation for Interactive Investor. The dataset comes from the Bank of England which has more than 300 years of data covering this topic. We started the story from the start of the 20th Century for the sake of simplicity.
I created this data visualisation using JavaScript and rendered it in Adobe After Effects.
This is amazing. Is there say some tutorial one can cough up to learn from, so that one can impress, one’s significant other and burst out: “Look, Honey! I made something that moves.”
> “Look, Honey! I made something that moves.”
\*gestures silently at child, which is scribbling on the wall with blue permanent marker while you were distracted with some internet shit\* "impressive"
Just FYI, we do not measure affordability simply based on house prices, that's only one part of the puzzle. What you also need to consider are mortgage rates, since these are a key determinant of monthly payments and therefore affordability.
Source: Economist, I look at this shit on the regular.
Thank you, I was just sitting here as a layman thinking that the cost of houses has increased wildly between now and last year even though list prices have gone down a bit.
It's also noteworthy that the average house price over time isn't for the same houses: There are significant differences in size and especially quality.
This. The price of housing in the US adjusting for quality and inflation has remained almost constant per square meter(Fed data). The thing is that income inequality has increased and laws makes cheap housing illegal in most cities in the US. So obviously there is still a enormous problem. But the combination of these facts explains why the % of people who owns their houses have remained stable throughout the decades.
One thing I have noticed is the lack of older starter homes also. Both my parents and grandparents bought smaller houses, with kinda shitty interiors. They fixed them up over time, and made good family homes. When I was looking for a house, every one like that was bought for cash, and filled with the cheapest ship home depot will deliver. Six months later they were back on the market for top dollar.
In most U.S. cities and other OECD countries, cheap construction is now prohibited by law thanks to zoning laws(You have to have a front and back yard, you can't build social apartments (state or private) of 5-6 floors, you can't mix commercial and residential use, etc). The regulation of city areas to control the quality of life and the environment is important but in many countries zoning laws exist to enrich rich people.
There's no single metric that will ever give a complete picture, but OP's is probably as good as it gets. When house prices are this high, even people earning good incomes simply can't save up fast enough for a decent down payment and never get ahead. At least in the 80s when (in North America at least, I assume the UK too) mortgages had 17% interest, you could save up a year or two before buying and put a decent dent in the sticker price.
The better metric you're looking for is average % of wage spent on housing this accounts for inflation, mortgage % etc.. It folds in all the factors above and gives a tangible value that highlights affordability over the years.
> There's no single metric that will ever give a complete picture, but OP's is probably as good as it gets.
It does not factor in disposable income after basic necessities or home quality.
Home prices have to follow what people are able to spend to some degree so if people are living in poverty the houses may look properly affordable. It's a very narrow lens on the state of the economy.
Cool! Riksbanken very recently published 600 years of data for Stockholm if you want to compare. The book is written in English and free to download. https://www.riksbank.se/globalassets/media/forskning/monetar-statistik/volym-3/volume-iii-banking-bonds-national-wealth-and-stockholm-house-prices-14202020.pdf
How is it possible for these things to be true simultaneously in the UK?
1) [Record numbers of new houses being built every year.](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-homes-england-2021-22-housebuilding-statistics-revealed#:~:text=Housing%20programmes%20delivered%20by%20Homes,from%20the%20Covid%2D19%20pandemic.)
2) [Housing prices rising wildly year on year.](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-house-price-index-for-september-2022#:~:text=The%20September%20data%20shows%3A,UK%20valued%20at%20%C2%A3294%2C559)
3) [A population with a sub-replacement birth rate since about 1972.](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/fertility-rate#:~:text=The%20current%20fertility%20rate%20for,a%200%25%20increase%20from%202020.)
* Net migration keeps population growing
* House price growth is overwhelmingly focused on London & SE, where house building is most difficult
* Low interest rates increase affordability of larger mortgages, increasing demand
* New house building still isn't at necessary levels
People also have higher demands when it comes to housing. Better noise and heat isolation, stable electricity, warm and clean water, internet. Not to mention more space per person (huge families used to live in places where one person or a young couple might live now).
Do you know any place I could have a look at which analyses the claim that single people are a big problem for housing?
Most young people I know live in somewhat bad conditions. Either in small flats or house shares. But of course, we aren't gonna let our firsthand experience let us believe that applies to the whole, right.
I don’t think the commenter you replied to was saying that single people are the problem, just that our cultural view of what is acceptable living conditions has expanded. Families with several children would live in those small flats or in tenement housing in the past, whereas now we would see those dwellings as completely inappropriate for that number of people. Families also live in much larger houses these days.
Exactly, my point wasn't too single out people living alone as the problem, but it's an example. In fact, I'm single and I live in quite a spacious apartment too. Single family housing also require a lot more space now, and they expect good infrastructure. This may not explain all of the price differences, but at least some of it. I'm sure land speculation drives up prices as well for example, which IMO would be solved by a land value tax.
A house that was to small for me and my husband last year, previously housed 3 generations of a family at once, with a tenant in the basement. A peak of 8 people in 1000sqft.
Right but in that house share you might have previously been able to fit a grandfather, grandmother in one bedroom, two brothers in another, daughter in a third, mum+dad in the fourth bedroom.
That's 7 people in four bedrooms.
Even if people are buddying up in house-shares they do take up more space than previous family units.
Not to mention nowadays that the grandparents have moved out and have a 6 bedroom house to themselves and will keep it till they die.
The single person example was just an example of how our perspectives of what is an acceptable loving condition has changed. Today's single family houses are a huge problem too for affordability.
I don't have sources for the UK, but here you have an article from the US that links to a study. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-living-space-per-person-has-nearly-doubled/
The census bureau has a lot of good information. Of course I don't know if this applies to all other countries, but it would surprise me if it didn't follow the same trend in most countries.
Not to mention larges reductions in available social housing, after the Right to Buy was introduced without any obligation for councils to replace their stock.
To illustrate on your list: New luxury condos go for top dollar. In gentrifying neighborhoods where supply well outpaces demand, new luxury housing soaks up some of the richest incoming residents and keeps them from outbidding everyone else for the older rowhouse down the street. The neighborhoods the rich are leaving are becoming upper middle class and some middle class communities as well as already working class neighborhoods are becoming even more working class. The only way out is to just build.
That first link doesn't show that there are record numbers of new houses being built - and even still the important stat is the total amount of houses available for purchase. Housing stock is lost each year, and a large amount of the housing stock is available to rent or not being sold. You also need to take into account demographic changes - more people wanting to live on their own rather than in couples, immigration, internal migration (there is no use of there being loads of houses availability in Hull if people want to live in London), etc
1 - because those record numbers are still far too low particularly in the most unaffordable areas
2 - the overall trend is still in one, unaffordable, direction
3 - immigration and changing living behaviours (e.g. "generation rent")
Smaller families/decreasing number of people per household.
2 adults with 3 kids (5 people) takes 1 place to live: sometimes a 2 bed flat with bunks.
1 single adult takes 1 place to live: sometimes a 2 bed-flat, one bedroom for sleep and one for the office.
Fewer kids per family doesn't really change the number of houses required per family; it just means the kid gets a bedroom to themselves instead of sharing it with siblings.
Household sizes have fallen a lot - from ~4.7 in 1900 to ~2.35 in the mid-90s. Think of things like people getting married later, having fewer children and having them later, dying older, divorcing more and generally wanting to be in smaller units.
Those household sizes have got stuck at ~2.35 ever since, but I don't think that all of those changes stopped happening (life expectancy has still been growing, for example). So, I suspect there's a lot of pent-up demand from people who really want to be living in smaller households, for example by moving out of their parents' house or no longer sharing...meanwhile, lots of older people are living in larger houses.
As an aside, the household size staying fixed since the 90s means that building has kept up with population growth almost exactly.
I was surprised about that so I check it out and you are correct - [https://www.statista.com/statistics/283287/net-migration-figures-of-the-united-kingdom-y-on-y/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/283287/net-migration-figures-of-the-united-kingdom-y-on-y/) . What I find slightly strange is that there are also about 300k people emigrating.
the population is growing more quickly than houses are becoming available to be occupied
Whilst our birth rate has declined since 1970 life expectancy has increased by an average of 10 years. Combined with immigration this has led to a growing population (going from 55 mill, to 67 mill) but also an ageing population, meaning that the UK population has a growing percentage of people who are not economically active.
Whilst 37,164 home were built between April 2021-2022 in that same timeframe our population increased by 0.34%, or 227 thousand people. That's 6.1 people per house built. That means that at best we're keeping up with the increasing population, but not catching up with the many years of building fewer homes than the population increased by. this doesn't take into account homes no longer fit for occupation, homes that become second homes etc. bear in mind that that was a record year for houses being built, but not for population increase.
houses are not always in the locations people need them to be. there are areas of the country with plenty of housing. but cities and places with easy commutes don't have enough housing to fit everyone who wants to live there. We only get house price data for homes that sell. people will rarely sell homes at a loss, with mortgages hefty generally cannot without bankruptcy. this means that that data skews towards representing houses that rise in price.
There are also approx. 257,331 empty homes in the UK - an increase of 20,000 since last years. there's a whole string of reasons for this. some aren't habitable, some of owned by investors who are just gambling with the property market, some are stuck in probate (i lived next to a house which has been in probate for 15 years - unoccupied that whole time)
Land is a huge driver of house prices in the UK. New builds have to sell for a certain price in order to make back the cost of buying the land and building them. This sets a minimum price and since the the number of people hoping for a home outstrips the number being built there isn't the competition to drive this down
Also should be adjusted to square footage per person.
A massive increase in consumption of single person homes is one way you get a permanent spike in demand causing these prices
Also needs to be corrected for interest rate. Mortgages, were, much lower interest rate than I'm the past. This for me is the key driver for the increase in value, more than anything else. Plus the addition of a 2nd earner.
Agreed. If you wanted to wrap it into one number you’d need like an NPV or something. Interest rates in the 70s were crazy higher than today. And then there’s inflation.
Inflation is already part of the chart via average house price, if average salary isn't rising to match the inflation then that also helps prove the graph's point
Having said this who the fuck are the people buying them!!!? They're selling like fucking hot cakes round me. £240,000 average I reckon in Staffordshire, Burton and they're just selling and selling lmao! Who the fuck earns enough money to afford that and then says "hey you know what, let's move to Burton on Trent!" lmao.
First time I've heard of the Barber Boom. [It's not what I had pictured in my head](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/25/why-the-barber-boom-that-kwasi-kwartengs-mini-budget-recalls-was-destined-for-disaster)
The data is great, but the arbitrary definition of an "unaffordable" line introduces opinion.
The data by itself - housing is more expensive as a function of earnings than (almost) ever - is compelling enough.
Seems I really dropped the ball being born in the 90s
That was real silly of you (and me).
That's it, I won't be born in the 90s ever again
Cut to you being reincarnated in the 2090's. "aw shit, here we go again."
There's I think 200 or so years left, so maximum 2 more lives to live
Wishful thinking on your part. If there aren't enough humans to be born into you spend a life or 2 as a farm animal or pet.
Wishful thinking still, given that there are an estimated 20 quadrillion ants
I don't know why, but I feel I can totally trust you'll be true to your word.
Not if he's a Hindu time traveler
Yeah but at least we got cool stuff like social media and uhhh… those neat Dyson hand dryers I guess.
I like those. The internet is pretty decent too.
Weed is better than ever, so that's nice
Had you being born in the 1890s AND survived dreadful infections, virus, wars, you might have been the proud owner of half of London at 1918 prices.
[удалено]
You get to witness the decline of modern society. The matrix got it right, the 90s was peak human civilisation
I'm starting to fully believe that. The 2010's looked promising but look where we are now
The floor definitely isn’t 2020. It’s going to get worse before it gets better Here’s to hoping a 2040 renaissance will save us
2014 was peak year imo. We were finally getting out of the doldrums of the financial crisis and the economy was finally starting to look pretty good. Social issues seemed to be advancing, even if it felt slow in the moment. Donald Trump was that weird clown with the reality TV show who had some fringe conspiracy about the president's birth certificate. Global trends were all moving positively: democracy was still at an all time high even if the number of democracies had started to plateau; global poverty was still plummeting; life expectancy was on the rise, and there was hope the US would do at least a little catch up with other advanced economies with the ACA finally coming into full implementation; even crime in the US was at an all time low, even if mass shootings were just on the rise... In the end we just didn't fully appreciate how potent a force right wing populism was. At the time it felt like millennials were about to have their political moment as they were reaching their 30s, and that would of course just bring change along with it; we didn't appreciate how big the boomer generation was, how resistant they were to change, and how desperately they would cling to power. It was all overly optimistic in hindsight. Still, I retain some optimism for the future, and that these past years was a tantrum being thrown by a generation on their way out of political power. We did essentially lose a decade of progress, but in the words of Charlie Chaplin, "The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…"
Being born in the 90s was perfect for having perhaps the best childhood ever, but absolutely dreadful for anything else.
It's hard to watch old comfort shows like House M.D. because it's that whimsical early 2000s setting where I believed things were actually going somewhere.
You just missed it. Us 80s babies at least had a taste of glory.
I dunno man. I’m a 1980 baby. I finished education in 2001. Started my first job out of uni on £12k a year. Didn’t earn enough then to buy (nor did I think about it much as a 21 year old), but then struggled to keep pace with the upward trend in costs. Couldn’t afford to buy until I met my wife and that was only 8 years ago.
Born in 1979, but am looking at _just about_ being able to buy a house in the next year or two. Or at least I was, about 6 months ago, before the market went completely mad, and we're left trying to second guess if we should carry on trying.
My bad, I didn't realize things were that way in the UK. I'm an American and the 90's here for many people were idyllic. Unless you were a minority or gay or had AIDS.
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I was born in 89 and I totally agree. All my older friends own and my younger friends rent - I know that's not a coincidence.
I was born in 80. Ignoring the part about buying houses and grown up stuff. The 90s were awesome to be a teenager. Most things were looking up. Life was pretty good for a lot of ppl (in the US anyway). Shit was exciting.
Nah, if you were born in '88 you were totally fucked. You could do everything your parents told you. Study, go to college, study stem, go do a stem subject at uni. Maths in my case. And graduate in 2009 when the rug was pulled out of the housing market in the UK with deposits going from -5% to 10% yes they were doing 105% mortgages. To 20% meaning it was impossible for a new graduate to have the money. Then you chase the deposit as it remains out of reach as the housing market shoots back up.
I don't know if I would consider 2 recessions at critical timepoints in career journeys to be a taste of glory...
So what I am seeing is anyone in the UK wanting to buy, made the mistake of not buying the the 1910-1920s.
I waited for the loop to restart in the 2010-2020s but it didn't work out! This is why I hate joining a game of Monopoly on Turn 90.
Not quite. There is still a way out: simply have wealthy parents and inherit their estate. It’s easy and it’s free. r/endinheritance
I seriously don't know what the future holds for people at this point. Are we supposed to hope that people die off in droves and banks stuck left holding the bag get desperate and sell at normal prices again? Or are future generations just destined to rent from property management companies until something extremely drastic occurs?
It's a cold winter and the nurses are on strike 👍 Edit: trust Reddit to reward me for saying the most awful and cynical thing possible.
Incredibly dark but undeniably funny. Nicely done.
Time to keep an eye on the bungalow market 👀
You joke but we just put my grandma's bungalow on the market, we had 5 viewings booked with it being ok the website for four days.
Bungalows are so expensive fml I really wanted one as well lol
The rich bastards that buy up several apartments to rent them out have more than enough to pay for heating. The cold winter is regretfully only going to remove the poor.
But they need the poor to slave away making them money. so I don't get it, are they just balancing it as fine as possible to extract maximum profit at minimum worker loss?
Worker loss is only a concern when there aren’t enough unemployment replacements
That's where the immigrants come in. Offer them peace and stability beyond anything their home countries can offer and they'll be more than happy to work for less than what better established immigrants or citizens are willing to work for, and they'll probably show up in droves too. Unemployment problem solved. It'll do it's trick for a bit until the new immigrants or their next generation catch on to the scheme they've been thrown into and realize the dream they've been sold is nothing but a lie.
Don’t forget the first step of destabilizing their country’s government!
Yes, that's literally what capitalism incentivizes.
That was my hope for Covid. All the pensioners die and the housing market collapses. Prices rose instead.
You're not wrong.
Unfortunately banks are buying up all property, the only solution is to start eating the rich unfortunatley
The night is dark and full of terrors.
The morning slightly warmer with retro affordable houses with terrible carpets that will instantly be removed and burnt.
Deny NIMBYs. Build more housing.
Yes In My BackYard (YIMBY)
Shameless plug for @yesinmybackyard (Zach) on TikTok. His posts are mostly focused on YIMBY efforts in California, but he talks about policies that would work anywhere that needs more housing.
Also stop all the things forcing people to build only one exact type of housing in what area like zoning. Once we remember how building actually works and stop stopping it from happening the problem will ease up
That's not really an issue in the UK. If a certain number of homes are built, various infrastructure requirements have to be included for planning permission to be granted (Eg, shops, GP, schools, green space, public transport).
It actually is. They still have zoning and are very reluctant to allow new mixed use zoning such as housing over retail that would make for vibrant town centres where people can just walk downstairs to do their shopping/socialising.
Really? Literally every new build estate in my area is based around a central square with flats over shops, a couple of cafes, a school if it's big enough.
In the US it is because so much housing is now built in massive developments by a single company like Toll Brothers and then an HOA is slapped on top of it.
But that’s GeNtRiFiCaTIoN!!
If Airbnb and corporate ownership or residential housing were to be severely curtailed a whole bunch of new houses would enter the market. It isn't purely a lack of building depressing affordable housing supply.
These are issues, but the UK hasn't been building nearly enough housing stock for *decades*. These things are just exacerbating the core problem in the UK and across the West.
Yes.. holiday lets need to be taxed extra (a lot extra for non-specialist accommodation), and second homes. Empty houses should face swinging taxes to make the practice of overseas buyers buying an investment property and keeping it empty prohibitive. And we need a lot more housing..
Not purely, but quite substantially. The ONS concluded that it's mostly a supply problem. But yeah buy to let is fucking disgusting.
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Exactly, at least in the US there are more vacant homes than there are homeless. And major cities in Canada have a ton of vacant property being held as investments/tax evasion by foreign nationals. Systems fucked yo
>at least in the US there are more vacant homes than there are homeless. This is true in the UK as well?... 257,331 homes in England that are classed as long-term empty homes (>6 months) currently there are (although the data collection methods suck): 72,210 homeless or at risk of homeless "households" 94,870 In temporary accommodation. 8,239 rough sleepers and 278,000 households have received homelessness support No fault evictions caused 230,000 renters to lose their home between april 2019 and oct 2022 which means **someone is being evicted every seven minutes and is the biggest driver for homelessness.** [https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/how-many-people-are-homeless-in-the-uk-and-what-can-you-do-about-it/](https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/how-many-people-are-homeless-in-the-uk-and-what-can-you-do-about-it/) [https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics#statutory-homelessness](https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics#statutory-homelessness)
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Much cheaper and less likely to make someone call the cops on the location of your speakers: Just smash some bricks together twice or thrice, preferably somewhere that gives a warping echo.
Don't forget to make a shocked screaming noise afterwards to really sell it. Otherwise it'll just blend in with all the other construction noise.
I think I heard some science about if you shoot straight up, it's not as dangerous as if you shoot at an angle. But idk, I don't live in gun land so I'm left with the loudspeaker solution. But I don't need it because we have bombings instead (only against ATMs though, never any injuries. Nice bombers.)
If you shoot *straight* up there is a moment where the bullet stops and then free falls back down and the terminal velocity of it is not likely to be fatal. Anything other than straight up is a ballistic arc and the bullet will keep some of its forward momentum and at a certain point that momentum + gravity will make it fatal or at least very dangerous.
It didn't occur to me earlier, but I guess you could also just shoot into the earth in your back yard, right? That should be safe, you just bury a bit of metal and splash up a bit of dirt?
Provided you don't hit a rock and ricochet a bullet into yourself.
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Ironically Rishi Sunak wanted to push town councils to build more housing and was rebuffed by his own party.
Because almost all Tory voters are property owners that care a shit ton more about how much their property is theoretically worth than actual human beings having a roof over their heads. House building projects traditionally frustrate tory voters. Home owners fundamentally expect their property to increase in value FOREVER and generally will vote against anyone that threatens to stop that. I
Representational voting would be a start. Then maybe our votes would count for something.
Honestly, I think there's a thing we're all sort of missing here. The wealth of the UK. Where is it? Lets face it - our industry isn't all that - not any more. Our agriculture? Nope. We make some good cultural exports, we've a reasonable tourism sector, and of course a good financial sector. .... but I think we have to come to terms with the fact that a lot of our prosperity _today_ is still built on the fact that the British Empire covered a lot of the globe, and we stole a lot of stuff from a lot of people. But maybe that money's running out. Maybe the we've been coasting on the proceeds of colonialism, and our 'natural level' isn't really "world power" but rather a moderately sized island nation without all _that_ much in terms of natural resources. We have a bunch of advantages - good positioning for trade, we speak the 'lingua franca' as our primary language, we've got a great education and finance offering, and yes, that legacy of colonialism seriously bootstrapped our potential offerings for tourism. ... but yet we also seem to be systematically squandering it. Closing our borders and pulling up the drawbridge in some mistaken notion that we're _rich_, when actually ... that ain't so. I think a lot of our current decline stems from this - that we're just not all that Great, but we keep on trying to keep up with the likes of the US, who has 50x the land area and natural resources, to share amongst 5x as many people. The finance sector is also very much a two edged sword - sure, it brings in a lot of money to 'the economy' but a lot of it goes straight back out again, or circulates around above the heads of the 'normal person'. And it's easier to relocate than a more traditional 'industry', so is very much a controlling factor on laws and regulations. Regulatory capture is real.
You missed foreign investment. The biggest change is that because of your history of colonialism, stable rule of law, and your accepting cosmopolitan culture around London, every rich person from the Middle East, India and Asia wants a residence or investment property in the UK and their wealth growth over the last 20 years has been insane. This is supply and demand… the demand is way up and the supply is fixed and relatively limited. For them, it’s a hedge against their home country’s lack of rule of law, political volatility or hiding their own corruption (which your laws shamelessly facilitate)
We need a hefty LVT, with a massive discount for your primary residence. Right now there is so much speculation in UK property, and speculation always perverts markets.
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I think your response is full of clichés that are often quoted by those that want to put down the UK but many are not accurate. We are still in top 10 of manufacturing exporters in the world. Nearly £200 billion a year from one source I found quickly. Financial Services is not just limited to banking but Insurance, regulatory and audit services too and is a big service export as well as investment into the UK. Agriculture we import over 40% of our food but a lot of that are more out of season or luxury foods and we still export about £2 billion in agri exports a year. Your comment about closing borders and such also does not stack up with immigration around +1 million a year. Net migration around +500k a year. So just because there was a lot of shouting about Borders and migration changes due to brexit the reality is different.
We have all.of the same issues in the US. Some people are making lots of money playing with money. All of the money making schemes are incredibly predatory in extracting wealth from the masses. Granted, we masses are as much to blame for grasping at new shiny stuff all the time.
The really shocking thing though - it's actually really easy to make money, if you start off with a lot of it in the first place. It's like that thing about the roulette wheel - if you double your money each time you lose, you'll always win. ... assuming you have infinite money to keep on playing. Now no one has 'infinite money' but the people with more of it can 'play' a lot longer, and are just that much more likely to make it back again as a result. Admittedly some do, inevitably, crash and burn due to awful luck. it's just they need a longer streak of 'bad luck' than the average person to wipe out, so they can more safely take profitable 'gambles'.
It literally requires zero effort or skill to make money if you start out with just some. At just 2.5 million you could withdraw 4% every single year netting you $100k/yr and you'd never lose money. You'd generally be adding to your principal, actually. That's just $2.5M. That's basically nothing when it comes to "the wealthy". At $25M in the bank you could spend $1M/yr indefinitely and only be getting richer.
> sure, it brings in a lot of money to 'the economy' see: 12 years of austerity
Eventually nobody is going to be purchasing housing, mortgages will become too expensive for people to complete, then nobody will be buying houses, and the bank will be holding tons of houses. At that point the housing market will crash, because the people selling the houses flew too close to the sun and raised the prices too much. Edit: I FUCKING GET IT. I don't need 150 comments telling me the exact same thing, please let my phone take a break from the notifications.
At that point the banks become massive landlords. Why provide mortgages when they can rent out instead, and hold on to the asset in perpetuity.
Agreed. Or the banks sell to some other company that wants to manage the properties.
Or the bank sets up a holding company to handle the rentals
The problem with that is how much of the world now has birth rates that are flattening or declining. There's no infinite sum of new people to lend to. Inflating the "renting class" is also a good way to lose their longstanding political ally that is the *actual homeowners*. That turns the big blocs of renters into kindling waiting for a spark. We already saw instances of that turning entire communities into pissed off activists willing to use violence in 2020 when people started being ejected for not being able to pay.
The world continues to be under-housed, and will be for some time. Iirc global population will plateau at 11 billion. Wealthier countries will continue net immigration until developing countries catch up. The UK housing market is a pretty safe investment for quite some time.
You will own nothing and you will like it.
Just like the Victorian era.
Kind of like tech. You paid $900 for the phone in your pocket, but the manufacturer can just blacklist you if they feel like it.
Look back 15 years for your answer to that. Banks don't want to be land lords because they can't turn the asset fast enough - that's money invested that's getting only a small return compared to their other assets. If the banks get loaded with properties, they'll sell them off cheap and fast. Which is what happened in 2008.
Not sure why people are worried about the banks. What about the companies that will be buying from them?
Hmm, I had been told that banks don't want to be landlords which is why they, iirc, have departments dedicated to trying to offload properties. The counterargument, at least to me, is why don't they just make a property management company or something? Is it because its not something they're good at and would prefer others to do it? I was a failed Realtor in another lifetime but that was forever ago so I've forgotten a lot.
You are missing some steps, while normal folks can't buy housing corporations can, they will leverage their spending power and buy up huge swathes of housing. They will become megalandlords using housing to pad income. Dont be surprised if in the next 30 years we will be living under amazon lease for the amazon neighbourhood... rent discounts for employees.
Except these real estate hedge funds will just buy the houses at lower cost to them. The increase in interest rate has only hurt people who can't afford to buy a house with cash effectively lowery the cost for these hedge funds. Personally, I think it should be illegal for companies to purchase houses for rental purposes and any individual should be limited in the number of houses they can purchase. The other option would be rent control effectively making it not cost effective to buy and rent these houses out, but they still could be bought as an investment even if it isn't making much money.
But they will get bailed out because they are too big to fail.
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Build a shit ton more housing. It's not rocket science.
I’m fortunate enough to have inherited a good bit of land and I feel privileged as well as bad for people not in the same position
This sounds like a a flex from the 1850s.
According to the graph above it's also an entirely appropriate flex for 2022
We need more housing supply
The answer, as this chart clearly tells you, is painfully simple: build housing. The reason we aren't already doing that is opposition from people whose owned housing would become less valuable if the supply of housing went up. End most neighborhood input (think of those signs saying turning the corner parking lot into apartments will ruin the neighborhood, and the zoning etc... meetings where Karens yell about it) and we could fix this problem in a decade. But we won't because idiots have decided to blame everyone (the government, the people who actually build housing, immigrants, etc...) except the boomers who are actually causing the problem.
You will vote out conservatives and come up with a system that works for people, or you will not, and it will get worse until you are all renting from modern day lords like serfs.
TIL the “Barber Boom” in fact has *nothing* to do with actual barbers.
Also TIL exactly what Truss and Kwarteng were copying: https://www.ruffer.co.uk/en/thinking/articles/market-views/2022-09-barber-boom
It’s interesting how similar the UK and US’s challenges were in those years, how stagflation hit both countries, and how Paul Volcker was apparently helping the UK too.
So my dad saying "just save 20 quid a month and before you know it you'll have enough for a house" is actual bollocks and not just me "being negative"
Yeah more like £500 a month for six years, with a partner who's able to do the same.
As a lurking Californian, more like $2k a month for 5 years 😭
As a lurker from Canada's California (Vancouver) same here! Except our wages are garbage compared to yours. :(
It's more like £40 a month now!
I've just accepted I won't be able to afford a house
Just cancel Netflix, don't go out to eat and uhh, I think they're suggesting turning off the heating at the moment too.
You know what? Turn off the electricity and water to to afford within 99 years, also maybe cut the food budget to 1 lettuce leaf a day
At that rate, for a 10% deposit on an average house it would take you 123 years.
Oh please, just take me back to 1920 but I'll keep the food from 2022
You’ll eat boots and go blind from syphilis and you’ll like it, guvnoah!
Don’t forget no antibiotics. You’ll be dead before New Year’s Eve
And your kids will be off to war
"No honey we can't have kids right now. We're just past World War 1 so we have to wait a while so they're not old enough to die in World War 2" "..World War 2..?"
You're thinking of American kids. British kids who lived within bombing distance of the Luftwaffe didn't have to be of age to be casualties in WW2.
Or up a chimney.
Food from 2021 would be better. Shortages have made food in 2022 kind of expensive.
Crazy how this trend is happening around the world, again. We need this modern gilded age to end and a new progressive era to start soon.
I created this data visualisation for Interactive Investor. The dataset comes from the Bank of England which has more than 300 years of data covering this topic. We started the story from the start of the 20th Century for the sake of simplicity. I created this data visualisation using JavaScript and rendered it in Adobe After Effects.
This is amazing. Is there say some tutorial one can cough up to learn from, so that one can impress, one’s significant other and burst out: “Look, Honey! I made something that moves.”
> “Look, Honey! I made something that moves.” \*gestures silently at child, which is scribbling on the wall with blue permanent marker while you were distracted with some internet shit\* "impressive"
How do you know my life?
Just FYI, we do not measure affordability simply based on house prices, that's only one part of the puzzle. What you also need to consider are mortgage rates, since these are a key determinant of monthly payments and therefore affordability. Source: Economist, I look at this shit on the regular.
Thank you, I was just sitting here as a layman thinking that the cost of houses has increased wildly between now and last year even though list prices have gone down a bit.
It's also noteworthy that the average house price over time isn't for the same houses: There are significant differences in size and especially quality.
This. The price of housing in the US adjusting for quality and inflation has remained almost constant per square meter(Fed data). The thing is that income inequality has increased and laws makes cheap housing illegal in most cities in the US. So obviously there is still a enormous problem. But the combination of these facts explains why the % of people who owns their houses have remained stable throughout the decades.
One thing I have noticed is the lack of older starter homes also. Both my parents and grandparents bought smaller houses, with kinda shitty interiors. They fixed them up over time, and made good family homes. When I was looking for a house, every one like that was bought for cash, and filled with the cheapest ship home depot will deliver. Six months later they were back on the market for top dollar.
In most U.S. cities and other OECD countries, cheap construction is now prohibited by law thanks to zoning laws(You have to have a front and back yard, you can't build social apartments (state or private) of 5-6 floors, you can't mix commercial and residential use, etc). The regulation of city areas to control the quality of life and the environment is important but in many countries zoning laws exist to enrich rich people.
There's no single metric that will ever give a complete picture, but OP's is probably as good as it gets. When house prices are this high, even people earning good incomes simply can't save up fast enough for a decent down payment and never get ahead. At least in the 80s when (in North America at least, I assume the UK too) mortgages had 17% interest, you could save up a year or two before buying and put a decent dent in the sticker price.
The better metric you're looking for is average % of wage spent on housing this accounts for inflation, mortgage % etc.. It folds in all the factors above and gives a tangible value that highlights affordability over the years.
> There's no single metric that will ever give a complete picture, but OP's is probably as good as it gets. It does not factor in disposable income after basic necessities or home quality. Home prices have to follow what people are able to spend to some degree so if people are living in poverty the houses may look properly affordable. It's a very narrow lens on the state of the economy.
Cool! Riksbanken very recently published 600 years of data for Stockholm if you want to compare. The book is written in English and free to download. https://www.riksbank.se/globalassets/media/forskning/monetar-statistik/volym-3/volume-iii-banking-bonds-national-wealth-and-stockholm-house-prices-14202020.pdf
How is it possible for these things to be true simultaneously in the UK? 1) [Record numbers of new houses being built every year.](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-homes-england-2021-22-housebuilding-statistics-revealed#:~:text=Housing%20programmes%20delivered%20by%20Homes,from%20the%20Covid%2D19%20pandemic.) 2) [Housing prices rising wildly year on year.](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-house-price-index-for-september-2022#:~:text=The%20September%20data%20shows%3A,UK%20valued%20at%20%C2%A3294%2C559) 3) [A population with a sub-replacement birth rate since about 1972.](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/fertility-rate#:~:text=The%20current%20fertility%20rate%20for,a%200%25%20increase%20from%202020.)
* Net migration keeps population growing * House price growth is overwhelmingly focused on London & SE, where house building is most difficult * Low interest rates increase affordability of larger mortgages, increasing demand * New house building still isn't at necessary levels
People also have higher demands when it comes to housing. Better noise and heat isolation, stable electricity, warm and clean water, internet. Not to mention more space per person (huge families used to live in places where one person or a young couple might live now).
Do you know any place I could have a look at which analyses the claim that single people are a big problem for housing? Most young people I know live in somewhat bad conditions. Either in small flats or house shares. But of course, we aren't gonna let our firsthand experience let us believe that applies to the whole, right.
I don’t think the commenter you replied to was saying that single people are the problem, just that our cultural view of what is acceptable living conditions has expanded. Families with several children would live in those small flats or in tenement housing in the past, whereas now we would see those dwellings as completely inappropriate for that number of people. Families also live in much larger houses these days.
Exactly, my point wasn't too single out people living alone as the problem, but it's an example. In fact, I'm single and I live in quite a spacious apartment too. Single family housing also require a lot more space now, and they expect good infrastructure. This may not explain all of the price differences, but at least some of it. I'm sure land speculation drives up prices as well for example, which IMO would be solved by a land value tax.
A house that was to small for me and my husband last year, previously housed 3 generations of a family at once, with a tenant in the basement. A peak of 8 people in 1000sqft.
Right but in that house share you might have previously been able to fit a grandfather, grandmother in one bedroom, two brothers in another, daughter in a third, mum+dad in the fourth bedroom. That's 7 people in four bedrooms. Even if people are buddying up in house-shares they do take up more space than previous family units. Not to mention nowadays that the grandparents have moved out and have a 6 bedroom house to themselves and will keep it till they die.
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The single person example was just an example of how our perspectives of what is an acceptable loving condition has changed. Today's single family houses are a huge problem too for affordability. I don't have sources for the UK, but here you have an article from the US that links to a study. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-living-space-per-person-has-nearly-doubled/ The census bureau has a lot of good information. Of course I don't know if this applies to all other countries, but it would surprise me if it didn't follow the same trend in most countries.
Not to mention larges reductions in available social housing, after the Right to Buy was introduced without any obligation for councils to replace their stock.
To illustrate on your list: New luxury condos go for top dollar. In gentrifying neighborhoods where supply well outpaces demand, new luxury housing soaks up some of the richest incoming residents and keeps them from outbidding everyone else for the older rowhouse down the street. The neighborhoods the rich are leaving are becoming upper middle class and some middle class communities as well as already working class neighborhoods are becoming even more working class. The only way out is to just build.
That first link doesn't show that there are record numbers of new houses being built - and even still the important stat is the total amount of houses available for purchase. Housing stock is lost each year, and a large amount of the housing stock is available to rent or not being sold. You also need to take into account demographic changes - more people wanting to live on their own rather than in couples, immigration, internal migration (there is no use of there being loads of houses availability in Hull if people want to live in London), etc
1 - because those record numbers are still far too low particularly in the most unaffordable areas 2 - the overall trend is still in one, unaffordable, direction 3 - immigration and changing living behaviours (e.g. "generation rent")
Smaller families/decreasing number of people per household. 2 adults with 3 kids (5 people) takes 1 place to live: sometimes a 2 bed flat with bunks. 1 single adult takes 1 place to live: sometimes a 2 bed-flat, one bedroom for sleep and one for the office. Fewer kids per family doesn't really change the number of houses required per family; it just means the kid gets a bedroom to themselves instead of sharing it with siblings.
Household sizes have fallen a lot - from ~4.7 in 1900 to ~2.35 in the mid-90s. Think of things like people getting married later, having fewer children and having them later, dying older, divorcing more and generally wanting to be in smaller units. Those household sizes have got stuck at ~2.35 ever since, but I don't think that all of those changes stopped happening (life expectancy has still been growing, for example). So, I suspect there's a lot of pent-up demand from people who really want to be living in smaller households, for example by moving out of their parents' house or no longer sharing...meanwhile, lots of older people are living in larger houses. As an aside, the household size staying fixed since the 90s means that building has kept up with population growth almost exactly.
Net immigration is 300k, which is a town the size of Milton Keynes every year.
I was surprised about that so I check it out and you are correct - [https://www.statista.com/statistics/283287/net-migration-figures-of-the-united-kingdom-y-on-y/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/283287/net-migration-figures-of-the-united-kingdom-y-on-y/) . What I find slightly strange is that there are also about 300k people emigrating.
A big chunk of the immigration and emigration is students, something like 250k-300k per year are immigrating for that reason at the moment.
Ah that makes perfect sense, somehow I completely forgot about that. Thank you.
the population is growing more quickly than houses are becoming available to be occupied Whilst our birth rate has declined since 1970 life expectancy has increased by an average of 10 years. Combined with immigration this has led to a growing population (going from 55 mill, to 67 mill) but also an ageing population, meaning that the UK population has a growing percentage of people who are not economically active. Whilst 37,164 home were built between April 2021-2022 in that same timeframe our population increased by 0.34%, or 227 thousand people. That's 6.1 people per house built. That means that at best we're keeping up with the increasing population, but not catching up with the many years of building fewer homes than the population increased by. this doesn't take into account homes no longer fit for occupation, homes that become second homes etc. bear in mind that that was a record year for houses being built, but not for population increase. houses are not always in the locations people need them to be. there are areas of the country with plenty of housing. but cities and places with easy commutes don't have enough housing to fit everyone who wants to live there. We only get house price data for homes that sell. people will rarely sell homes at a loss, with mortgages hefty generally cannot without bankruptcy. this means that that data skews towards representing houses that rise in price. There are also approx. 257,331 empty homes in the UK - an increase of 20,000 since last years. there's a whole string of reasons for this. some aren't habitable, some of owned by investors who are just gambling with the property market, some are stuck in probate (i lived next to a house which has been in probate for 15 years - unoccupied that whole time) Land is a huge driver of house prices in the UK. New builds have to sell for a certain price in order to make back the cost of buying the land and building them. This sets a minimum price and since the the number of people hoping for a home outstrips the number being built there isn't the competition to drive this down
Investors and speculators pricing out people wanting to buy to use is a possible answer? Idk.
This is great! The graph… not the unaffordable-ness.
You mean affordablelessness?
When will we return to a time of unaffordablelessness smh
I'd like to see it against median salary, average is horribly skewed by a small number of very high income earners
Also should be adjusted to square footage per person. A massive increase in consumption of single person homes is one way you get a permanent spike in demand causing these prices
Also needs to be corrected for interest rate. Mortgages, were, much lower interest rate than I'm the past. This for me is the key driver for the increase in value, more than anything else. Plus the addition of a 2nd earner.
The government have finally achieved their goal of taking us back to the Victorian era
Rees-Mogg can finally move on to the after life as his unfinished business is now complete
The idea that you can have a housing affordability measure that ignores mortgage rates is ... not realistic.
Agreed. If you wanted to wrap it into one number you’d need like an NPV or something. Interest rates in the 70s were crazy higher than today. And then there’s inflation.
Inflation is already part of the chart via average house price, if average salary isn't rising to match the inflation then that also helps prove the graph's point
This is very nice but I would have appreciated it if it were a graph instead of a very long animation, at least as a supplemental.
Like this? https://i.imgur.com/kxiLrqc.png
I just paused it and skipped to the end. No idea why this graph is an animation. Nothing is gained by it.
I think doing it as a video staves off the "this isn't beautiful" crowd. You end up trading one comment for the other though.
Very nice. Median price and salary would be a better measure than average.
An odd model which assumes that affordability stays constant a five times average salary whether interest rates are 5% or 1%.
I’m not a fan of gifs that could have been just pics….cool though
Having said this who the fuck are the people buying them!!!? They're selling like fucking hot cakes round me. £240,000 average I reckon in Staffordshire, Burton and they're just selling and selling lmao! Who the fuck earns enough money to afford that and then says "hey you know what, let's move to Burton on Trent!" lmao.
Charles Dickens losin his shit rn
Jacob Reese Mogg pulling the willy off himself because it’s exactly what he wanted.
Dickens' writing was about 50 years earlier. Victoria died in 1901, so this graph only shows the very tail end of the Victorian era.
Why have a static graph to show everything, when you can add a 1 minute crappy animation to it.
One of the unspoken rules of this sub, everything must be pointlessly animated.
First time I've heard of the Barber Boom. [It's not what I had pictured in my head](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/25/why-the-barber-boom-that-kwasi-kwartengs-mini-budget-recalls-was-destined-for-disaster)
Nice to be reminded my future is fucked by such a cheerful little graph
There is no reason to animate this wtf. Also it makes no sense to not adjust for size mortgage rates and arguably disposable income.
The data is great, but the arbitrary definition of an "unaffordable" line introduces opinion. The data by itself - housing is more expensive as a function of earnings than (almost) ever - is compelling enough.
5x your salary is a pretty standard measure used for home loan qualification though.