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RE: Why you can’t afford a house – financialisation, deregulation and easy-mortgages!?
Another factor is foreign investors (in any major global city). They don't just buy houses and apartments and rent them out to locals, which would at least keep them on the housing market and take some pressure off the home sales prices. They buy them and keep them empty, waiting ONLY for profit from resale. That not only pushes up prices directly, but also means there is a greater housing shortage than just land area constrains.
I think there's a proposal in London to start taxing empty units. Not sure of the particulars. Wouldn't want to be taxing someone who's just having trouble finding renters, but how you determine that genuinely vs making outrageous demands to dissuade applicants, I don't know.
I commented about this in response to a previous post: as well as taking properties out of the housing market, it's removing spend on retail, restaurants and services in the local economy. In the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, England's richest borough, over a third of the properties are unoccupied with corresponding damage to local jobs and businesses.
I hadn't thought about that. Great point!
Often a lot more non foreign investors do it. Persoannly I don't care about their nationality.
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I agree, but there are different tax regulations for UK and foreign nationals. Both need to be tackled.
Very fair point, I'm not sure how significant such speculators are compared to ordinary house buyers, but it certainly does push prices up!
Council tax has been increased on empty properties since 2013. However, a £4,250 Council Tax bill on a £2.1m average price property isn't having much impact. Foreign nationals are also happy to pay £218,000pa in tax rather than declare which mega-properties they own.