Rents up again.....

robmatic

Cleaver wrote: »

Oh, right, okay. A housing shortage doesn't mean that people have nowhere to live. It means that people either pay more out of their income for property, live in different formats (i.e. houseshare, two couples in a place where maybe there was one before etc. etc.) or simply stay at home with parents or with friends. A housing shortage changes the way people live, it doesn't force people out on to the street. Homelessness is, by and large, a completely different issue based around social and mental health issues.

In summary, the issue homelessness generally doesn't really have anything to do with housing shortages in a traditional sense. Your question is akin to asking, "well if people are finding it harder and harder to buy food, why don't we see starving people on the street?". And the answer is that you can have a problem that doesn't necessarily lead to the worst case scenario.

It's not really a shortage as such then, really, is it? It's just a distribution issue, in that property ownership isn't shared as widely as some people would like. We all know about the plight of young people being unable to buy a home, but there also seems to be a substantial number of people who own more than one property, either as landlords or by having holiday properties.

Cleaver

robmatic wrote: »

It's not really a shortage as such then, really, is it? It's just a distribution issue, in that property ownership isn't shared as widely as some people would like.

That's a good point but I guess it all depends on how you look at things. It's way too simplistic to count up how many properties you have and how many people you have, keep a tally, and use a comparison of the two to see if there is a housing shortage. To look at things accurately you'd need to look at regions, living styles, societal expectations etc. etc. Really difficult stuff to measure. Another complex issue is where you could see a housing shortage for a certain type of property. For example, I live in Manchester. There isn't a shortage of property in the truest sense of the word as we have thousands of flats sitting empty as no one wants to live in them. But there is a 'shortage' of desirable homes in nice areas, as more people want to live in these areas (obviously) in nice houses (obviously), so the price goes up. Maybe you're right and shortage isn't the right word?

I think the long and short of it is that our population is increasing faster than our rate of building houses. Added to that issue is that we have more people wanting to live alone than ever before, a population that is far more mobile than ever before (kids more likely to other places than stay in the family town) and the fact that people are more fussy about how and where they live. Add these factors together and in a lot of places you have a housing shortage.

Obviously simplistic minds will come back and say, "if you have enough houses then you don't have a shortage", but it's obviously a lot more complex than this.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Cleaver wrote: »

Obviously simplistic minds will come back and say, "if you have enough houses then you don't have a shortage", but it's obviously a lot more complex than this.

It's actually quite simple.

There is a significant shortage of housing, of the types people want to live in, in the places people want to live, and where the employment exists to support them.

There is, for example, a surplus of around 1600 empty houses in Caithness and Sutherland at the northern tip of Scotland. Of course, this does no good at all to the young couple looking for housing in London..... Or even Edinburgh for that matter......

But the fact remains you can still find cheap-ish housing within an hour or two's drive of most major employment hubs in the UK, outside the south east of England. Some people seem to think such housing is beneath them however.

geneer

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

It's actually quite simple.

There is a significant shortage of housing, of the types people want to live in, in the places people want to live, and where the employment exists to support them.

There is, for example, a surplus of around 1600 empty houses in Caithness and Sutherland at the northern tip of Scotland. Of course, this does no good at all to the young couple looking for housing in London..... Or even Edinburgh for that matter......

Yet ESPC says that supply continues to outstrip demand in Edinburgh.

Insert 10P to play again...

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

geneer wrote: »

Yet ESPC says that supply continues to outstrip demand in Edinburgh...

Demand is temporarily limited by the mortgage famine.

And in the meantime, rents are soaring instead.

Thrugelmir

Generali wrote: »

Interesting that tenant's incomes are rising faster than average.

Lower proportion of public sector workers in the South East.

ruggedtoast

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

It's actually quite simple.

There is a significant shortage of housing, of the types people want to live in, in the places people want to live, and where the employment exists to support them.

There is, for example, a surplus of around 1600 empty houses in Caithness and Sutherland at the northern tip of Scotland. Of course, this does no good at all to the young couple looking for housing in London..... Or even Edinburgh for that matter......

But the fact remains you can still find cheap-ish housing within an hour or two's drive of most major employment hubs in the UK, outside the south east of England. Some people seem to think such housing is beneath them however.

Yes, they should complain to their parents and get a handout to live somewhere nicer shouldnt they.

Oh wait thats just you.

PasturesNew

Are the people with 2 or more houses, putting up rents so that the people with 0 houses continue to pay for their holidays abroad and nights out now prices have gone up?

PasturesNew

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

But the fact remains you can still find cheap-ish housing within an hour or two's drive of most major employment hubs in the UK

But can people afford to keep a car legal/working/on the road for a journey of 2-4 hours a day every day without fail?

Thrugelmir

Percy1983 wrote: »

So a couple of greedy landlords are squeezing tenants harder, hardly shocking with the average profile of a landlord.

On a commercial level rents need to be higher.

However that merely reflects the fact that property is overpriced.

As average incomes come under enormous cost pressures and low rises.

Can people afford the rent? Or will they seek a cheaper alternative.

So more property comes to market.

Property prices fall back so rents will become both affordable and commercially viable.

The coiled up spring of the great property boom has a fair way yet to unwind.