MSE News: House prices up at fastest rate in three years, Nationwide says

SG27

Doc_N wrote: »

That's all we need, isn't it? A government-created housing bubble which is going to help nobody but itself.

House prices rise (pushing yet more people out of the market), homeowners feel good about their wealth and imagine that the government's not quite as bad as they thought it was. So they conside Conservative again as a voting option.

Then the bubble bursts (but after the election in 2015).

House price rises help nobody but people selling up and pulling out of the market altogether, or trading down. Anybody trading up or staying the same gains nothing. All smoke and mirrors created by governments to get votes.

Yeah that's how I see it. But the side effect is higher rents as less can afford to buy and more people on housing benefits meaning higher social housing costs for the government.

Labour did it and now the Torys are doing the same. That's what happens when governments only care about the next 4 years and effectively are destroying the country long term.

Doc_N

SG27 wrote: »

That's what happens when governments only care about the next 4 years and effectively are destroying the country long term.

So very true - and probably the single greatest factor in the poor performance of the UK in both economic and social terms.

If Thtcher's government and its successors had invested our North Sea oil revenues in the way that Norway did, instead of squandering it on populist tax cuts in order to keep getting re-elected, imagine how different it would be to live in the UK now.

Always the same - s*d the country, let's get back into power.