How to bring down London house prices (LSE Blog)

CLAPTON

Zero_Sum wrote: »

No it doesn't. All EZ do is move jobs from a few miles outside the EZ to inside the EZ as they get tax benefits.

I live in the NE, unemployment is still rising, people are moving away to get jobs.

Look at house prices
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26844488

18% in London, 1% in Sunderland

Says it all. Governments have for years been far too Londoncentric.

so maybe we should restrict EZ benefits only to firms that move from London & the SE?

[Deleted User]

How to get house prices down in London?

Relocate Trident to the Thames, build a few nuclear power stations within 10 minutes of Whitehall, and a sewage treatment plant in each council area.

That'd do it...

Or, seriously, there is really only one way although it has 2 aspects -

as summarised above, make London a less attractive place to live and work, (maybe put IDS in charge, he seems to be a natural at making folk unhappy:p) and/or

make other areas of the country better places to live and work.

In the absence of shifting the demand for property there, you can fiddle around with a fraction on interest rates, council tax bands and so on till the cows come home and it won't make a bit of difference.

Keeping on feeding the beat of the great megacity will only make life even less tolerable for the people who live there - roads, airports, noise, congestion, pollution, water supply etc. Fine if you are wealthy, but I'd have thought pretty grim if you are on the minimum wage. With modern tech, there is no need for business leaders etc to all be within 10 mins of each other - and (shock horror) some other parts of the country are actually quite nice, you know. The last job I had before I retired, I had a journey to work time - finish cup of coffee in our kitchen to office desk - of less than 20 mins, by public transport costing less than 15 quid a week. Commute for over an hour? Over two hours? Not for me, and I always had a seat. Life is hard enough without that (IMO).

(And before anyone asks - yes, I have been to London, including twice in the last 8 months and I would not live there! The folk were friendly enough, but the place is not for me. I'm quite happy to leave the city living conditions shown in the Judge Dredd films as fiction, and don't really regard the rest of the country as "the cursed earth" - or whatever it was called - close enough though!)

Right - off out into the garden. Have a nice day all!:)

WR

PasturesNew

Personally, I'd move the Govt out of London. It's an area prone to future flooding, so I'd move them out now and the rest will follow.

I'd find another town, picking at random let's say Bristol/M4, that has lots of land around for building ... and already a direct road to London. I'd then build a big airport there (Bristol Airport is tiny/in a field) and connect up an underground system to include the airport.

That'd do it.

With good transport, an underground and an airport ..... you've got a whole new area that's workable.

CLAPTON

Wild_Rover wrote: »

How to get house prices down in London?

Relocate Trident to the Thames, build a few nuclear power stations within 10 minutes of Whitehall, and a sewage treatment plant in each council area.

That'd do it...

Or, seriously, there is really only one way although it has 2 aspects -

as summarised above, make London a less attractive place to live and work, (maybe put IDS in charge, he seems to be a natural at making folk unhappy:p) and/or

make other areas of the country better places to live and work.

In the absence of shifting the demand for property there, you can fiddle around with a fraction on interest rates, council tax bands and so on till the cows come home and it won't make a bit of difference.

Keeping on feeding the beat of the great megacity will only make life even less tolerable for the people who live there - roads, airports, noise, congestion, pollution, water supply etc. Fine if you are wealthy, but I'd have thought pretty grim if you are on the minimum wage. With modern tech, there is no need for business leaders etc to all be within 10 mins of each other - and (shock horror) some other parts of the country are actually quite nice, you know. The last job I had before I retired, I had a journey to work time - finish cup of coffee in our kitchen to office desk - of less than 20 mins, by public transport costing less than 15 quid a week. Commute for over an hour? Over two hours? Not for me, and I always had a seat. Life is hard enough without that (IMO).

(And before anyone asks - yes, I have been to London, including twice in the last 8 months and I would not live there! The folk were friendly enough, but the place is not for me. I'm quite happy to leave the city living conditions shown in the Judge Dredd films as fiction, and don't really regard the rest of the country as "the cursed earth" - or whatever it was called - close enough though!)

Right - off out into the garden. Have a nice day all!:)

WR

most people living in London weren't born there, so have direct experience of life outside the capital

London is improving all the time : the wonderful south bank, the Lee Valley recreation area, massive improvements in transport etc.

When you're next in London try actually talking to people ( they don't bite and they may have been born in a road never you)

Conrad

Keep importing bodies and demand will only increase, no amount of building will ease things as new infrastructure resources such as shiny new homes simply act as a migration pull.

Bantex_2

Quickest way to get london prices down would be to set up at least 10 or 20 "travellers" camps in each borough so that nobody is more than 1/2 mile away from one.

Would be cheap to do.
The EU and diversity types would love it.
House prices would tumble.
Visitors would come from all over Europe to camp in these sites.

Solved.

Joe_Bloggs

@Zero Sum

Northern Rail gets a subsidy of 40.7p per passenger mile.
Source:-
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rail-subsidy-per-passenger-mile

Where do your subsidy figures come from ?
I will grant you that Crossrail is the largest engineering undertaking in Europe but nobody can use it for at least four years.

Anyone from anywhere outside of the EU can come to the UK if they have enough capital to do so. This attracts the wealthy. There tends to be less state tyranny/corruption here when compared to other countries.

The net effect is high demand for London property from overseas business people and family who want to hold onto/build upon what they have made elsewhere.
J_B.

antrobus

Bantex wrote: »

Quickest way to get london prices down would be to set up at least 10 or 20 "travellers" camps in each borough so that nobody is more than 1/2 mile away from one.

Would be cheap to do.
The EU and diversity types would love it.
House prices would tumble.
Visitors would come from all over Europe to camp in these sites.

Solved.

Or put the Green Party into power. That would certainly do it.

[Deleted User]

CLAPTON wrote: »

most people living in London weren't born there, so have direct experience of life outside the capital

London is improving all the time : the wonderful south bank, the Lee Valley recreation area, massive improvements in transport etc.

When you're next in London try actually talking to people ( they don't bite and they may have been born in a road never you)

With the very greatest of respect, Clapton, if you take another look you'll find that I did say " The folk were friendly enough...."..... I didn't absorb that information through my skin - I talked to them!:p

What I did notice was the generally "down" atmosphere on the public transport. I suspect if you have cash, and these days it's megacash you will be able to find somewhere nice. My main point is that there is absolutely no point in tweaking "the system" to try to make housing more affordable.... in the absence of building hundreds of thousands of houses - in folks' "back yards", housing will stay scarce compared to demand. You can lower demend by hiking prices, building third sector houses for cheap rent, or encouraging folk out of the area - or not to go into the area in the first place - prices will keep rising and the middle earners (never mind the poor!) will be stuck.

The government has a responsibility to the whole population, not just the London economy. How about much better tax breaks for business start ups elsewhere - lower or no Corp Tax for companies outside a radius of x miles from London? If businesses are prepared to move their operations from the USA to the UK or Ireland for tax advantage, it should not be beyond the wit of man to come up with an incentive package that UK companies would find irresistable to encouage them to move away from an already overheated area.. Unless we spread economic activity away from the London area into other parts of the counrty, the housing situation WILL only get worse.

WR

CLAPTON

Wild_Rover wrote: »

With the very greatest of respect, Clapton, if you take another look you'll find that I did say " The folk were friendly enough...."..... I didn't absorb that information through my skin - I talked to them!:p

What I did notice was the generally "down" atmosphere on the public transport. I suspect if you have cash, and these days it's megacash you will be able to find somewhere nice. My main point is that there is absolutely no point in tweaking "the system" to try to make housing more affordable.... in the absence of building hundreds of thousands of houses - in folks' "back yards", housing will stay scarce compared to demand. You can lower demend by hiking prices, building third sector houses for cheap rent, or encouraging folk out of the area - or not to go into the area in the first place - prices will keep rising and the middle earners (never mind the poor!) will be stuck.

The government has a responsibility to the whole population, not just the London economy. How about much better tax breaks for business start ups elsewhere - lower or no Corp Tax for companies outside a radius of x miles from London? If businesses are prepared to move their operations from the USA to the UK or Ireland for tax advantage, it should not be beyond the wit of man to come up with an incentive package that UK companies would find irresistable to encouage them to move away from an already overheated area.. Unless we spread economic activity away from the London area into other parts of the counrty, the housing situation WILL only get worse.

WR

You have clearly missed the fact that millions of people love living in London.

And yes, I see no reason not to build 100,000s of properties in London:
amasingly other countries manage to build enough properties to house their people.

However, I do support the principle of redirecting businesses from London in practical means can be found.

There are already many example of tax breaks available in many parts of the country.

and yes I think the government / parliament should move north of Watford.