Landlords to blame for Britain's rising house prices

CLAPTON

jjlandlord wrote: »

A lot of positive metrics haven't improved in a few years because of a certain crash an recession that is regularly mentioned in the news.

Leaving that aside, one can see that GDP per capita and salaries grew in real terms since 2002 when Eastern European countries joined the EU.
(Thus, if you complain about the NHS the real question should be: Where's the money gone?)

I think that, if only to protect quality of life, no one would claim that the UK population should continue to increase forever.
The issue is that a stable population would bring many fundamental changes that many do not seem to think about.

It would worsen the situation of the NHS, unless we find ways to seriously boost productivity it would dampen economic growth, it would negatively impact the housing market (what happens when many people are in negative equity?), etc.

Our whole system is based on the assumption that tomorrow there will be more people than today. Changing that would be fundamental, and I don't think that it's been thought through.

Amongst all of its problems, Japan has a demography in tatters and that does not help them.

gdp per capita has been increasing since about 1945

many would argue that the 2002-2007 per capita growth was fuelled by large increase in government borrowing, huge growth of cheap imports from China and low world prices for our essential imports.

You seem to accept that population growth can't continue but you are happy to leave the 'problem' to your children and grandchildren, by which time the problems will be hugely worse.

However will reducing the growth in population cause the housing market to decline? Why would people be in negative equity?
If the population stablised tomorrow (impossible because of the birth rate) there is still a shortage of houses

Why do you say the whole system is based on population growth?
You mean our plans for importing more and more food and more and more fuel and electrical goods would be disrupted in some way?
We already large and growing balance of trade deficit and a growing level of foreign debts to fund it.

Productively improvement have indeed been very low in the Uk but this is because we have a large inflow of cheap labour making investment in higher productivity uneconomic.
Once the labour market tightens and wages start to rise significantly then there will be real incentives for business to invest in increasing productivity.

jjlandlord

CLAPTON wrote: »

gdp per capita has been increasing since about 1945

many would argue that the 2002-2007 per capita growth was fuelled by large increase in government borrowing, huge growth of cheap imports from China and low world prices for our essential imports.

Ah so your previous reference to immigration's impact on GDP growth per capita was just nonsense... I thought so too

CLAPTON wrote: »

You seem to accept that population growth can't continue but you are happy to leave the 'problem' to your children and grandchildren,

When have I suggested that?

CLAPTON wrote: »

If the population stablised tomorrow (impossible because of the birth rate) there is still a shortage of houses

Except that this ignores the houses being built right now and that it will level off.
If the population is constant, at one point, soon enough, there is almost no need to build any new houses.

As for the birth rate, from the ONS "In 2013, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) decreased to 1.85 children per woman, from 1.94 in 2012."

If the rate is still in close to that today, without immigration population would actually start to decrease soon.

CLAPTON wrote: »

Why do you say the whole system is based on population growth?

Because that's the case.

CLAPTON

jjlandlord wrote: »

Ah so your previous reference to immigration's impact on GDP growth per capita was just nonsense... I thought so too

which comment was that?

jjlandlord wrote:

When have I suggested that?

jjlandlord wrote:

I think that, if only to protect quality of life, no one would claim that the UK population should continue to increase forever.

jjlandlord wrote:

Except that this ignores the houses being built right now and that it will level off.
If the population is constant, at one point, soon enough, there is almost no need to build any new houses.

You seem to think the current housing situation is satisfactory; in London and the SE that is clearly wrong and even with zero growth in population, new housing would continue to be needed to meet peoples wants for reasonable housing standards.

jjlandlord wrote:

As for the birth rate, from the ONS "In 2013, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) decreased to 1.85 children per woman, from 1.94 in 2012."

If the rate is still in close to that today, without immigration population would actually start to decrease soon.

At the moment the population will continue to grow due to the increase in longevity.
Many also view the lower level in fertility as partly caused by the difficulty of obtaining decent housing suitable for a family

jjlandlord wrote:

Because that's the case.

the vast majority of our economic activity is simply occupied in addressing the needs of the existing population: a no population growth scenerio would mean most existing businesses could continue as now.

Stability or decline in the population would be welcomed as the working age population would also decline.

I would view a reduced need to import essential food and fuel as being exceptionally welcome rather than view this with regret.

I would also view the reduced pressure on roads, rails, NHS services as being welcome too.

I also welcome the reduced pressure on our open spaces and national parks, recreation areas.

michaels

CLAPTON wrote: »

many would argue that the 2002-2007 per capita growth was fuelled by large increase in government borrowing, huge growth of cheap imports from China and low world prices for our essential imports.

You seem to accept that population growth can't continue but you are happy to leave the 'problem' to your children and grandchildren, by which time the problems will be hugely worse.

However will reducing the growth in population cause the housing market to decline? Why would people be in negative equity?
If the population stablised tomorrow (impossible because of the birth rate) there is still a shortage of houses

Why do you say the whole system is based on population growth?
You mean our plans for importing more and more food and more and more fuel and electrical goods would be disrupted in some way?
We already large and growing balance of trade deficit and a growing level of foreign debts to fund it.

Productively improvement have indeed been very low in the Uk but this is because we have a large inflow of cheap labour making investment in higher productivity uneconomic.
Once the labour market tightens and wages start to rise significantly then there will be real incentives for business to invest in increasing productivity.

So I would argue that the increase in output/productivity in the decade to 2007 was actually as the result of financial innovation developing an alchemy which allowed profits that previously accrued over the life of a financial product (loan, mortgage etc) all being taken immediately via securitisation thus 'bringing forward' GDP.

Post 2007 it turns out this was indeed fools gold, unsustainable and in many cases profits had been assumed that in reality never materialised. It was then found that the hugely productive financial sector was nothing of the sort and as the real output of this sector (and related hangers on in hedge funds, accountancy, legal services, consultancy) fell sharply with jobs replaced by much lower paying positions in the service sector with the inevitable impact on productivity.

jjlandlord

CLAPTON wrote: »

You seem to think the current housing situation is satisfactory;

Again, where did I suggest that?

You cannot look at the housing situation in isolation. A 'solution' solving the housing problem while creating many more other problems, arguably more serious ones, is not a real solution...

CLAPTON wrote: »

Stability or decline in the population would be welcomed as the working age population would also decline.

The economy would certainly not welcome a declining working age population.
I alluded to that with respect to Japan.

That's especially true if we have large debts.

PasturesNew

An economy needs full-time jobs, not more people.
If there were 1,000,000 new kids and only 1 new job it'd collapse.
If there were 1,000,000 new jobs and only 1 new kid then there'd be enough people on the dole and in part-time jobs to fill those.

CLAPTON

jjlandlord wrote: »

Again, where did I suggest that?

You cannot look at the housing situation in isolation. A 'solution' solving the housing problem while creating many more other problems, arguably more serious ones, is not a real solution...



The economy would certainly not welcome a declining working age population.
I alluded to that with respect to Japan.

That's especially true if we have large debts.

you said that a stable population would

it would negatively impact the housing market (what happens when many people are in negative equity?), etc.

whatever did you mean by that then ?


Why would an economy not welcome a declining population?

do you dislike the idea of fewer essential food imports
do you dislike the idea of smaller oil and gas imports

why would that be?

It seems very strange that we have large debts in spite of the massive boast the immigration has given the economy.
Maybe fewer people would have given us smaller debts.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

CLAPTON wrote: »

Why would an economy not welcome a declining population?.

In the case of the UK, because a declining population of working age people then has to support an increasing population of retirement age people and a very significant national debt.

"Many hands make light work"

CLAPTON

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

In the case of the UK, because a declining population of working age people then has to support an increasing population of retirement age people and a very significant national debt.

"Many hands make light work"

they might welcome the increased productivity due to the reduced travel time of our road system and lesser over crowding on our trains.

they might welcome the reduction is the worsening balance of trade

they might welcome the lower increase in foreign debt due to lesser imports of essential foods and fuel

they might welcome the better housing prospects due to the lower population

they might welcome the lower than otherwise of house prices

they might welcome the investment in productivity resulting from the reduction of cheap labour
(I know you subscribe to the productivity lump of labour theory but it really isn't applicable to an economy like ours)

any increasing number of hands make for increasing competition for scarce resources


in a country of infinite resources then a pyramid of increasing population might make sense : but in a resource constrained one with increasing need to import food and fuel, it might give temporary relief for a greedy generation that is content to burden the next will a worsening situation.

TickersPlaysPop

tkane wrote: »

Please don't ever believe the British government or its scapegoat, the ONS, did not know the level of immigration coming into the UK

They knew exactly what would happen as the UK has always been destination No.1 for immigrants.

Housing building targets will never ever be met, regardless of accurate population projections or not.

This is because restricted planning and housebuilding is a deliberate government policy.

You can vent your anger at immigrants if you like, but you really ought to go after the politicians who deliberately put in place these states of affairs.

Bringing this discussion back to drilling down to how, why, and who inflated the housing market....

It seems there is common belief that it was due to government policy .... who are the people whom should be keeping track of numbers in and out of the UK, and whom should set policies accordingly in place to keep the country working.... for the majority of people.

Makes me wonder if the immigration dept chaos and disorganisaition is a convenient mess or a planned scapegoat.

Also, did we need housing market inflation to make the vital statistics of the UK's performance look good? Similarly... as things are now... the housing inflation helps the UK have a better growth figure?