France overtakes UK in homeownership

cells

The talk was that the French love to rent....maybe they are now saying the brits love to rent?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2893463/Home-ownership-Britain-set-fall-France-buy-let-surge-pushes-families-rented-properties.html

France has seen its home-ownership rate increase over the last 10 years while the UK has fallen both are now ~65% with the UK continuing to fall and France continuing to increase

France is by comparison in a building boom and the UK in a big shortage. France has 34.5 million homes now vs UK at ~28 million even though the population is about the same

The UK is heading to <60% owners within 10 years if the build rate isn't doubled

Conrad

Building more homes will only mean treading water if we carry on with a net 300,000 new migrants each year.


Also the more we build on farm land the more dependant we become on both food imports and chemical forming


Personally I think this is all madness, that without limits on numbers coming here we're on a pretty bleak path and no I don't go along with this idea we cant plan pensions and bum wiping for the elderly without ever rising population.

HappyMJ

cells wrote: »

The talk was that the French love to rent....maybe they are now saying the brits love to rent?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2893463/Home-ownership-Britain-set-fall-France-buy-let-surge-pushes-families-rented-properties.html

France has seen its home-ownership rate increase over the last 10 years while the UK has fallen both are now ~65% with the UK continuing to fall and France continuing to increase

France is by comparison in a building boom and the UK in a big shortage. France has 34.5 million homes now vs UK at ~28 million even though the population is about the same

The UK is heading to <60% owners within 10 years if the build rate isn't doubled

What does build rate have to do with home ownership?

Build another 100,000 houses per year and 65% will go to owner occupiers and 35% to investors. The percentages won't change.

cells

Conrad wrote: »

Building more homes will only mean treading water if we carry on with a net 300,000 new migrants each year.

this is clearly wrong as France is also a big net migration reverencing country yet it was able to up its ownership rate from under 60% to over 65% and the direction is still up

cells

HappyMJ wrote: »

What does build rate have to do with home ownership?

Build another 100,000 houses per year and 65% will go to owner occupiers and 35% to investors. The percentages won't change.

my view is that if new builds exceed population growth the amount of owners will increase and the amount of renters will decreases

In the UK this is what happened from ww2 to about 2004. The number of homes built exceeded the population growth divided by occupancy level and home-ownership increased

This changed around 2005 when the build rate was lower than the population growth divided by occupancy level and the result has been ten years of falling ownership

This idea also works for France, over the last 10 years they build more homes than population growth divided by occupancy level and they have seen ownership rise and renting fall

Generali

It shows that the idea that there is a Nirvana where renters have strong rights and so just rent is rubbish.

I rented in France for a while and all that happens under the French system is that the poor end up entering into illegal contracts and so get shafted by being outside the system. The middle class just buy, exactly as they try to in the UK.

cells

The UK has ~64.7 million people vs ~64.2 million for mainland France

The UK has ~28 million homes while mainland France ~33.5 million homes

So the UK has half a million more people and 5.5 million fewer homes than mainland France....

SailorSam

You can get a lot more house for your money in France than you can here.

martinsurrey

Conrad wrote: »

Building more homes will only mean treading water if we carry on with a net 300,000 new migrants each year.


Also the more we build on farm land the more dependant we become on both food imports and chemical forming


Personally I think this is all madness, that without limits on numbers coming here we're on a pretty bleak path and no I don't go along with this idea we cant plan pensions and bum wiping for the elderly without ever rising population.

You do know that under 10% of the UK is built upon so 10% urban (urban includes rural development and roads) of which 50% is green space anyway and a further 18% is gardens, meaning less that 3% of the UK is actually hard standing?

If we replicated this again and rebuilt every building in the UK again, that would be up to 6%, farmland is over 75%, and this includes all of the under utilized land used for horses, and long term grass land.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18623096

I know people like to think the uk is a concrete jungle, but really its not...

antrobus

cells wrote: »

The talk was that the French love to rent....

Only by the ignorant. France is not Germany, and never has been.

cells wrote: »

The UK has ~64.7 million people vs ~64.2 million for mainland France

The UK has ~28 million homes while mainland France ~33.5 million homes

So the UK has half a million more people and 5.5 million fewer homes than mainland France....

I think you mean metropolitan France, as in France excluding its overseas possessions. 'Mainland' doesn't make any sense; we don't exclude the people living in Anglesey and the Isle of Wight from UK population stats.:)

Of course, France is indeed very keen on spending government money on building lots of homes. On the other hand, it hasn't quite had the effect you imagine.

French housing is now some of the most expensive in Europe, just behind the UK. In 2015, a 70m2 flat would cost you around 7.9 times the average wage. In the UK, it's 8.5.

And,

In other words, simply building more homes is an overly simplistic response to a complicated problem. For one thing, the state hasn't been building in the right places.

In France, housing policies are creating vast numbers of empty cities
http://www.citymetric.com/politics/france-housing-policies-are-creating-vast-numbers-empty-cities-799

ukcarper

martinsurrey wrote: »

You do know that under 10% of the UK is built upon so 10% urban (urban includes rural development and roads) of which 50% is green space anyway and a further 18% is gardens, meaning less that 3% of the UK is actually hard standing?

If we replicated this again and rebuilt every building in the UK again, that would be up to 6%, farmland is over 75%, and this includes all of the under utilized land used for horses, and long term grass land.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18623096

I know people like to think the uk is a concrete jungle, but really its not...

The only problem with those figures it's the whole of UK London and surrounding areas the figure is much higher.