Is immigration increasing house prices in London and the south east

Mistermeaner

Well is it?

chucknorris

Mistermeaner wrote: »

Well is it?

Certainly, but to what extent is the real question.

kinger101

A large part of the migration in to London and the South East is from the rest of the UK. Most the people I knew in London when I lived there were non-native. It's a great city to live in, so is enticing to graduates. Career progression is usually better too.

You also don't need to live in London to own a property there. There are plenty of mothballed investment properties in the capital.

But yes, all migration into London will drive up property prices.

chucknorris

kinger101 wrote: »

Career progression is usually better too.

That and also cheap property prices brought me down to London in 1990.

Mistermeaner

New poll added couldn't edit this one

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

The housing shortage is the cause of high prices.

Immigration certainly adds to demand but is far from the only or even main factor.

But it's a bit of a pointless question - we need immigration to ensure the long term prosperity of the nation - however we can solve the housing shortage at any point by simply building more houses.

cells

The question is loaded because it all depends on time frame and its kinda silly looking at gross migration and not net

So if we look at migration as a whole over the last few hundred years its almost certainly had a dampening on London prices. Afterall some 8% of Americans about 25 million of them trace their roots back to England and likewise some 7 million Australians. Had they not migrated away then England would be about 32 million more people and those are not the only countries the english have left and gone and made home.

There could well be more England descendants (lets limit it to 500 years) living outside of England than live in England.

michaels

Poll - without 3m foreign born in London would we have seen the population decline of the 70s and 80s become terminal wih crumbling infratructure, intractable social problems and all those who could get out doing so - sort of Detroit writ large?

Mistermeaner

Cells youre a clever chap. Could you plot immigration against hpi by region for the past 25 years?

cells

Mistermeaner wrote: »

Cells youre a clever chap. Could you plot immigration against hpi by region for the past 25 years?

Im sorry I dont have the time just now. But I know London has outperformed the rest of the UK a lot over the last 20 years. Going from 20% of UK GDP to 30%. I think that explains a lot of the HPI in London not immigration or even population or house building.

If I were to guess why London has gone up in price so much over the last 20 years it would be in this order.

1: GDP growth by a long shot
2: Low House building (more important than population growth as we need house building even when population is flat)
3: High population growth



PS: IT would be difficult to plot such a graph as populations flow and there would need to be some cut off point when an immigrant is no longer an immigrant for certain stats. Also what of their descendants and what about emigration out and migration within england. Overall I think its possible there may be more English descendants living in the rest of the world than live in England

cells

michaels wrote: »

Poll - without 3m foreign born in London would we have seen the population decline of the 70s and 80s become terminal wih crumbling infratructure, intractable social problems and all those who could get out doing so - sort of Detroit writ large?

Thats a very good point I know hackney council were for all intents and purposes literally hoovering up immigrates. Their council stock was quite poor and a lot of it was empty and was being vandalized and making life hell for everyone. So they tried to put people in and the only people who would accept the crap they had to offer were the immigrants who came from even worse housing.

Some very interesting videos from the 1970s/80s/90s on you tube about hackney social housing