The era in which all Britons aspire to own their own home may be coming to an end, according to the Housing minister, John Healey. In a controversial speech, he suggested that Britain may be moving towards a European model, with renting on a roughly equal footing with buying. He said home ownership had fallen from 71 per cent of households in 2003 to 68 per cent today, noting that this trend began in 2005, well before the recession. "I'm not sure that's such a bad thing," he said.
(I repeat my view: Britain is part of Europe, even if usually in denial.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
...it was Quentin Davies, the defence minister, who was facing the most searching questions following the disclosure that he put in an invoice for £20,700 for repairs to his constituency home in Lincolnshire. The work was evenly divided between shoring up its decorative belltower and replacing gutters on the main roof of the house. Mr Davies, who defected to Labour from the Tories in 2007, sent the bill to the Commons fees office in a bundle of receipts in February....Other senior Tories also faced embarrassment over the latest expenses revelations. Andrew Lansley, the shadow Health Secretary, submitted a £3,500 claim for the cost of insuring a medal and a painting. James Arbuthnot, the Tory chairman of Commons Defence Committee, submitted perhaps the most bizarre claim - for the cost of three garlic peelers, bought for £43 from the QVC Shopping channel.
The work was evenly divided between shoring up its decorative belltower and replacing gutters on the main roof of the house. Mr Davies, who defected to Labour from the Tories in 2007, sent the bill to the Commons fees office in a bundle of receipts in February.
...Other senior Tories also faced embarrassment over the latest expenses revelations. Andrew Lansley, the shadow Health Secretary, submitted a £3,500 claim for the cost of insuring a medal and a painting. James Arbuthnot, the Tory chairman of Commons Defence Committee, submitted perhaps the most bizarre claim - for the cost of three garlic peelers, bought for £43 from the QVC Shopping channel.
I admit there are issues that most of the demand is in areas where there is genuinely a shortage of land, but the actual shortage is nothing like as bad as it appears to be.
also the refusal of government to build council housing to reduce the demand on housing over the last 30 years is cowardly and short sighted. Given the constraints, rented housing doesn't work in the UK because it's more expensive than purchased property. keep to the Fen Causeway
For the 4 years I lived in London I could not have afforded the monthly payments on a mortgage on the properties I could afford to rent. Of course that was at the peak of the housing bubble, but still the conventional wisdom was that owning was cheaper... En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
In practice, the main advantage of buying used to be that it represented a form of forced saving, allowing you to build up your patrimony. But with interest-only, 2/28, resettable and other fancy loans where you paid almost exclusively interest, the borrowers did not accumulate any equity unless there was a price increase... but they were on the hook for asset value losses. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
However, what you're demonstrating is that the artificail shortage of property in london was forcing rental into ridiculous areas as well. There are believed to be over a million empty properties within the M25. If they came on the market they'd trash current property and rental prices. keep to the Fen Causeway
