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
