The comments following an article in The Daily Mail celebrating house price increases are almost unanimously aghast. Paul, London on 13/1/2010 at 11:38 says it best:
"[a Conservative election victory in 2010, and the] associated changes to planning policy, could result in further upward price pressure in the medium term as the supply of new housing is further restricted"
This author of this article celebrates this as good news. It doesn't matter that successive generations of hard-working young families will never have the opportunity of owning their own home, just as long as the existing generation of home-owners can continue to cash-in. "Thank goodness" indeed.
Unbelievable...
Hanwell Systems
1 hour ago
7 comments:
It is a fact that many homeowners will have children too, so are probably very aware of their difficulties getting on the housing ladder.
Even Daily Male reading home owners :-)
So no change there then - no chance of anybody new owning a home.
We need to get rid of the dumb civil service development control culture and tax the unimproved value of land before we get any progress here.
PA, exactly. The fact that most people have children is the Achilles' Heel of Home-Owner-Ism, and the easiest point of attack.
JH, and once the Tories are in, it will get even harder, that is their raison d'etre.
JD, having campaigned for LVT (and liberalising planning laws, and, as of late, building more council houses) for a couple of years, I have realised I am banging my head against a brick wall.
My new strategy is to lay into Home-Owner-Ism (as distinct from homeownership!), in the vague hope that having won that argument, people ask me what the solution is.
A thought occurrs...
Will it help when all the baby boomers decide to sell up and downsize... Some will then use some of the equity to assist their children. Though this may be viwed as "unfair" by the state.
Also, provided inheritance tax hasn't been raised to 110% by then to foster help"equality", will the momey raised from the sale of properties allow the children of the owners to buy or upgrade.
Phil, no it won't help.
Wouldn't people rather be able to afford to buy somewhere nice in their 20s under their own steam, or be forced to wait until parents die or downsize to "help" them buy somewhere hugely overpriced?
And wouldn't parents, in turn, rather spend their money on themselves?
My argument was essentially that like much else the population bulge of the baby boomers like much else impacted on the housing market.
That coming at the same time as the resurgence of the meme of owning you own property, as opposed to say renting.
Once the hump is passed things may get moving again, provided some other form of population increase does not maintain the scarcity.
My Parents lived in private rented accomodation until they could afford to buy a home in their early 40s.
When they later downsized they didn't keep all the equity but shared it round.
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