Brown will build out the bubble

[wendigo100]

at best they will rent and in this case they will rent a room

And tell me where this room will be? In a tree?

It all puts pressure on the bottome of the market, squeezing everyone else upwards.

[Rantor]

No-one has ever answered the question ..., if we have a housing shortage why are rents not going up?

Demand is high because a lot of people want to buy property. Many of these are aspiring BTLers.

Once they have entered the competitive and costly property market they switch to selling a product in a vastly over-supplied market i.e. the rental market.

As long as the mugs keep piling in to BTL at any cost, rents will be supressed as supply continues to outstrip demand.

It won't be a prob as everyone with a BTL can sell it in a couple of years and retire a zillionaire.

[sasguru]

And tell me where this room will be? In a tree?

It all puts pressure on the bottome of the market, squeezing everyone else upwards.

Agree with atw. I've been a BTL landlord at the "good 1-bed in good area" end of the London market and I doubt that my renters were squeezed out of the market by Poles. These are totally 2 different markets. The sort who rented my flat - a doctor and wife, a City manager, would not be in the "multi-occupation room renter" end of the market.
Also who do the "room-renters" who you claim are forced out suddenly find the money to buy a 1-bed flat? Perhaps your argument works for houses - how do you explain the rise in small flats?

[AtW]

And tell me where this room will be? In a tree?

Last time I looked at BTL market loans, it seemed like 500k of them were issued by banks, so assuming one morgage is one 3 bedroom house, then this alone is enough to house 3x500k immigrant type of people - that's 1.5 mln, way more than 100k Poles you mentioned, and guess what - most of them earn jack sh1t because life is so expensive in this country: the people responsible for stupid house price inflation are locals who can get 6 times their salary in equally stupid banks.

[Euro-commuter]

Gordon just gets better and better

at last some common sense

the country needs hundreds of thousands of new homes

selling the council house stock in the thatcher years boosted the economy but didn't help anybody wanting a house as we see now


I have to say, Gordon's economic miracle, the man just delivers more and more common sense

good on him and long may it last, think of all the jobs the house building will create

Milan.

Absolutely! So some property speculators will get their fingers burned? Good! Bring it on, is all I can say.

I also suspect that Brown will fix IR35 once and for all, by introducing NICs on dividends. That'll put an end to that racket.

[Euro-commuter]

Demand is high because a lot of people want to buy property. Many of these are aspiring BTLers.

Absolutely right. Whether as BTLers, or as house-owners, they don't want somewhere to live, they want to own property so that it will go up in price and they will get rich for doing nothing. Ask yourself how congenial you think that principle is to the new PM.

[Rantor]

Absolutely right. Whether as BTLers, or as house-owners, they don't want somewhere to live, they want to own property so that it will go up in price and they will get rich for doing nothing. Ask yourself how congenial you think that principle is to the new PM.

Well I assume he would not consider it to be 'just' or 'fair' but in practical terms he is stuffed already.

On one hand, he has ridden the boom fuelled by increased consumer confidence, equity release, cheap credit etc. If he deliberately puts the brakes on by popping the housing bubble then his tenure in No 10 is likely to be short.

On the other hand he knows full well it is unsustainable and is unlikely to end any differently from other speculative bubbles.

Shame really

[wendigo100]

Last time I looked at BTL market loans, ... blah blah blah.

Look, I'm not interested in the whys and wherefores of the BTL market. They are beside the point. Let's look at facts.

Net migration into the UK (not just Poles) has averaged 166,000 a year over the last 7 years (ONS: International Migration Series MN no. 31 and News Release 2 November 2006). That number is rising rapidly following the admission of the new EU members from the east. And this is just the migrants that we know about.

One simple question Alexei, or sas: where are these new people living?

Unless they all sleeping rough, they must be in some sort of bricks and mortar somewhere.

[AtW]

Ok, what's the net emigration then, how many people who lived here left this country in the last 7 years?

Immigrants are living in BTL places of which there are plenty, they would live one per room if they are lucky or share same room: 2, sometimes 3 people, often they would go for 4-5 bedroom houses because they provided cheapest per person cost - this means that of 160k people who come to live in this country every year, about 150k are dirty poor and would share around 40k houses, and 10k are probably wealthy enough to buy house, this makes demand of 50k houses per year: check out BTL morgages and you will find well over 150k were issued in a year, I think it was like 300k last year.

[wendigo100]

Ok, what's the net emigration then, how many people who lived here left this country in the last 7 years?

Alexei, that IS the net immigration figure. Total IN minus total OUT. It says so.