One of the main stories on the BBC website this morning was the news that house prices have seen their biggest annual fall in ten years. This should mean housing becomes much more affordable for young people, right? Right?! I’ve written for the Evening Standard why this is not the case. Feel free to click the link below to give it a read.
I alluded it to in the article but didn’t have room to go into detail about what the BBC covering this, as opposed to high rent prices, reveals about the priorities of the media and politicians.
Politicians and policy makers like house prices being high because homeowners tend to be older, wealthier, and they vote. These people like reading about how the value of their house/(s) are doing and so the BBC obviously reports on it. Renters on the otehr hand get a very rough deal. There will be almost no help for them and most the proposed solutions are focussed on getting them onto the housing ladder but often end up exacerbating the housing crisis (I’m looking at you, Help to Buy).
There is nothing wrong about trying to help people to buy a home and it’s obviously a good thing. However, it ignores the fact that the rental market is very different from the market for buying and selling houses.
We also need to radically rethink the way we treat housing. It should not be seen as an asset to help people get rich. Landlords really should be encouraged to do something far more productive with their time and skills and house prices should be much lower and far more stable.
Thanks as ever for reading and subscribing. I should have a new blog post out on Friday with new material, not just a ‘read this thing I wrote somewhere else’.