Economy & Banks

Oh no, my mistake, it was "opium".

living in the past like dicki

You said "very rich foreigners". Very rich people are hardly buying up properties that normal folk live in.

Depends of they are buying lots of entry level flats as an investment

You mean like half the blocks at the Olympic Village?

(1) Yes they do, as rental investments or for speculative purposes.

(2) Even where they buy expensive properties this forces the Brit to buy a slightly less nice property, which forces the next person down the chain to buy a slightly less nice property, until finally at the margins at the bottom of the chain someone can't buy at all because there is now one more buyer (the rich foreigner) than there were houses.

Go any figures for all these foreign-owned rental properties?

How is £200k plus for a 1 bed entry level?

It's where I 'entered'.

"Unlike the laws in Europe, where real estate acquisition gives citizenship rights to non-resident in the UK things are different. Buying in a country mansion apartments and does not give the right to citizenship, to attend his English home, you can of the regular visitor's visa."
http://propertiesengland.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/mortgages-in-uk-for-foreigners.html

I could've saved many more thousands of pounds if I'd decided to live in Spain instead. Your laws aren't that bad and the original premise is still wrong.

It's entry level for London

The average cost of a property in London has rocketed to a record of £500,000.
http://www.itv.com/news/london/2013-05-20/london-property-prices-see-how-your-borough-fares/

I brought money into this country and bought the property I currently live in, paying various taxes as well as the wages of food sellers, IFAs, solicitors, house inspectors, electricians and others along the way.

Fixed.

I'm single-handedly dragging Britain out of the fire and into the frying pan..

living in the past like dicki

fred dibnah had it right

It is not a level that most ordinary people can prudently enter the market at.

"Entry-level" is what it is - it doesn't have a set of your parameters around it.

My premise is that lack of affordable housing is a massive issue for many people born and brought up in this country; that you can't increase housing supply indefinitely or overnight; that our politicians duty is to the population more than it is to people from overseas.

I fail to see what is wrong with that premise.

I accept that international trade is vital to the national wealth - I am not sure I have ever seen the evidence to suggest that it is impossible to trade with other countries without flogging off your housing.

The original premise being "premise: any inflow of money from abroad to buy up property is purely speculative: to extract rent", not your comment afterwards.
This is wrong. I know it's wrong because I'm living proof it's wrong.

Your point about lack of affordable housing is valid but I don't see you guys complaining about all the British born and bred people with investment properties here. It's all 'blame the foreigners'. As above - show me some figures about British vs. foreign owned rental properties and I'll change my opinion. I've only ever had British landlords though.

Last I heard 5-6 million UK citizens, myself included, live abroad. How does that fit into the equation?

good riddance to 'em

...was merely suggesting it's a two-way street.

There's more Brits in Australia than Australians over here so obviously, until you lot fuck off, I'm staying :)

There's more Brits in Australia than Australians
Per unit, but not net weight.

Depends whether you care about ordinary people or do not give a flying fuck so long as you are all right. I like to think that I am in the latter camp.

Are you joking? London's entry level price is not about your or my personal opinion. It's a number based on a fact. The fact being the cheapest price of property in London.

Per unit, but not net awesome.

ftfy

Myth number 1 - The UK is short housing.
There isn't a shortage of housing in the UK. There's a shortage of housing where people want to live. For £200k I could buy a five-bed house in Inverness. It wouldn't make for a particularly practical commute.

Myth number 2 - all the evil Russian/Arab forrins are driving up house prices.
Maybe if you're in the market for penthouse flats in Mayfair. Most of the people buy-to-let people I've come across have been people who bought their own place before the last housing bubble burst, have remortgaged against a higher valuation after prices rose, and bought another property. Some have done that a few of times and have a small portfolio of properties. It makes sense to do that because interest rates are so low that a) there's not much else to do with the cash, and b), mortgages are cheap as chips again. And because there's so much demand in London - particularly in the popular bits - you can easily pull in enough from the rental to pay the mortgage and take an income.

I hasten to add that think it's unfair that they do that. But they aren't foreigners. Well, apart from my Aussie downstairs neighbour. I don't think he epitomises hot money in the macroeconomic sense, though.

I will caveat that by saying I have no idea who is paying £300k off-plan for a small studio flat in the appallingly named Avant Garde Tower in Shoreditch. I have met nobody who is even remotely interested. That could well be the foreign investors. I think they will get burnt, if so. The stuff looks overhyped and overpriced.

Jeez, people buy property as an investment for the rental yield, generally, not to sit on a vacant property.

Land banks are rare, and are far more about fleecing the investors dumb enough to put money into them than they they are about speculating on land prices.

Jeez - hence social housing, shared ownership and other schemes designed to make property more accessible to people on lower incomes. You can't just decree that prices will be lower,so those are the tools we've been using to date. Should we use them more, and better? Sure.