Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/07/20/giant-popping-sound.html
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Anyone miss the good ol’ days of London where disease killed off people faster than they could make new ones, and the only way there was any growth was through people moving there? I bet finding housing was just a short waiting game.
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Hey man, don’t knock finance. White-collar crime is the only industry that the wealthy westerners still dominate, and we’re hanging on for dear life. If it helps, think of it how aristocracies shore up the value of their cultural capital but making more and more complex imaginary rules of “etiquette” and “taste” to separate themselves from the lower and middle classes, ensuring that the bubble of their incestuous wealth, business, favors, political force and marriages stays in the family. Likewise, we’ve create a bizarre market of imaginary money, all sustained and kept insulated by hidden, secret math, accumulated capital, purchased political power and smoky, incestuous backrooms. Don’t take it from us, what will we do otherwise, WORK?
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Brexit and crash is an interesting tactic of disruption.
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Yes it is. Considering who owns most of the real estate in London, I have little sympathy.
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IMHO that “The City” is finally waking up to the fact that Brexit means that many of them will have to leave London. Without a “legal” market for super expensive residential property, will the prices stay high? If your money launderer is living in Paris or Berlin, will Oligarchs continue to want a place in London? And everybody knows that if a bubble is going to burst, it is best to be the first one out. So everybody is standing around the punch bowl, ready to run for the exit, and eyeing the fire licking at the curtains while saying “It’s nothing, how about another round of champagne?” And they’re all under the illusion that THEY will be the ones smart enough to get out just before the panic hits.
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You mean Qatar?
I thought that lots of real estate was owned by Russian oligarchs.
I’m more likely to believe that they would tank their own property to crash the British ecomony.
Don’t cut off your nose so quickly.
As long as hundreds of thousands more people are born in and immigrate to London every year, than there are new houses built, the price of housing will keep going up. Sure there is some foreign investment, and indications are that recent changes to taxation have dissuaded that, and domestic buy-to-let investment to a bit, but people need houses, there aren’t enough of them, hence the prices will ultimately keep rising. I wouldn’t recommend a £100m penthouse flat as an investment, but the vast majority of normal people trying to buy in London might see a slowing of the rate of increase, but not big price falls.
The writing has been on the wall for the City since the Brexit vote. If I’d have been an oligarch looking to park my money in a stable place in Europe and see it appreciate a little back then, I’d have been more inclined to look at Frankfurt. That’s where the dead-eyed Euro versions of Patrick Bateman (and those who serve them) will be headed next.
I think we’re in for sharp global correction this fall, and housing will be a big part of it (especially in places like London where, due to seeming government inaction, the landing will be a hard one). Falling real estate prices wouldn’t be such a bad thing if people stopped looking at their houses primarily as an investment (often their major and only investment, for which all else is sacrificed) and started looking at them as, y’know, places they’re going to be living in and enjoying for the next 10+ years.
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Oh OH Spaghetti O’s!
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I think they should put the handle back on the Broad Street well.
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Absolutely. But it has taken some time for the banksters to go from denial to acceptance.
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Just the kind of attitude one wants from those charged with taking care of one’s money!
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Remember kids, it’s never an exponential curve. It’s always a part of sinusoid.
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Nonsense, why any fool can see at first glance, that graph is about to continue going up, or perhaps drop sharply, but there’s a good likelihood of leveling off.
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If you’re prepared to challenge/fully inform your preconceptions:
And maybe most relevant:
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In other words it’s either gonna go up, go down or stay flat?
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The market has been cooling off in Canada too, in Vancouver then Toronto, as foreign-buyers taxes were enacted, leaving the only possible buyers those lowly peasants who actually need houses to live in.
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So, regarding that last one, they say
The research, by the London School of Economics, found that “there was almost no evidence of [new-build] units being left entirely empty - certainly less than 1pc”.
The part in brackets seems to indicate that the study found that there aren’t many folks building new properties and then leaving them unoccupied. I thought that the phenomenon in question was about foreign investors purchasing existing townhouses and then leaving them unoccupied. Am i remembering incorrectly, am i interpreting incorrectly, is this study irrelevant, or is there an other option i’m not thinking of?
Edited to add a comma. Right near the start.
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