London house-purchase volume falls off a cliff

The long term bond market is not at all worried about govt. debt.

The UK had far larger debt to gdp ratio after the Napoleonic wars - did England to bankrupt? no they outgrew it,
just as the US has grown from a GDP of 11 trillion to 15trillion in only the last 10 years or so (btw wall st and corporate US had no problem going to the gov’t cap in hand for bailouts while clutching Friedman and Hayek in the other - the most interesting scene is Greenspan addressing congress that his entire life belief system was wrong - that markets would fix themselves - see PBS Frontline the Warning (where they Brooksley Born warned about a systemic collapse just before LTCM tanked)

Though the US may complain about high tax rates they you can check the OECD figures they are not that high at all - and the government share of tax intake from the corporate sector declined from 20% in the 70s to around 2% now. Just pay the taxes.

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House sales have also hit a wall in Toronto and Vancouver, thanks to new laws taxing foreign homeowners who don’t live in the houses they buy. Thankfully we bought our house (which we will live in until one of us dies) before the bubble had gotten as inflated as it is now. I feel bad for mock the poor fools who bought into the market when prices were going up 30% a year who are now wondering what the hell happened.

hang on, i thought it was the Qataris? Wasnt there just a post covering a Mayors report saying that the foreign ownership of real estate was not a significant vector, within the last couple weeks.

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Which guys? Whom?

you want to see a dance, ask about pensions!

Foreign speculators trying to wash their vigourish.

This one was recent.

There was a discussion of these nefarious real estate boogie-people. I thought it was Russians. Then Qataris. I think that the Ferengi had come up in that thread, too.

Which ones, with at least some hint of citations? Lots of talk about this, who are these people, what proof is there of this speculation by outsiders with criminal cash (aside from the entire history of the british isles, of course)

Sounds ‘truthy’, wish i had ‘facties’. I have no such facts to support your assertions!

but were any facts identified, or just speculations about how a market got so seemingly speculative?

This could be a good sign for other cities with “housing crises”. China has cracked down on its cronies parking money in foreign real estate.

I did not leave that thread with more facts.

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so that’s 9% of what total %?

that’s 9% in a period of time of less than one year, not comprehensive. Not year on year.

Did 1% of London change hands? 10% in those 10 months?

Then that would be 9% of (1% or 10%), aka .009% or 0.09%.

are 0.009% or 0.09% significant?

Is there more? Can you do more than hint at a yes?

But 90% of some high value neighborhoods

Both the financial times and the guardian coming to the same opinion is rare as trump truths

I have long ago adapted a phrase from Neuromancer and said that money is a consensual hallucination. Which is really the best was to describe it.

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as in how did london bridge fall down in the first place

This is excellent news. Hopefully, the people of London might be able to live where they work again.

(1) sounds a bit xenophobic

(2) homeowners who pay taxes on expensive homes yet consume far less city services…at first glance, this does not sound like the sort of thing which should be discouraged

People who buy real estate here but don’t live here have been driving up house prices and rents beyond affordability for everyone else. Tons of condos being built all the time, with lots of units selling and then nobody ever moves in, because it wasn’t bought to be a home, it was just bought to be a place to park their money.

Trying to curb the ridiculous growth of the housing bubble so it doesn’t explode quite so messily when it does burst is a good thing.

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