

England House Prices Sad Story – Live Dashboard - briskat
http://www.briskat.com/blog/House-Prices-Analytics

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toyg
_> England is already the second most crowded major country in the EU_

This particular definition of country is an abuse of the British term (let
alone "major"). You cannot compare England to Italy; you could compare it to
Northern Italy, maybe. If you want to compare "major" country to "major"
country, then use UK numbers. Figures would likely look different: every
"major" nation out there will have more populous and less populous areas. You
don't get to discount Scotland but include Southern Italy just because it
suits your viewpoint better.

TBH, here in Northern England there is still plenty of brownfield to revamp
and house prices are fairly sane. The problem is not Europe or England, it's
bloody _London_ , so go fix your own bloody problem.

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waqf
England is more than four times the area of the second most dense EU country
(Belgium) and nevertheless has higher population density.

So the wording is imprecise but I don't think the comparison is unfair.

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jacquesm
NL is considerably more dense than Belgium and definitely not the most dense
(that's Monaco).

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waqf
Sorry, I omitted the qualifier ("major" in the original I was criticising)
that was meant to exclude the tiny states which really are not a fair
comparison (100 times smaller).

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jacquesm
Belgium and NL are about the same size.

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waqf
But Monaco is not. So NL is the most dense [macroscopic] EU state, and England
is more dense than the second most dense such state, Belgium.

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tim333
It makes the property market look a bit more stable than it really is if you
compare to this graph
[http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/](http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/)

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marcosscriven
Something not mentioned here is the historically low interest rates. The Bank
of England base rate is only 0.5%, with mortgages available for only 2.0%.

I think if mortgage rates went back to 6% - 8% a lot of people would be
screwed.

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dataminer
Wouldn't the whole economy be screwed if interest rates are back up that much?
It seems the low interest rates are the new normal, unless for some reason
inflation becomes very high. With commodity prices falling hard due to
increase productivity, that threat seems to be quite far now.

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fooballs
The key here is demand - with open door immigration from Europe, that demand
is ever increasing. People are flocking to the UK, and want somewhere to live.
As long as we have that massive population explosion, there's only one way for
house prices to go.

If we want to solve the problem, and a whole host of other problems, perhaps
we shouldn't have an open door immigration policy.

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garagemc2
Hmmm I think it's unfair to put the cause purely on immigration. A few other
causal factors:

\- Anglo Saxon obsession with property. There is a culture of being obsessed
with home ownership in Anglo-Saxon countries. Particularly the UK. This pushes
people to pay over the top for property and thus increases prices even
further.

\- Property prices seem to be increasing particularly sharply around London &
Brighton. This is because they are wealth creation centres. Well paid jobs,
tourism, industry, culture all cause property prices to go up as people want
to live there.

\- Weather. This one isn't written about so much. But the hypothesis is that
people tend to want to live in the South because of better weather. The
weather in Kent is far better than is say Yorkshire in terms of net sunlight
and average temperatures.

I would be willing to bet that, in the past, property prices would have still
sharply increased in certain areas even without high immigration.

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ppointerofact
restrictions on supply are the most important factor outside central london.
There is no reason why sufficient housing could not be built in Kent or
Oxfordshire to meet new demand.

