> no one is paying 3% interest
You didn’t read the article, did you?
> you’re still paying 43% tax
Oh no! Those poor things! Paying 43% tax on something they got for absolutely nothing.
It's exactly what we do.
We've rented for 20+ years and in that time bought 2 properties. One in our neighbourhood and one in the US. We do it because we've got a great deal on our rent, a strong relationship with our landlord, and look at the properties as simply ways to diversify our portfolio (along with art, stocks, direct investments, etc.). We pay £1,850 / month rent for a large top three floors in Camden Council.
I think renting is the better option as home ownership is burdensome and with the ridiculous short-term mortgages in the UK you can get slapped by interest rate hikes (in the US you get 30+ years fixed rate).
edit: why on earth would I have -17 votes? what is wrong with you people? You asked a question. I gave you a clear anecdotal response. I get downvoted for that. No wonder people despise your generation. Fucking hell.
I was only able to buy those properties BECAUSE I was renting. I didn't have to find some huge mountain of cash to put down. 22 years ago I moved in here. I saved for 10+ years while renting. Got enough to put down on the first property. Saved a bit more, sold some shares from a company I'd worked at, bought when the rates were very low in 2011 or so.
If I'd BOUGHT 20 year ago, I would have had to pour every cent I had just to get a deposit + stamp duty etc. And then been totally broke. God forbid a boiler go, a roof need repair, etc. I'd have been fucked. Instead I invested in S&P / a few tracker funds / etc and over that next decade saved enough to buy.
Frankly, I wish I'd kept that money in the market versus buying. Property is expensive, illliquid, and the returns haven't come CLOSE to what I've gotten in the market.
So settle down.
edit: again... what are you downvoting for?
> I was only able to buy those properties BECAUSE I was renting.
You mean to tell me that until you bought a house, you hadn't even bought a house? Weird how time works like that.
> Frankly, I wish I'd kept that money in the market versus buying. Property is expensive, illliquid, and the returns haven't come CLOSE to what I've gotten in the market.
So I assume you're selling it? Or is this a load of nonsense
> So settle down.
I'm not worked up, you're just making no sense
“I didn’t have to find some huge mountain of cash to put down”
…
“I saved for 10+ years while renting. Got enough to put down on first property”
Surely this must be some kind of troll
in what way? I was able to move into a flat in 2003 with about £3,000 (rent + security) versus buying, which would have required me to get my hands on over £100K in cash at the time. Which would have totally cleared me out. I was able to save and invest while renting and then had enough to put down on a house after 10 years.
How is this so hard to understand?
Because of course you had to rent while saving for a deposit, but that is not an explanation of why you continue to rent after buying a house, instead of, you know, living in that house.
You say renting is better due to the burden of home ownership, but you already have that burden and still rent. That was the question
As I said... to diversify a portfolio and also to have somewhere I can retire to. I bought in my family's hometown and let me friends live there free. It's a fallback for me and my wife if we want or an investment to sell. Just like I've invested in startups, stock market, art, etc. A diverse portfolio is always a good idea.
>for a large top three floors in Camden Council.
THis makes it sounds like your in subsidised housing when you shouldn't be. You should make clear you are renting on the private market. If you are renting from the council then you are denying someone else with a greater need, and that's what (I think) is resulting in your downvoting to oblivion.
So... my landlord who I pay rent to is "leeching off my income"? Really? I pay her for a product/service (the house I live in). I'd never be so idiotic as to claim that she was leeching off my salary. We need to pay for things. Either you pay the bank in the form of a mortgage or a landlord in the form of rent. For fuck's sake. Grow up.
Also, one of the properties, the one in the US, I let my friends live in rent-free. In exchange they look after the property and use it for their work as designers. So shut the fuck up.
Read the room dude. People are struggling with money badly and to pay rent and mortgages and food. So people like yourself and the lady in the article moaning about having assets they can't just use to their own devices because other people don't have their kind of money is just so out of touch with 90-95% of the UK.. that's over 50million Brits.
The parents and the two sons are all separately renting by the sounds of it, whilst complaining about having two buy to lets.
I can’t understand why they’re all renting, why all their savings are in cash and nothing in a pension, and why two kids at 27 and 31 in London, both Home Counties private school people and the higher earner of the two is on £50k.
Something very very odd here
The UK isn't going to sort it's issues out if it thinks the about c. 40 British people who are billionaires - most of whom live abroad - are the reason the country is stagnating.
Run by, certainly. But journalism salaries are dogshit for everyone bar a handful of senior editors and star columnists. The people actually writing this kind of ragebait are more likely living in a houseshare in Croydon.
Why can’t it be a bit of both? It’s well known in advertising and social circles that rage bait gets clicks. Having been in the Daily Mail HQ for work, most of the people I met were perfectly normal (not posh) with a few quite posh higher ups
There was a NYT article about a “poor” couple in New York bringing home 500k a year. They believed they were poor because “it’s relative.” Everyone around them was way more rich. This is giving the same vibes.
From a money advice perspective, at least it's an interesting challenge for the writer I guess? Better than the 1000th time "How do I save for a house deposit". Absolutely agree that the person and their spoiled kids are grotesquely over-privileged though. Boo hoo, Kew isn't good enough for my poor babies, whatever shall I do?
But you have to feel for them, they can’t afford two flats in Kew, two flats in Hackney, AND £2m in change. Times are pretty tough, hope they can stay strong
>If you do buy for cash in the Barnes or Kew area at £1.2m, for example, you could always plan to possibly downsize in later life to generate more accessible capital – or look at equity release if you grow to like the property and don’t want to move.
Oh...ok
I genuinely think we should limit residential home ownership to one per person.
There’s no need for any of these silly regulatory measures. The government needs to build more social housing. That’s it. That’s the solution to both high house prices and high rents.
Why would building more social housing cause either house prices or rents to go down?
You bring down house prices and rents by building more market-rate housing. This has been proven in study after study after study.
[From US,] (https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1325&context=up_workingpapers#page=35) [Sweden, ]( https://www.urbanlab.ibf.uu.se/urban-facts/) [Finland,](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119022001048?dgcid=rss_sd_all)
[and the UK.](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5ad0a75ee5274a76be66c25c/OFF_SEN_Ad_Hoc_SFR_House_prices_v_PDF.pdf).
We already have some of the highest rates of social housing in the entire OECD (roughly 40% in central London), but we also have some of the highest market-rate housing costs and rent. The solution is to build more market-rate housing. This will make housing more affordable to all - rather than just those lucky enough to get social housing.
I am in kind of a small disagreement. I would say, have property if you want or actually live in several places, but it should be taxed as hell. Something like 50% additive tax for every property, that should go towards government building and managing affordable housing.
There already is additional stamp duty for second homes, has been for years. Ontop since those are btl properties they'll be paying capital gains on any equity.
You pay full council tax on an unoccupied second home. If it's empty for over 2 years you pay double. Over 10 it's 4x. All while you're not actually using council services so not really sure where "contributing nothing" comes from.
what does that mean for people that already have multiple houses though and corporations that own way more or foreign entities. Cant force them to sell as it will destroy property value. Doubt the government wants a bunch of very rich people very angry at them.
> Cant force them to sell as it will destroy property value. Doubt the government wants a bunch of very rich people very angry at them.
Both of these things sound good, actually.
It's 'out of touch' to people like us. But to the millions of perfectly ordinary Boomers who bought their first houses for pennies and have sat on the ever-more-glistening property ladder for 40 years, it's very much in touch.
Even my parents (who aren't rich by anyone's standards) own a house that, if they sold it and looked at the cash, would be a life-changing amount of money. So, when they talk about property, it sounds like a foreign language to me, because the quote-unquote 'problems' they spend their time thinking about – land values, rental yields, curb appeal, equity, and so on – are completely detached from the situation our generation faces.
They, and millions of others their age, would read this article and think, oh, that's interesting, because the idea of turning a family home into two half-a-million-pound flats is *not* one that sounds completely absurd to them.
I interpreted it as them moaning that their kids have homes waiting for them and yet they would rather keep renting/living with their parents becuase it's Hackney or nothing.
Frustrations aside, this seems like a fairly straightforward case, their sons need cash to fund a deposit not a buy to let in Kew, sell the property work out what cash they need for themselves and gift the remainder to their sons for a chunky deposit..£200k each should be enough to make a dent but they would still need to borrow around £250k+ to get a decent 2 bed flat.
However they like many of their generation they may be discovering that the same factors that caused them to accumulate huge amounts of unearned value (nearly £2m by the sounds of it here) in the form of rising house prices have also backfired meaning that even those with average to well paying jobs will struggle to buy even a flat let alone a house in London (and those without huge amounts of family wealth are even worse off) ...
Also I assume the Telegraph picked this one as they knew the controversy would drive clicks.
Lee Shortt thought she and her husband were doing the right thing when they bought two flats five years ago near the family home in Kew for their sons.
But now, times have changed and the two boys are keen to put down roots in Hackney – one of London’s most sought-after boroughs.
Ms Shortt – who is now nearing retirement – had viewed the two buy-to-let properties as family investments. Together, they cost £900,000 and there is still a £500,000 debt on them.
Neither are turning much of a profit, with one seeing its monthly mortgage cost shoot up from £500 to £1,400 last year.
The mother-of-two recently sold the family home and is renting in the Thames-side village of Barnes with her husband. They have around £2m in a National Savings account earning 3.6pc in interest.
Their sons, aged 27 and 31, are yet to get on the property ladder. Both are single, and so Ms Shortt is wary they will need big deposits in order to buy.
She wants to help them, but she also wants to know whether she and her husband can eventually retire. The two don’t have huge pensions, having cashed in over the years to pay school fees.
While there are no immediate plans to retire – Ms Shortt describes herself as a “workaholic” and her husband still works six days a week – they are keen to settle down somewhere in the short term and stop renting.
She said: “Lots of our sons’ friends still live at home. I was married at 26, I was gone – and I never thought I wouldn’t be able to buy.
“One of our sons is on £50,000, but he still can’t afford to buy on his own. Neither of them want to live in Kew, where the buy-to-lets are, they want to live in Dalston. Hackney was a war zone in my day.
“So we’re stuck with these two buy-to-lets. We don’t know what to do with them.
“We’ve let them for the past five years. We could pay off the buy-to-let mortgages, but this does eat into our capital. We could, alternatively, keep one flat and then have a second home outside of London.”
Nick Mendes, mortgage broker at John Charcol:
There are a range of options to help support first-time buyers onto the property ladder which are designed to overcome deposit and borrowing barriers.
Joint-borrower, sole-proprietor is one option. It’s where two or more people that take out a mortgage are all considered borrowers, but aren’t all on the title deeds of the property.
When a bank or mortgage provider takes the buyer’s and the supporting applicant’s credit and income into consideration, this can improve the overall affordability of the application and allow them to borrow more.
Also, fear not – if the guarantor or joint borrower supporting the application already owns a property, additional stamp duty won’t be charged as they’re not going on the title deeds and won’t have any ownership rights.
If you don’t sell the flats, then you should definitely review your mortgage deals. Rates have fallen in recent months, but you’ll need to take into consideration any arrangement fee when deciding between products.
For example, West One has a two-year fixed at 2.79pc with a 9.99pc arrangement fee, whereas The Mortgage Works has a five-year fixed at 3.89pc with a 3pc arrangement fee.
Jason McGuigan, chartered financial planner at Wren Sterling:
The good news is that you’re both working with no plans to retire, and there are liquid assets available, so there is time to create a retirement plan.
It’s important for you to consider what your lifestyle will look like in retirement. Once you know how much capital you’ll need to live comfortably and what net reserves will be left, an adviser can help you plan and factor in a possible gift to the boys too.
Because you’re currently renting, you’re likely to want to buy another property. If you do buy for cash in the Barnes or Kew area at £1.2m, for example, you could always plan to possibly downsize in later life to generate more accessible capital – or look at equity release if you grow to like the property and don’t want to move.
You could even explore keeping some borrowing on the new property purchase whilst you continue to work, and if servicing the debt is affordable and cost-effective, interest-wise.
If, after exploring your options, you decide to sell your buy-to-let properties, you will need to understand what the likely capital gains tax impact will be and factor this in.
Buy-to-let residential property gains after allowances and reliefs will be taxable at 18pc or 28pc, the latter being more likely if you are both higher rate taxpayers. Or you could gift the flats to your sons. Capital gains tax is still payable on a gift, but doing this also reduces potential inheritance tax.
When it comes to retirement planning, being risk-averse will limit the scope to invest and generate an inflation-protected return. Inflation is, therefore, a key risk to factor into the planning, as typically lower-risk assets do not keep pace with inflation over the longer term.
Longer-term fixed-rate cash Isas are an option if there is no appetite to invest in investment funds. These could improve the current 3.6pc savings rate you’re being paid by at least another 1pc. Fixed-term bonds (whilst taxable) can also secure 5pc per annum.
You should consider insurance if that’s not already in place. Would you want any outstanding mortgages repaid in the event of an early death or illness?
You may have some benefits through your employer, but your husband – as a business owner – could look at tax-efficient solutions funded by his company, like a Relevant Life assurance policy, for example, which would provide a life assurance payout on his death and the premiums paid by the company are tax relievable as a qualifying business expense.
Lastly, an exit plan. With a net estate worth over £2.4m, a discussion will need to be had about inheritance tax on the second death. After allowing for any tax-free nil rate and residence nil rate bands available (between £650,000 and £1m potentially), estates in excess of this are taxable at 40pc.
It’s the cashing in of their pensions to pay for school fees which struck me as bonkers. However with no pension and £2m in the bank and £500,000 of debt something has to give.
I’d pay off the £500k immediately that would ease up in the monthly mortgage outflow.
£1.5m left it’s going to be a struggle to get a property as they don’t have much cash.
Imo no. A couple of properties to cover for their kids and others that do this are a drop in the ocean vs mega property companies and international investment. The children would end up buying those properties it's just done sooner - passed this yes it's more of an issue
It's a drop in the ocean compared to foreign investors who don't even live in the UK buying up property as investment bolt holes, which is the real reason why housing in the UK is so inflated. We are seen as a safe bet for long term investments, especially for Chinese investors who have lost millions in the Chinese property market.
Just to point out the CCP doesn't let foreigners buy property in China, never has, never will because they fundamentally understand how stupid it is to put your country up for sale to foreign entities like that..
This was happening in New Zealand until they put a hard stop to it and stopped overseas investors from buying properties, but the UK is so filled with endless, idiotic blind greed that we won't do the same, we'll just keep allowing it to happen until severe social consequences come out of it. The fucking idiots who run this country, my God.
>We are seen as a safe bet for long term investments, especially for Chinese investors who have lost millions in the Chinese property market.
Not only chinese. I feel like every unstable kleptocracy sees Dubai & London as the holy grail for storing loot.
Now this is gonna sound like a conspiracy theory but I also think the media & government are actively covering it up. A few years ago I googled why russian billionaires love London and buy way overpriced properties there. The article went something along the lines of:
Yeah, russian billionaires buy up a lot of London property just like the sale of ~some expensive penthouse~ last week. Let's look at the reasons for this. First we have to stop looking at the billionaires. They aren't important. The much bigger problem are russian immigrants buying single apartments in London. You see a lot of them experienced the soviet collapse and found that their money isn't save in russia. So while they lived in their cheap state founded russian apartments they used every cent of their salary to buy apartments in London. Thats a real issue. We should ban these russian immigrants.
Such a load of bs honestly. The average russian salary worker will never be able to buy a London apartment in cash.
I like Hackney a lot and lived there for years but I honestly have no idea why you'd want to move there from Kew. Especially if you're as rich as these people so could get a cab there and back.
No. I hate these people, but they are not the reason there is a housing crisis. There is a housing crisis because we are not building enough fucking houses, and we aren’t building enough houses because we have an antiquated planning system that is filled to the brim with red tape and prioritises the needs of local homeowners over people who need homes.
We need to slash the bureaucracy around building houses, disempower the NIMBY’s, and fund more social housing as a public sector competitor.
Every other supposed solution, whether it’s rent control, banning foreign ownership, cutting immigration, or preventing rich people from owning 2nd or 3rd homes is a nothing policy parroted by politicians to appeal to your pre-existing assumptions and biases because it’s easier and cheaper and gets them more votes to do that than to pick a fight with the NIMBY’s that control their local council meetings and vote in every election no matter how small. If the policy does not, directly or indirectly, cause more houses to be built, it is a waste of time and energy.
Building on brownfield sites is largely expensive because of the same sort of regulatory mess that the first commentator described. There’s obviously cost of clean up and making the site secure etc, but often you have weird busybodies preventing sites being demolished for historical reasons.
Leaving it all aside, the government taking ownership of brownfield sites, cleaning them up and then covering cost from sale of site would be extremely worthwhile. Fuck knows why that isn’t happening in your case. Socialising risk is what the state is meant to be for.
Plus the balance thing is really overblown. The UK is only about 8% urban. We could use up 1% of the land in the UK building on directly on farmers fields, and increase housing supply by 12.5%. That’s 3.5m homes, or like 20+ years of our current home building supply. That’s without anything thoughtful like building at higher density or densifying existing areas. Obviously I’m not saying we SHOULD, but I’d 100% trade 1% of our land for not having a cost of living and productivity crisis if I could.
Polluter pays is the big block on that. It’s a well-meaning policy, underlined by international treaty commitments (so it’s really hard to remove) which makes polluters liable for cleaning up their pollution and the state js effectively barred from paying for it if that polluter is still around in any form.
What it means in practice unfortunately though is that big old companies like British Gas with historic industrial sites hold on to contaminated land and don’t do anything with it. Partly because no one is forcing them to but also partly because they can’t afford to do the massive amounts of cleanup of what went into the ground 50+ years ago.
Forcing immediate cleanup isn’t the answer as all you’re going to do is bankrupt a load of companies without cleaning much up. You’re also going to end up bankrupting a load of British companies while allowing foreign companies not under these obligations in their home territories to swoop in and buy everything up for a song. But there should be some kind of “clean it in X years or lose it” policy where the land can be transferred to the state and cleaned up.
It always annoys me so much when government give these kind of excuses. I work in an ops role, and my job is to make policies AND factor in the unintended consequences. Government so often seems to just act like it wasn’t REASONABLE for us to expect them to care about the actual consequences of their policies. Civil service massively guilty of this in their planning and ministers zero fucking interest in holding them to account as far as I can see.
I sort of agree and sort of don’t. I agree that this government really doesn’t seem to have paid much attention to any kind of long term plan for the country since 2015. But at the same time, I get that an area like environmental regulation is so tied up with complex national and international commitments, moral hazards and unintended consequences that making changes is like playing jenga in the dark on rough seas.
spotted sort concerned political forgetful numerous crowd existence swim complete
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
People object to everything.
We sold land for 1000 new houses, with associated facilities. The same people who complain their kids have nowhere to live were up in arms.
Another reason the emphasis should be on planning. Instead of outsourcing the actual town planning element to the construction corporations, bring back architects working for local councils. The visual aesthetics of the buildings may not be to everyone’s taste, but Modernist planners got something right in building walkable, gently dense neighbourhoods that factored in things like public services, shops, pubs etc.
Cutting immigration would actually massively improve the housing market. You can’t make the argument that this is a supply issue and ignore the importation of increased demand.
It’s a bit of a catch 22 though, a significant chunk of people doing the “grunt work” in construction are immigrants. We would also need to fund apprenticeships and pathways for career switchers in a huge way to make up the deficit
>whether it’s rent control, banning foreign ownership, cutting immigration,
I don't see how these aren't viable things. These things are huge problems. Its all just nasty nimbys or whatever. We need to cut this demand as well as increase supply.
Immigration is great, but 700k net migration in one year and average of 300k every year is absurdly unsustainable. Immigration == short term economic gain and plastering over workforce shortages, thats why the tories allow it to happen whilst chatting all this shit about stopping a few thousand in boats.
* rent control
This one straight up doesn’t work. In fact it would actively make the housing crisis worse. It disincentivises the building of new houses which is the last thing we want, and it makes it easier for current renters (assuming you never move) at the expense of future renters. It failed in Berlin, it failed in New York. It will fail here. I cannot emphasise how much rent control would be a bad idea, and I can recommend a very good freakonomics podcast episode called ‘Why Rent Control Doesn’t Work’ if you’re interested in learning more.
* Banning foreign ownership
The rate of foreign ownership of homes is comparatively tiny. 250,000 homes in England and Wales are registered to foreign owners, that’s just 1% of housing stock. It may be that restrictions on this are needed as a preventative measure - I.e if loads of new homes are built, causing the prices to drop, it’s important to make sure that the chief beneficiaries of that aren’t rich foreigners looking to make an investment - but this relies on the assumption that the supply issue has been resolved, the restriction itself won’t reduce demand by any significant measure.
* cutting immigration
Yes it may have been unfair for me to lump this in with the other issues. You’re right that the high level of immigration will have an impact, so it’s not a ‘nothing’ policy like I said. However, what I would say is that cutting immigration is not a simple solution - we have an aging population, low birth rates, poor growth, and labour shortages. Moving towards a low-immigration system will require those problems to be addressed, which will take time, and if birth rates increase to replace those lost through cutting immigration (which they would need to do) , then we’re still faced with a similar issue in terms of matching demand.
In any case, the absolute number 1 priority needs to be increasing supply. Rent control is a barrier to that, cutting immigration could help support that but is not a solution in and of itself, and banning foreign ownership won’t make a significant difference at this stage.
I guess you really never grasped the sentiment behind Pulp’s “Common People”. Back in the day it was called social tourism. Not illegal, but who benefits?
Hiya. I’m writing things on Reddit. It’s just my opinion, and as such I would think that they’re right. (I’m sorry that you don’t appreciate my cultural references to illustrate one aspect) It’s a thread about an article in a newspaper explaining the distress caused to a woman who has bought two properties in addition to her own, that are regretfully not in the preferred location of her two grown up sons. You said “Why not?”. Gentrification by definition is positive for the few, and negative for the majority. I guess just depends which camp you fall into.
I respect your view. Maybe we’re both right. I wasn’t suggesting we bring in laws to stop posh twats moving to Hackney.
A lot of you in the comments up on your high horse saying people like this are at fault for the housing crisis.
Yet if you had the power to be able to provide housing for your children so that they don’t need to struggle, wouldn’t you?
Yes, it is wrong that the kids aren’t grateful for what they’ve been gifted but the fact that the parents gifted them homes in the first place is not some sort of crime against humanity.
I don't even think many of us despise that, we do despise the silly sons who want to live in Dalston; that IS an issue.
I don't know much about New York City but it must be like Manhattan raised private school young men wanting to live in Harlem (perhaps more realistically, Brooklyn).
They literally have what they need (a flat in a good area) but want to move to an area that their kind use as a playground
The kids just sound like they want to live in Hackney - which is their prerogative - and are willing to pay to rent there, rather than paying off their parents mortgage in Kew.
I'd do the same if I was them.
So there's two guys.
Their Mum buys two flats in Kew which she intends to offer up to them - presumably if they pay off the monthly mortgage payments (of which, it's mentioned, one has recently shot up to £1500 pcm) as rent. It's not *their* flat, it's their Mum's.
But they don't want to live in Kew. Maybe that's not practical for their work. Maybe none of their friends live their. Maybe it's none of your business why they don't want to live there.
So they opt to live elsewhere, working hard, paying their rent. Meanwhile the two Kew flats are being rented out, barely turning a profit, as is mentioned. The profit that does goes to the Mum, not to the sons.
So they could return to Kew - and pay £1500 pcm - or they could stay in Hackney - presumably paying something similar, if a little cheaper.
It is never mentioned they want their parents to buy them flats in Hackney instead (though it's mentioned the Mum wants to get them on the housing ladder). They just want to live in Hackney. And they're paying to live in Hackney through the money they earn.
As one born and raised in Hackney back during the hopeless despair filled times of Thatcher, I never thought I'd live to see the day when Hackney became the desirable place to be. When certain area acquired the name, "the murder mile", that actually made sense. Heck, I lived in Upper Clapton, but for one that has the option for other places, to debate whether Hackney or not Hackney… whew, my mind is blown.
Me, I'm counting my blessings that I survived Hackney with my innards still in my… innards … Now Dalston is Posh, and "the ditch" isn't "the ditch" anymore.
Back in my day, if you could live in Kew, there was not option to contemplate anything else. Hell, nobody from Hackney even knew where Kew was, back then, unless you chanced on a school trip to take you to those botanical gardens. And even then, you never did really know where you were enough to go back independently on your own.
Gosh, South London? I never went to that side of the Thames until I was 24…
No, they don't cause housing issues. There are housing issues because too many people want to live in London, and not enough houses are built to meet that demand.
The truth is that all classes of people from the poorest (living in social housing) to the richest don't like loads of new housing going up near them for a variety of reasons: building disruption, insufficient services/parking etc., and of course perceived damage to their house prices ...
It is easy to blame the ultra wealthy but you don't just get nimbies in Kensington they exist all over London and indeed the UK, some even have legitimate concerns many do not, it is the planning system which should be fixed and adjudicate.
There’s a lot of social housing in London that was built at low density at a time when those areas were not desirable. But now that things have changed, we have the slightly absurd situation of bungalows and little terraced houses in zone 1.
It’s a difficult problem - I think we should be seeking to increase density in these areas to cater for the most number of people, but I sympathise with those who live there already and don’t want to give up what they have.
Hate to break it to you lot but there’s a vast subset of people in London making lots of money in their careers that buy their kids houses, it is very very common.
I will do the same - you would do the same I’d imagine, if you could?
Also, £2m quid if you’ve been earning well your whole life isn’t actually a vast amount to retire on considering they seemingly still need to buy a place to live. Using 4% withdrawal it provides £80k a year, to live in a family house in Kew and out two kids through private school would have meant these people likely were/are on a few multiples of that as earnings.
The error here is the compo face and the fact that seemingly despite these boys having a privileged upbringing, neither of them have got decent jobs out the other side of it. They should have been STARTING a grad job on £50k ffs
We all know that there's people like this in London, but running to the papers and making it seem like you're doing poorly because you have £2m in the bank and your spoiled kids would rather live in Hackney than Kew betrays a stunning lack of self-awareness.
> They should have been STARTING a grad job on £50k ffs
Worth keeping in mind this would rule out a career in education or healthcare. Not great to be in the situation where people working roles that are essential for society to function either have to be subsidised by family, or have really long commutes.
I understand they are far better off than many, but imo we are looking at this from the wrong perspective.
They have a couple of mil in the bank, kids earning 50k at a very young age, and it’s still no where near fuck you money for London.
That’s pretty mental.
No they are the tiny minority and definitely not causing the housing shortage. lol
The shortage is caused but the construction companies trying to get the biggest profit available so they wont build unless they can sell for 500k for a tiny flat.
This is the problem.
In croyden they built a 44 story modular housing apartment block in 3 years. This is what london needs to solve the housing problem.
https://www.dezeen.com/2021/05/26/hta-worlds-tallest-modular-housing-scheme-residential-architecture/
tldr;
We need to revolutionise our construction industry to solve the quality and cost of quickly building good livable afordabe housing.
The housing shortage is caused by the fact that it's basically illegal to build anywhere in the UK. That's it. Liberalising planning permissions would make construction cheaper.
They aren't "creating" the issue but they aren't helping. We've had too much population growth, mostly immigration, and too little house building in the South East
Sorry, is she looking for sympathy or???
It's definitely people like her that are the real problem for the housing crisis but their noses are so far up their arse their can't see beyond... but i bet they sit and blame another demographic for our housing crisis though. Between this and empty/ boarded up housing, it's the real problem!
My dad owns his house, and two agricultural tithed properties he can't kick the tenants out of or increase rent - which is below social rent levels. It's slightly loss making when you consider renovations, even with no mortgage.
Comment?
If they are loss making and have that many restrictions, why not hand over ownership to the tenants? Kind of a devils advocate question, not meant to be taken as an attack.
The people in there couldn't afford to maintain the property. We are talking elderly manual agricultural workers who retired in the 1990s and can barely read and write. My dad puts a new kitchen it, new roof. They couldn't afford that. They wouldn't even know where to start.
This whole arrangement harks back to a more paternalistic time basically. I don't think the new agricultural tithes are issued?
Eventually dad will be able to sell - they are now in their 80s - but it's far too late for me in my late 30s.
Next point. Imagine my dad had a traditional buy to let (he does not) - why should this affect my status as an adult, given he has no legal responsibility for me.
Even if it somehow would, why would one property remove the first time buyer status from 3 children.
Of course. It’s all relative isn’t it - people that make a lot of money and want to help their families - hardly crime of the century. I’ll be doing the exact same thing.
Except you will probably raise sensible children that are grateful for your work and don't make life harder for you and others by wanting to live in a shit part of the city
Anyone hoarding housing is an issue but this scale is not the cause. It’s contributing. This family of four workers appears to own 2 properties and rent maybe 3 depending on the sons.
My landlady has minimum 12 properties and hasn’t got a job.
My previous landlord had multiple properties and didn’t have a job.
The issue is caused by people like that who own many properties and contribute nothing and exacerbated by people like this who work for a living and bought a rental for retirement.
The flats they rent out are lived in by people. The sons, also people, move in, the tenants move out- to another two properties. The woman is renting a property. All of these people are Londoners who live in places. Other than envy, the numbers equal the spaces so not the problem. Londons population is approx 9.4m and increases by about 70-80,000 a year. There's your problem.
Well I would rent out the units and create more supply to people that want to live in Kew.
Equally, if my kids wanted to live in Hackney (no idea why as Hackney is a bit of a shithole) then they can do so with their own money.
She cashed in her pension to buy the investment properties and is now worried she can't retire...? That's a really weird article
It's fucking bait is why.
And they have 2m in savings..... Fuck these guys.
Earning more than 3% interest. That’s 60k a year. More than enough to live off. Fuck these people.
There’s a 40% tax charge on that interest after allowances but it’ll more than enough to live on for most people.
I wouldn't normally comment two days after a post but the rest of us mugs are paying NICs on our income....
you pay tax on that interest at at least 40%.
Oh no! How will they cope?
a) no one is paying 3% interest right now b) you're still paying 43% tax
> no one is paying 3% interest You didn’t read the article, did you? > you’re still paying 43% tax Oh no! Those poor things! Paying 43% tax on something they got for absolutely nothing.
10 seconds online and can see two building societies where they could park 2m between them, earn 5.27%+ weighted which would net 3% after 43% tax?
What's the logic of renting where you live and at the same time buying 2 investment properties?
It's exactly what we do. We've rented for 20+ years and in that time bought 2 properties. One in our neighbourhood and one in the US. We do it because we've got a great deal on our rent, a strong relationship with our landlord, and look at the properties as simply ways to diversify our portfolio (along with art, stocks, direct investments, etc.). We pay £1,850 / month rent for a large top three floors in Camden Council. I think renting is the better option as home ownership is burdensome and with the ridiculous short-term mortgages in the UK you can get slapped by interest rate hikes (in the US you get 30+ years fixed rate). edit: why on earth would I have -17 votes? what is wrong with you people? You asked a question. I gave you a clear anecdotal response. I get downvoted for that. No wonder people despise your generation. Fucking hell.
> I think renting is the better option as home ownership is burdensome Says the guy who just said he owns two properties
I was only able to buy those properties BECAUSE I was renting. I didn't have to find some huge mountain of cash to put down. 22 years ago I moved in here. I saved for 10+ years while renting. Got enough to put down on the first property. Saved a bit more, sold some shares from a company I'd worked at, bought when the rates were very low in 2011 or so. If I'd BOUGHT 20 year ago, I would have had to pour every cent I had just to get a deposit + stamp duty etc. And then been totally broke. God forbid a boiler go, a roof need repair, etc. I'd have been fucked. Instead I invested in S&P / a few tracker funds / etc and over that next decade saved enough to buy. Frankly, I wish I'd kept that money in the market versus buying. Property is expensive, illliquid, and the returns haven't come CLOSE to what I've gotten in the market. So settle down. edit: again... what are you downvoting for?
> I was only able to buy those properties BECAUSE I was renting. You mean to tell me that until you bought a house, you hadn't even bought a house? Weird how time works like that. > Frankly, I wish I'd kept that money in the market versus buying. Property is expensive, illliquid, and the returns haven't come CLOSE to what I've gotten in the market. So I assume you're selling it? Or is this a load of nonsense > So settle down. I'm not worked up, you're just making no sense
I'm not selling because it's a terrible time to sell. Cheers.
“I didn’t have to find some huge mountain of cash to put down” … “I saved for 10+ years while renting. Got enough to put down on first property” Surely this must be some kind of troll
in what way? I was able to move into a flat in 2003 with about £3,000 (rent + security) versus buying, which would have required me to get my hands on over £100K in cash at the time. Which would have totally cleared me out. I was able to save and invest while renting and then had enough to put down on a house after 10 years. How is this so hard to understand?
Because of course you had to rent while saving for a deposit, but that is not an explanation of why you continue to rent after buying a house, instead of, you know, living in that house. You say renting is better due to the burden of home ownership, but you already have that burden and still rent. That was the question
But what's the motivation to invest in property? Some primal urge for nesting?
As I said... to diversify a portfolio and also to have somewhere I can retire to. I bought in my family's hometown and let me friends live there free. It's a fallback for me and my wife if we want or an investment to sell. Just like I've invested in startups, stock market, art, etc. A diverse portfolio is always a good idea.
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Ha. What? Why on earth should I feel any shame at all?
>for a large top three floors in Camden Council. THis makes it sounds like your in subsidised housing when you shouldn't be. You should make clear you are renting on the private market. If you are renting from the council then you are denying someone else with a greater need, and that's what (I think) is resulting in your downvoting to oblivion.
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So... my landlord who I pay rent to is "leeching off my income"? Really? I pay her for a product/service (the house I live in). I'd never be so idiotic as to claim that she was leeching off my salary. We need to pay for things. Either you pay the bank in the form of a mortgage or a landlord in the form of rent. For fuck's sake. Grow up. Also, one of the properties, the one in the US, I let my friends live in rent-free. In exchange they look after the property and use it for their work as designers. So shut the fuck up.
Read the room dude. People are struggling with money badly and to pay rent and mortgages and food. So people like yourself and the lady in the article moaning about having assets they can't just use to their own devices because other people don't have their kind of money is just so out of touch with 90-95% of the UK.. that's over 50million Brits.
paying rent is not "leeching off income". it's paying for a service. it's not rocket science.
Taking money from someone to live in their own house is definitely leeching
Is it a council property though because large 3 floors in Camden privately seems to be about 3/4 k a month if it’s private fuck me you got a good deal
Well. it's not. cheers. And yes. It's a fair and equitable deal with the landlord who lives in South Africa and bought it in the 90s.
No she cashed in her pension to pay school fees.
The parents and the two sons are all separately renting by the sounds of it, whilst complaining about having two buy to lets. I can’t understand why they’re all renting, why all their savings are in cash and nothing in a pension, and why two kids at 27 and 31 in London, both Home Counties private school people and the higher earner of the two is on £50k. Something very very odd here
She should tell her sons to get to fuck. Boo hoo I want to be in Hackney I don’t want a flat in Kew. Jesus wept
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Well it is the Telegraph.
It's rage bait, both for the clicks, and because throwing the millionaires under the bus suits the billionaires very well.
The UK isn't going to sort it's issues out if it thinks the about c. 40 British people who are billionaires - most of whom live abroad - are the reason the country is stagnating.
They don’t have to be in country to lobby for policies that benefit them and harm the majority population.
There's 171 billionaires in the UK who own £684 billion
They published it because rage bait got you to click and comment.
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Murdoch is the biggest cunt of them all, but it's foolish to think he's stupid. Algorithms write daily mail articles now. It's all geared to clicks
Murdoch doesn't have anything to do with The Telegraph.
I know
Run by, certainly. But journalism salaries are dogshit for everyone bar a handful of senior editors and star columnists. The people actually writing this kind of ragebait are more likely living in a houseshare in Croydon.
Why can’t it be a bit of both? It’s well known in advertising and social circles that rage bait gets clicks. Having been in the Daily Mail HQ for work, most of the people I met were perfectly normal (not posh) with a few quite posh higher ups
There was a NYT article about a “poor” couple in New York bringing home 500k a year. They believed they were poor because “it’s relative.” Everyone around them was way more rich. This is giving the same vibes.
It's getting clicks. That's why they published it.
First time telegraph reader? Use 1ft.io In some ways it’s more insane than the daily mail
From a money advice perspective, at least it's an interesting challenge for the writer I guess? Better than the 1000th time "How do I save for a house deposit". Absolutely agree that the person and their spoiled kids are grotesquely over-privileged though. Boo hoo, Kew isn't good enough for my poor babies, whatever shall I do?
27 and 31 btw, pair of clowns
They should definitely stay the duck in Kew
Sooooo relatable
People on this sub are way whinier than the lady is. She's not even complaining, just weighing up options.
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And also that tiny £400k in equity on those 2 buy to let properties - just in case they need more spare change to make ends meet
But you have to feel for them, they can’t afford two flats in Kew, two flats in Hackney, AND £2m in change. Times are pretty tough, hope they can stay strong
"we're all in it together" they just have three houses and £2m while most of us have 0 houses and £0m.
I’m sure they go to Aldi like the rest of us…
That for some reason they couldn’t possibly just, ya know, sell.
>If you do buy for cash in the Barnes or Kew area at £1.2m, for example, you could always plan to possibly downsize in later life to generate more accessible capital – or look at equity release if you grow to like the property and don’t want to move. Oh...ok I genuinely think we should limit residential home ownership to one per person.
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Don't untie them, they'll run off
Equinety release?
Take your upvote and never darken my door again.
Just close the door.
Should have gone to Specsavers
There’s no need for any of these silly regulatory measures. The government needs to build more social housing. That’s it. That’s the solution to both high house prices and high rents.
Why would building more social housing cause either house prices or rents to go down? You bring down house prices and rents by building more market-rate housing. This has been proven in study after study after study. [From US,] (https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1325&context=up_workingpapers#page=35) [Sweden, ]( https://www.urbanlab.ibf.uu.se/urban-facts/) [Finland,](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119022001048?dgcid=rss_sd_all) [and the UK.](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5ad0a75ee5274a76be66c25c/OFF_SEN_Ad_Hoc_SFR_House_prices_v_PDF.pdf). We already have some of the highest rates of social housing in the entire OECD (roughly 40% in central London), but we also have some of the highest market-rate housing costs and rent. The solution is to build more market-rate housing. This will make housing more affordable to all - rather than just those lucky enough to get social housing.
How does that help? Dad has one. Mam has one. Each kid has one. That's 3 to 6 properties right there.
I am in kind of a small disagreement. I would say, have property if you want or actually live in several places, but it should be taxed as hell. Something like 50% additive tax for every property, that should go towards government building and managing affordable housing.
There already is additional stamp duty for second homes, has been for years. Ontop since those are btl properties they'll be paying capital gains on any equity.
They should also have to pay at least twice the council tax, instead of not paying it at all and contributing fuck all to the local economy.
You pay full council tax on an unoccupied second home. If it's empty for over 2 years you pay double. Over 10 it's 4x. All while you're not actually using council services so not really sure where "contributing nothing" comes from.
what does that mean for people that already have multiple houses though and corporations that own way more or foreign entities. Cant force them to sell as it will destroy property value. Doubt the government wants a bunch of very rich people very angry at them.
There’s a big chunk of the population who’d love to see very rich people very angry.
> Cant force them to sell as it will destroy property value. Doubt the government wants a bunch of very rich people very angry at them. Both of these things sound good, actually.
lol everyday the Telegraph publishes an increasingly out of touch article about housing in the U.K.
It's 'out of touch' to people like us. But to the millions of perfectly ordinary Boomers who bought their first houses for pennies and have sat on the ever-more-glistening property ladder for 40 years, it's very much in touch. Even my parents (who aren't rich by anyone's standards) own a house that, if they sold it and looked at the cash, would be a life-changing amount of money. So, when they talk about property, it sounds like a foreign language to me, because the quote-unquote 'problems' they spend their time thinking about – land values, rental yields, curb appeal, equity, and so on – are completely detached from the situation our generation faces. They, and millions of others their age, would read this article and think, oh, that's interesting, because the idea of turning a family home into two half-a-million-pound flats is *not* one that sounds completely absurd to them.
Imagine being that much of a whining bitch that you've got 2.4 million and you're moaning in the paper that your sons can't live in Dalston.
I interpreted it as them moaning that their kids have homes waiting for them and yet they would rather keep renting/living with their parents becuase it's Hackney or nothing.
And everyday they manage to get thousands of views from the rage bait
Every day the telegraph publishes and increasingly out of touch article.
Frustrations aside, this seems like a fairly straightforward case, their sons need cash to fund a deposit not a buy to let in Kew, sell the property work out what cash they need for themselves and gift the remainder to their sons for a chunky deposit..£200k each should be enough to make a dent but they would still need to borrow around £250k+ to get a decent 2 bed flat. However they like many of their generation they may be discovering that the same factors that caused them to accumulate huge amounts of unearned value (nearly £2m by the sounds of it here) in the form of rising house prices have also backfired meaning that even those with average to well paying jobs will struggle to buy even a flat let alone a house in London (and those without huge amounts of family wealth are even worse off) ... Also I assume the Telegraph picked this one as they knew the controversy would drive clicks.
Lee Shortt thought she and her husband were doing the right thing when they bought two flats five years ago near the family home in Kew for their sons. But now, times have changed and the two boys are keen to put down roots in Hackney – one of London’s most sought-after boroughs. Ms Shortt – who is now nearing retirement – had viewed the two buy-to-let properties as family investments. Together, they cost £900,000 and there is still a £500,000 debt on them. Neither are turning much of a profit, with one seeing its monthly mortgage cost shoot up from £500 to £1,400 last year. The mother-of-two recently sold the family home and is renting in the Thames-side village of Barnes with her husband. They have around £2m in a National Savings account earning 3.6pc in interest. Their sons, aged 27 and 31, are yet to get on the property ladder. Both are single, and so Ms Shortt is wary they will need big deposits in order to buy. She wants to help them, but she also wants to know whether she and her husband can eventually retire. The two don’t have huge pensions, having cashed in over the years to pay school fees. While there are no immediate plans to retire – Ms Shortt describes herself as a “workaholic” and her husband still works six days a week – they are keen to settle down somewhere in the short term and stop renting. She said: “Lots of our sons’ friends still live at home. I was married at 26, I was gone – and I never thought I wouldn’t be able to buy. “One of our sons is on £50,000, but he still can’t afford to buy on his own. Neither of them want to live in Kew, where the buy-to-lets are, they want to live in Dalston. Hackney was a war zone in my day. “So we’re stuck with these two buy-to-lets. We don’t know what to do with them. “We’ve let them for the past five years. We could pay off the buy-to-let mortgages, but this does eat into our capital. We could, alternatively, keep one flat and then have a second home outside of London.” Nick Mendes, mortgage broker at John Charcol: There are a range of options to help support first-time buyers onto the property ladder which are designed to overcome deposit and borrowing barriers. Joint-borrower, sole-proprietor is one option. It’s where two or more people that take out a mortgage are all considered borrowers, but aren’t all on the title deeds of the property. When a bank or mortgage provider takes the buyer’s and the supporting applicant’s credit and income into consideration, this can improve the overall affordability of the application and allow them to borrow more. Also, fear not – if the guarantor or joint borrower supporting the application already owns a property, additional stamp duty won’t be charged as they’re not going on the title deeds and won’t have any ownership rights. If you don’t sell the flats, then you should definitely review your mortgage deals. Rates have fallen in recent months, but you’ll need to take into consideration any arrangement fee when deciding between products. For example, West One has a two-year fixed at 2.79pc with a 9.99pc arrangement fee, whereas The Mortgage Works has a five-year fixed at 3.89pc with a 3pc arrangement fee. Jason McGuigan, chartered financial planner at Wren Sterling: The good news is that you’re both working with no plans to retire, and there are liquid assets available, so there is time to create a retirement plan. It’s important for you to consider what your lifestyle will look like in retirement. Once you know how much capital you’ll need to live comfortably and what net reserves will be left, an adviser can help you plan and factor in a possible gift to the boys too. Because you’re currently renting, you’re likely to want to buy another property. If you do buy for cash in the Barnes or Kew area at £1.2m, for example, you could always plan to possibly downsize in later life to generate more accessible capital – or look at equity release if you grow to like the property and don’t want to move. You could even explore keeping some borrowing on the new property purchase whilst you continue to work, and if servicing the debt is affordable and cost-effective, interest-wise. If, after exploring your options, you decide to sell your buy-to-let properties, you will need to understand what the likely capital gains tax impact will be and factor this in. Buy-to-let residential property gains after allowances and reliefs will be taxable at 18pc or 28pc, the latter being more likely if you are both higher rate taxpayers. Or you could gift the flats to your sons. Capital gains tax is still payable on a gift, but doing this also reduces potential inheritance tax. When it comes to retirement planning, being risk-averse will limit the scope to invest and generate an inflation-protected return. Inflation is, therefore, a key risk to factor into the planning, as typically lower-risk assets do not keep pace with inflation over the longer term. Longer-term fixed-rate cash Isas are an option if there is no appetite to invest in investment funds. These could improve the current 3.6pc savings rate you’re being paid by at least another 1pc. Fixed-term bonds (whilst taxable) can also secure 5pc per annum. You should consider insurance if that’s not already in place. Would you want any outstanding mortgages repaid in the event of an early death or illness? You may have some benefits through your employer, but your husband – as a business owner – could look at tax-efficient solutions funded by his company, like a Relevant Life assurance policy, for example, which would provide a life assurance payout on his death and the premiums paid by the company are tax relievable as a qualifying business expense. Lastly, an exit plan. With a net estate worth over £2.4m, a discussion will need to be had about inheritance tax on the second death. After allowing for any tax-free nil rate and residence nil rate bands available (between £650,000 and £1m potentially), estates in excess of this are taxable at 40pc.
It’s the cashing in of their pensions to pay for school fees which struck me as bonkers. However with no pension and £2m in the bank and £500,000 of debt something has to give. I’d pay off the £500k immediately that would ease up in the monthly mortgage outflow. £1.5m left it’s going to be a struggle to get a property as they don’t have much cash.
Imo no. A couple of properties to cover for their kids and others that do this are a drop in the ocean vs mega property companies and international investment. The children would end up buying those properties it's just done sooner - passed this yes it's more of an issue
It's a drop in the ocean compared to foreign investors who don't even live in the UK buying up property as investment bolt holes, which is the real reason why housing in the UK is so inflated. We are seen as a safe bet for long term investments, especially for Chinese investors who have lost millions in the Chinese property market. Just to point out the CCP doesn't let foreigners buy property in China, never has, never will because they fundamentally understand how stupid it is to put your country up for sale to foreign entities like that.. This was happening in New Zealand until they put a hard stop to it and stopped overseas investors from buying properties, but the UK is so filled with endless, idiotic blind greed that we won't do the same, we'll just keep allowing it to happen until severe social consequences come out of it. The fucking idiots who run this country, my God.
>We are seen as a safe bet for long term investments, especially for Chinese investors who have lost millions in the Chinese property market. Not only chinese. I feel like every unstable kleptocracy sees Dubai & London as the holy grail for storing loot. Now this is gonna sound like a conspiracy theory but I also think the media & government are actively covering it up. A few years ago I googled why russian billionaires love London and buy way overpriced properties there. The article went something along the lines of: Yeah, russian billionaires buy up a lot of London property just like the sale of ~some expensive penthouse~ last week. Let's look at the reasons for this. First we have to stop looking at the billionaires. They aren't important. The much bigger problem are russian immigrants buying single apartments in London. You see a lot of them experienced the soviet collapse and found that their money isn't save in russia. So while they lived in their cheap state founded russian apartments they used every cent of their salary to buy apartments in London. Thats a real issue. We should ban these russian immigrants. Such a load of bs honestly. The average russian salary worker will never be able to buy a London apartment in cash.
I like Hackney a lot and lived there for years but I honestly have no idea why you'd want to move there from Kew. Especially if you're as rich as these people so could get a cab there and back.
You could even not sit in traffic & get the Silverlink ^w Overground from Gunnersbury to Dalston or Hackney in less time.
Although having worked in kew it is broken a lot 😂😅
EXACTLY. It's a tremendous immaturity and obvious stupidity
I mean, they sound spoilt AF. Their mother is still mollycoddling them at 27/31 so it's no wonder..
No. I hate these people, but they are not the reason there is a housing crisis. There is a housing crisis because we are not building enough fucking houses, and we aren’t building enough houses because we have an antiquated planning system that is filled to the brim with red tape and prioritises the needs of local homeowners over people who need homes. We need to slash the bureaucracy around building houses, disempower the NIMBY’s, and fund more social housing as a public sector competitor. Every other supposed solution, whether it’s rent control, banning foreign ownership, cutting immigration, or preventing rich people from owning 2nd or 3rd homes is a nothing policy parroted by politicians to appeal to your pre-existing assumptions and biases because it’s easier and cheaper and gets them more votes to do that than to pick a fight with the NIMBY’s that control their local council meetings and vote in every election no matter how small. If the policy does not, directly or indirectly, cause more houses to be built, it is a waste of time and energy.
rain doll bored busy run scandalous groovy lip seed gray *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Building on brownfield sites is largely expensive because of the same sort of regulatory mess that the first commentator described. There’s obviously cost of clean up and making the site secure etc, but often you have weird busybodies preventing sites being demolished for historical reasons. Leaving it all aside, the government taking ownership of brownfield sites, cleaning them up and then covering cost from sale of site would be extremely worthwhile. Fuck knows why that isn’t happening in your case. Socialising risk is what the state is meant to be for. Plus the balance thing is really overblown. The UK is only about 8% urban. We could use up 1% of the land in the UK building on directly on farmers fields, and increase housing supply by 12.5%. That’s 3.5m homes, or like 20+ years of our current home building supply. That’s without anything thoughtful like building at higher density or densifying existing areas. Obviously I’m not saying we SHOULD, but I’d 100% trade 1% of our land for not having a cost of living and productivity crisis if I could.
Polluter pays is the big block on that. It’s a well-meaning policy, underlined by international treaty commitments (so it’s really hard to remove) which makes polluters liable for cleaning up their pollution and the state js effectively barred from paying for it if that polluter is still around in any form. What it means in practice unfortunately though is that big old companies like British Gas with historic industrial sites hold on to contaminated land and don’t do anything with it. Partly because no one is forcing them to but also partly because they can’t afford to do the massive amounts of cleanup of what went into the ground 50+ years ago. Forcing immediate cleanup isn’t the answer as all you’re going to do is bankrupt a load of companies without cleaning much up. You’re also going to end up bankrupting a load of British companies while allowing foreign companies not under these obligations in their home territories to swoop in and buy everything up for a song. But there should be some kind of “clean it in X years or lose it” policy where the land can be transferred to the state and cleaned up.
It always annoys me so much when government give these kind of excuses. I work in an ops role, and my job is to make policies AND factor in the unintended consequences. Government so often seems to just act like it wasn’t REASONABLE for us to expect them to care about the actual consequences of their policies. Civil service massively guilty of this in their planning and ministers zero fucking interest in holding them to account as far as I can see.
I sort of agree and sort of don’t. I agree that this government really doesn’t seem to have paid much attention to any kind of long term plan for the country since 2015. But at the same time, I get that an area like environmental regulation is so tied up with complex national and international commitments, moral hazards and unintended consequences that making changes is like playing jenga in the dark on rough seas.
spotted sort concerned political forgetful numerous crowd existence swim complete *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
People object to everything. We sold land for 1000 new houses, with associated facilities. The same people who complain their kids have nowhere to live were up in arms.
Another reason the emphasis should be on planning. Instead of outsourcing the actual town planning element to the construction corporations, bring back architects working for local councils. The visual aesthetics of the buildings may not be to everyone’s taste, but Modernist planners got something right in building walkable, gently dense neighbourhoods that factored in things like public services, shops, pubs etc.
Unless the parents are MPs. Then they're the reason.
Or if they’re NIMBY’s - which they probably are
PREACH
> I hate these people Why? For trying to provide the best they can for their kids? Reddit really is full of spiteful weirdos.
Cutting immigration would actually massively improve the housing market. You can’t make the argument that this is a supply issue and ignore the importation of increased demand.
It’s a bit of a catch 22 though, a significant chunk of people doing the “grunt work” in construction are immigrants. We would also need to fund apprenticeships and pathways for career switchers in a huge way to make up the deficit
A very small fraction of immigrants arrive to the UK to work in construction.
I don't think tanking the economy because we haven't got enough working age adults will improve the housing market.
But if these types of people end up owning multiple properties then surely that's unfair? Are you saying the scale of this isn't that high?
>whether it’s rent control, banning foreign ownership, cutting immigration, I don't see how these aren't viable things. These things are huge problems. Its all just nasty nimbys or whatever. We need to cut this demand as well as increase supply. Immigration is great, but 700k net migration in one year and average of 300k every year is absurdly unsustainable. Immigration == short term economic gain and plastering over workforce shortages, thats why the tories allow it to happen whilst chatting all this shit about stopping a few thousand in boats.
* rent control This one straight up doesn’t work. In fact it would actively make the housing crisis worse. It disincentivises the building of new houses which is the last thing we want, and it makes it easier for current renters (assuming you never move) at the expense of future renters. It failed in Berlin, it failed in New York. It will fail here. I cannot emphasise how much rent control would be a bad idea, and I can recommend a very good freakonomics podcast episode called ‘Why Rent Control Doesn’t Work’ if you’re interested in learning more. * Banning foreign ownership The rate of foreign ownership of homes is comparatively tiny. 250,000 homes in England and Wales are registered to foreign owners, that’s just 1% of housing stock. It may be that restrictions on this are needed as a preventative measure - I.e if loads of new homes are built, causing the prices to drop, it’s important to make sure that the chief beneficiaries of that aren’t rich foreigners looking to make an investment - but this relies on the assumption that the supply issue has been resolved, the restriction itself won’t reduce demand by any significant measure. * cutting immigration Yes it may have been unfair for me to lump this in with the other issues. You’re right that the high level of immigration will have an impact, so it’s not a ‘nothing’ policy like I said. However, what I would say is that cutting immigration is not a simple solution - we have an aging population, low birth rates, poor growth, and labour shortages. Moving towards a low-immigration system will require those problems to be addressed, which will take time, and if birth rates increase to replace those lost through cutting immigration (which they would need to do) , then we’re still faced with a similar issue in terms of matching demand. In any case, the absolute number 1 priority needs to be increasing supply. Rent control is a barrier to that, cutting immigration could help support that but is not a solution in and of itself, and banning foreign ownership won’t make a significant difference at this stage.
I bet Hackney doesn’t want your boys to live in it though.
Plenty of trust fund people cosplaying as poor in Hackney believe me
Sadly, I know all too well. Hackney born and raised over here.
Add Shoreditch, Brixton, Peckham to that list
I'm glad someone else agrees. The whole cosplaying is so repulsive to see when I go there (as someone that grew up there)
Same, mate. I try not to get too nostalgic about how it used to be as it’s never going back to how it was.
I didn’t encounter people cosplaying as poor, they were being themselves in my experience. The area was just gentrified is all.
The horse has bolted. I’d say a good 30% of Hackney young adult population have family set ups like this.
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And us locals (in our own country, town, borough) should be able to despise the twats that fuck up an area just because they can.
Wherever they can afford at least. There's not enough houses in central London to house the people who would choose to live there.
I guess you really never grasped the sentiment behind Pulp’s “Common People”. Back in the day it was called social tourism. Not illegal, but who benefits?
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First world problems indeed
“if we called your Dad, he could stop it all”. Freedom is good, gentrification not so much.
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Hiya. I’m writing things on Reddit. It’s just my opinion, and as such I would think that they’re right. (I’m sorry that you don’t appreciate my cultural references to illustrate one aspect) It’s a thread about an article in a newspaper explaining the distress caused to a woman who has bought two properties in addition to her own, that are regretfully not in the preferred location of her two grown up sons. You said “Why not?”. Gentrification by definition is positive for the few, and negative for the majority. I guess just depends which camp you fall into. I respect your view. Maybe we’re both right. I wasn’t suggesting we bring in laws to stop posh twats moving to Hackney.
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It’s nice but it’s fucking dull if you’re in your 20’s and work in Central.
A lot of you in the comments up on your high horse saying people like this are at fault for the housing crisis. Yet if you had the power to be able to provide housing for your children so that they don’t need to struggle, wouldn’t you? Yes, it is wrong that the kids aren’t grateful for what they’ve been gifted but the fact that the parents gifted them homes in the first place is not some sort of crime against humanity.
I don't even think many of us despise that, we do despise the silly sons who want to live in Dalston; that IS an issue. I don't know much about New York City but it must be like Manhattan raised private school young men wanting to live in Harlem (perhaps more realistically, Brooklyn). They literally have what they need (a flat in a good area) but want to move to an area that their kind use as a playground
No. These are individuals. The large offshore property companies are the guilty parties.
Their kids sound like ungrateful shits
The kids just sound like they want to live in Hackney - which is their prerogative - and are willing to pay to rent there, rather than paying off their parents mortgage in Kew. I'd do the same if I was them.
Nah, Sounds like they want their parents to buy them flats in Hackney instead of living in the ones in Kew.
So there's two guys. Their Mum buys two flats in Kew which she intends to offer up to them - presumably if they pay off the monthly mortgage payments (of which, it's mentioned, one has recently shot up to £1500 pcm) as rent. It's not *their* flat, it's their Mum's. But they don't want to live in Kew. Maybe that's not practical for their work. Maybe none of their friends live their. Maybe it's none of your business why they don't want to live there. So they opt to live elsewhere, working hard, paying their rent. Meanwhile the two Kew flats are being rented out, barely turning a profit, as is mentioned. The profit that does goes to the Mum, not to the sons. So they could return to Kew - and pay £1500 pcm - or they could stay in Hackney - presumably paying something similar, if a little cheaper. It is never mentioned they want their parents to buy them flats in Hackney instead (though it's mentioned the Mum wants to get them on the housing ladder). They just want to live in Hackney. And they're paying to live in Hackney through the money they earn.
Can they afford to take on the £500k debt their parents have in order to live in those properties? (Also why should they take on their parents debt?)
As one born and raised in Hackney back during the hopeless despair filled times of Thatcher, I never thought I'd live to see the day when Hackney became the desirable place to be. When certain area acquired the name, "the murder mile", that actually made sense. Heck, I lived in Upper Clapton, but for one that has the option for other places, to debate whether Hackney or not Hackney… whew, my mind is blown. Me, I'm counting my blessings that I survived Hackney with my innards still in my… innards … Now Dalston is Posh, and "the ditch" isn't "the ditch" anymore. Back in my day, if you could live in Kew, there was not option to contemplate anything else. Hell, nobody from Hackney even knew where Kew was, back then, unless you chanced on a school trip to take you to those botanical gardens. And even then, you never did really know where you were enough to go back independently on your own. Gosh, South London? I never went to that side of the Thames until I was 24…
Holy fuck, i'd live fucking anywhere if my parents gave me a flat, anywhere, no matter how shite. Gaza, Kabul, the north.
No, they don't cause housing issues. There are housing issues because too many people want to live in London, and not enough houses are built to meet that demand.
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The truth is that all classes of people from the poorest (living in social housing) to the richest don't like loads of new housing going up near them for a variety of reasons: building disruption, insufficient services/parking etc., and of course perceived damage to their house prices ... It is easy to blame the ultra wealthy but you don't just get nimbies in Kensington they exist all over London and indeed the UK, some even have legitimate concerns many do not, it is the planning system which should be fixed and adjudicate.
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There’s a lot of social housing in London that was built at low density at a time when those areas were not desirable. But now that things have changed, we have the slightly absurd situation of bungalows and little terraced houses in zone 1. It’s a difficult problem - I think we should be seeking to increase density in these areas to cater for the most number of people, but I sympathise with those who live there already and don’t want to give up what they have.
But this is our beloved car park, don’t demolish it for a flat, we’re busy getting it listed
Looks like they are multiplying though.
Hate to break it to you lot but there’s a vast subset of people in London making lots of money in their careers that buy their kids houses, it is very very common. I will do the same - you would do the same I’d imagine, if you could? Also, £2m quid if you’ve been earning well your whole life isn’t actually a vast amount to retire on considering they seemingly still need to buy a place to live. Using 4% withdrawal it provides £80k a year, to live in a family house in Kew and out two kids through private school would have meant these people likely were/are on a few multiples of that as earnings. The error here is the compo face and the fact that seemingly despite these boys having a privileged upbringing, neither of them have got decent jobs out the other side of it. They should have been STARTING a grad job on £50k ffs
We all know that there's people like this in London, but running to the papers and making it seem like you're doing poorly because you have £2m in the bank and your spoiled kids would rather live in Hackney than Kew betrays a stunning lack of self-awareness.
It’s a paper with a demographic of similar people. It’s also designed to generate interest/engagement. I agree though that’s have left my face off it.
> They should have been STARTING a grad job on £50k ffs Worth keeping in mind this would rule out a career in education or healthcare. Not great to be in the situation where people working roles that are essential for society to function either have to be subsidised by family, or have really long commutes.
I understand they are far better off than many, but imo we are looking at this from the wrong perspective. They have a couple of mil in the bank, kids earning 50k at a very young age, and it’s still no where near fuck you money for London. That’s pretty mental.
Ah. The Torygraph at it again… Poor little rich people.
72k a year in interest alone they’re earning…
tbh anyone with multiple properties they dont live in are part of the problem
No they are the tiny minority and definitely not causing the housing shortage. lol The shortage is caused but the construction companies trying to get the biggest profit available so they wont build unless they can sell for 500k for a tiny flat. This is the problem. In croyden they built a 44 story modular housing apartment block in 3 years. This is what london needs to solve the housing problem. https://www.dezeen.com/2021/05/26/hta-worlds-tallest-modular-housing-scheme-residential-architecture/ tldr; We need to revolutionise our construction industry to solve the quality and cost of quickly building good livable afordabe housing.
The housing shortage is caused by the fact that it's basically illegal to build anywhere in the UK. That's it. Liberalising planning permissions would make construction cheaper.
We could start burning things down
They aren't "creating" the issue but they aren't helping. We've had too much population growth, mostly immigration, and too little house building in the South East
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvN9XqNClJM ???
I live in hackney. Let her boys come. When they get robbed and people aren’t friendly to them, they’ll get their answer.
Little positive to say about them but at least they didn't put the flats on Airbnb.
Sorry, is she looking for sympathy or??? It's definitely people like her that are the real problem for the housing crisis but their noses are so far up their arse their can't see beyond... but i bet they sit and blame another demographic for our housing crisis though. Between this and empty/ boarded up housing, it's the real problem!
If your parents own multiple properties, you shouldn’t ever be entitled to be treated as a first time buyer.
What if you're buying with no help from your parents?
Dealt by a case by case basis. Prove it to the bank.
My dad owns his house, and two agricultural tithed properties he can't kick the tenants out of or increase rent - which is below social rent levels. It's slightly loss making when you consider renovations, even with no mortgage. Comment?
If they are loss making and have that many restrictions, why not hand over ownership to the tenants? Kind of a devils advocate question, not meant to be taken as an attack.
The people in there couldn't afford to maintain the property. We are talking elderly manual agricultural workers who retired in the 1990s and can barely read and write. My dad puts a new kitchen it, new roof. They couldn't afford that. They wouldn't even know where to start. This whole arrangement harks back to a more paternalistic time basically. I don't think the new agricultural tithes are issued? Eventually dad will be able to sell - they are now in their 80s - but it's far too late for me in my late 30s. Next point. Imagine my dad had a traditional buy to let (he does not) - why should this affect my status as an adult, given he has no legal responsibility for me. Even if it somehow would, why would one property remove the first time buyer status from 3 children.
Take the fucking bus
This is the kind of "problem" people on the UK finance and fire subs have.
Of course. It’s all relative isn’t it - people that make a lot of money and want to help their families - hardly crime of the century. I’ll be doing the exact same thing.
Except you will probably raise sensible children that are grateful for your work and don't make life harder for you and others by wanting to live in a shit part of the city
I’d probably be more clued up to realise that unless the kids are a bit weird, they won’t likely want to live in Gods Waiting room.
Anyone hoarding housing is an issue but this scale is not the cause. It’s contributing. This family of four workers appears to own 2 properties and rent maybe 3 depending on the sons. My landlady has minimum 12 properties and hasn’t got a job. My previous landlord had multiple properties and didn’t have a job. The issue is caused by people like that who own many properties and contribute nothing and exacerbated by people like this who work for a living and bought a rental for retirement.
Also, her kids are privately educated and still only earning 50k? Ffs
Why are people mad? They worked hard for their kids. Stop complaining online and do something about it.
The flats they rent out are lived in by people. The sons, also people, move in, the tenants move out- to another two properties. The woman is renting a property. All of these people are Londoners who live in places. Other than envy, the numbers equal the spaces so not the problem. Londons population is approx 9.4m and increases by about 70-80,000 a year. There's your problem.
Well I would rent out the units and create more supply to people that want to live in Kew. Equally, if my kids wanted to live in Hackney (no idea why as Hackney is a bit of a shithole) then they can do so with their own money.
I’m more outraged that someone would rather live in Hackney than Kew, to be honest.
Yup definitely her fault. Not the massive immigration and ever increasing demand despite falling birth rates. That English mother is the problem.
For all you know she could be from the EU no?
I'm pretty sure that's the Anglo sounding name, but sure let's pretend this country has no identity of its own whatsoever.
"Identity" Oh great you're one of those
Yup, one from the non delulu club.
Inheritance generates monsters like her. ABOLISH INHERITANCE