At an economic level, one issue politicians rarely speak of but must worry about in private is demographic change. Sadly in the UK, whilst there was considerable long term thinking going on in the 1990's, we have now a Govt that says it thinks long term to hide the fact that it doesn't, in fact it has reversed many good things for shorter term gain. It is possible that the removing of the barriers to entry to the UK is far more deliberate than incompentent than it seems, its the poor man's solution to a looming problem.
I was looking at a chart on dependency ratios and it highlights to me the dramatic long term problems facing a number of apparently substantially attractive property markets.
Just to summarise the problem;
As the population ages, so an increasing share of the population shift from accumulatiuon to decummulation of assets (ie more sellers than buyers).
As the proportion of the population that is retired increases, so the cost of healthcare and other services rise, the tax raised on static tax rates falls, and the proportion of the population required to support the elderly rather than generate wealth increases.
Put into context, the perception of these markets is that more people want to retire to the sun, so the perception is excess demand for retirement property in the sun, but without a corresponding perception of increasing supply of property in the market from which people move. However, there will be a tipping point where the combination of locals aging and retiring, and wanting to downscale meets an influx of aged and unproductive souls to swamp the economy with declining taxes and rising social costs. There will then be a big problem with the retire to the sun strategy. And it is not as far away as you think....
Where will this be most extreme - Spain and Italy by the looks of it.