Anecdotes of the farcical British housing market

[The Angry Capitalist]

Having come across a Guardian article in another thread it seems appropriate to post some commenter stories from the article as it shows how insane the UK market has become.

Here's a post from a worker in Oxford on a good salary:

 

This hits close to home. I have a PhD, I’m an above average earner, I’m ready to settle and think about kids with my partner, but when I moved to Oxford for work in January, I enquired about 100 apartments and ended up having to live somewhere where my commute is 3 hours a day. To have a 2 bed apartment in Oxford, and not be “rent overburdened” you’d have to earn more than £100k gross pa. And forget about getting a mortgage. The whole situation feels untenable but also hopeless, like it’ll just keep getting worse and worse and there’ll be no end to the basic life experiences that my generation and successive gens will never get to have. FYI: we’re now not going to have kids, even though we want them, we can’t afford to.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/27/twenty-renters-flat-britain-home-landlords-agents-tenants#comment-163725603

 

These are major symptoms of  a very unhealthy economy that is on the verge of some serious cardiac arrest.

[The Angry Capitalist]

Here's another.

Professional couple in Bristol who cannot even afford to move out of their shared accommodation room for rent situation:

"This article makes me sick only in that it is so bleakly relatable. My partner and I desperately want to move in together, but here in Bristol, our wages can't keep up with the rent, even though we are both full-time professionals.

It means we're trapped in our tired, expensive respective flat shares, with no real chance to take the next step in our lives together because we simply can't afford it - and we're the lucky ones!

Genuinely don't understand what we're expected to do, and as long these ghouls continue to get their exploitative rent payments, they couldn't seem to care less; soul-destroying."

 

These stories really hit hard how the UK is going down the toilet.

And there are still plenty of idiots around who want rates to go down?

 

[The Angry Capitalist]

Another informative response to ponder:

"Amazing how much worse it's got in such a short time.

I last did this in January 2021, in the depths of the third lockdown. Looked around two or three very mediocre places before finding a one-bed - in London Zone 2, convenient for the underground! - for £1250 a month.

When I moved out in March this year, the landlady got a new bathroom put in and advertised the place for £1850 a month. It went pretty much immediately.

It sucks out there these days."

 

That's nearly a 50% increase in rent folks in the space of 2 years.

If you can't see how this is not a catastrophe in waiting you need your head examined.

The warning signs have been with us for many years.

London will be the first major casualty in the UK of this cheap money era that has destroyed so many people's lives.

[desiringonlychild]

Another anecdote- went to view a 3 bed flat (for sale) that was tenanted. The landlord informed me that his tenants were paying £2k rent pre pandemic but he was selling up in order to buy himself a Porsche...and he said that being a landlord was great as he can charge £2500 in rent.

That was several months ago and the flat is still unsold. The tenants have moved out (family with two kids including one daughter doing her GCSEs). And it is relisted on Rightmove for rent at £2700 per month..

[The Angry Capitalist]

Just now, desiringonlychild said:

Another anecdote- went to view a 3 bed flat (for sale) that was tenanted. The landlord informed me that his tenants were paying £2k rent pre pandemic but he was selling up in order to buy himself a Porsche...and he said that being a landlord was great as he can charge £2500 in rent.

That was several months ago and the flat is still unsold. The tenants have moved out (family with two kids including one daughter doing her GCSEs). And it is relisted on Rightmove for rent at £2700 per month..

Yes.

Many are just trying to price gouge now every penny to breaking point.

It will have the opposite effect soon as people leave and no longer decide to play the game.

[The Angry Capitalist]

Another poster writes about the crazy London market:

"Competing with 20 others? (Four Yorkshiremen accent) Luxureh!

I was desperately flat hunting three months ago and I was regularly up against 40, 60, and in one case 80 others (admittedly, I had to take the agents' word for this). Prices were through the roof. There were zero one-bed flats in a London postcode with their own oven, toilet and washing machine for less than £2,000 a month. None of the lettings agents let me know if I hadn't been successful. Most wanted acceptance on the spot; several basically held on-site auctions, at which the price would rise by up to 10%; one of the few that accepted me demanded six months' rent in advance.

I've rented in London all my adult life, and I'm in my 50s. It has NEVER been anything like this bad."

 

[The Angry Capitalist]

These stories really are depressing.

Another one here:

"As a young professional looking to rent a three bed in London, the market is absolutely cut throat. At every viewing time slot I’m accommodated, another 20 people are present. Families, students, other professionals - and this is on only one day of viewings. Most flats have 3 or 4. But even if you find a suitable place and put an offer in, what is truly disgusting is the bidding war which follows. Estate agents often encourage you to place an offer over £300 the monthly asking price, only for it to end up going for much more. A small three bed in Waterloo over a corner shop, advertised at £2800pm, ended up going for £3500. This culture of bidding wars is absolutely disgraceful and should be illegal. It is classist and squeezing anyone on modest incomes out of London. Something needs to be done."

 

What a mess!!

The more of these stories I see the more confident I am that London is going to see full on collapse of the economy.

[nero120]

Judging by Foxton's recent results they are cleaning up on the back of this behaviour. Could it be possible that the rental crisis was actually caused/engineered by estate agents attempting to make up for the massively declining sales numbers by pushing rental rates as hard as possible?

[The Angry Capitalist]

A Manchester resident gives us their side of the story:

"I’ve recently started working a few hours a week doing viewings on rental places in a town near Manchester. It’s insane.

In my interview I said I was happy to do evening viewings as I imagined they’d be popular; the agent suppressed a smile and explained that people came when they set the time for.
The area is a popular one, supposedly ’on the up’, but every property I show has 6-9 viewers. There is never a second viewing. This means that those viewers are competing fiercely with each other, and try all kinds of things to get ahead. Paying 6-12 months rent up front, requesting an audience with the landlord (as if they’re some combination of Pope and King) and offering to pay over the monthly rent are all very common.

The scariest thing is that landlords are selling up, so there are fewer places coming on to the market. This doesn’t only push the rent up more, but the lack of places to live is stifling the town’s growth. This isn’t London where people will commute from miles away, eventually they just go and live & work somewhere else.

My employer is a good one, and they always say that they won’t take properties that they wouldn’t want a friend living in, but others aren’t so scrupulous. I know families who’ve moved into damp and leaking flats and are paying more than they can afford to do so.

The whole market is broken, and it will take several years for it to right itself - even if a solution can be found. I have young children, and I don’t see how they will find a place to live when they want one in 10 years or so".

 

Words are failing me at this point.

It appears we right in the middle of a very serious crisis.

These comments are giving us real-time perspective on the market as it is trying to adjust from artificial low interest rates to market set rates.

A very good barometer of what is going on out there right now.

It's ugly!!!

[The Angry Capitalist]

1 minute ago, nero120 said:

Judging by Foxton's recent results they are cleaning up on the back of this behaviour. Could it be possible that the rental crisis was actually caused/engineered by estate agents attempting to make up for the massively declining sales numbers by pushing rental rates as hard as possible?

No.

Estate agents have no power to control the market like no other people can.

Its the consequence of 30 years plus of political degeneracy and the intellectual bankruptcy of the Establishment.

It's now reaching a crescendo.

[desiringonlychild]

5 minutes ago, The Angry Capitalist said:

These stories really are depressing.

Another one here:

"As a young professional looking to rent a three bed in London, the market is absolutely cut throat. At every viewing time slot I’m accommodated, another 20 people are present. Families, students, other professionals - and this is on only one day of viewings. Most flats have 3 or 4. But even if you find a suitable place and put an offer in, what is truly disgusting is the bidding war which follows. Estate agents often encourage you to place an offer over £300 the monthly asking price, only for it to end up going for much more. A small three bed in Waterloo over a corner shop, advertised at £2800pm, ended up going for £3500. This culture of bidding wars is absolutely disgraceful and should be illegal. It is classist and squeezing anyone on modest incomes out of London. Something needs to be done."

 

What a mess!!

The more of these stories I see the more confident I am that London is going to see full on collapse of the economy.

It is a nationwide problem, no? Of course most acute in London. If you go to other places it will be the same problem but with slightly fewer people as competition. Remember average rent in UK is still £1000.

There are still many ways it can get worse

1. Renting a bunk being normal for young professionals 

2. People living at home and commuting for the 1 /2 days in office (one of my ex colleagues did this)

3. Renting a shed

 

[The Angry Capitalist]

Another reality check for a new rent seeker:

"I feel this in my bones. Last week we were served notice on our flat of six years as the landlord can't meet the rising mortgage costs and has had to sell. We were lucky enough to have a fairly decent landlord and he did inform us some months ago and let us stay on the contract rent until he found a buyer. However, now the search is formally on its been incredibly depressing and humbling. We've been priced out of our area - imagine our joy when a "to let" sign appeared in our building, only to find it was £700 a month more for a flat with the same layout! It went in a day.

So we've cast a wider net, which brings the prices down to our budget but even then you need to compromise on almost everything and still be much worse off financially - and that's if you beat out the competition. We've put in two offers so far this week, both requiring us to prefill in sensitive financial information with the agents and, thus far, we've had no emails back to tell us the offers have been rejected (we can assume) and if the information has been deleted safely.

We're not poor either. We're three working professionals in our 30s. One of my flatmates is a senior advisor at a law firm. If even people like us are struggling, I feel sick thinking about it. When i moved to London 10 years ago I earned 20k a year and lived in Zone 3, just below Tooting. Now a young person, even on the new LLW, wouldn't stand a chance of that. London needs people of all walks to come and find a life here, but it really feels like it's doors are truly shut to all but the very wealthy, or those fortunate (?) enough to be born into social housing (which local authorities are still pawning off as fast as they can to developers and displacing communities) or families that bought and paid off decades ago (who still have to contend with rising costs brought about new money flooding in to their communities). If even flat owners are having to sell up and escape, what hope so renters have?"

[The Angry Capitalist]

1 minute ago, desiringonlychild said:

It is a nationwide problem, no? Of course most acute in London. If you go to other places it will be the same problem but with slightly fewer people as competition. Remember average rent in UK is still £1000.

There are still many ways it can get worse

1. Renting a bunk being normal for young professionals 

2. People living at home and commuting for the 1 /2 days in office (one of my ex colleagues did this)

3. Renting a shed

 

Wouldn't say there are still many ways left as we are close to the bottom.

If gets worse you will see a flood of people leaving the country at least from the 50k to 100k salary type people who can transfer their skills to another country without issue.

[The Angry Capitalist]

This disaster ends one of two ways:

1) We have a wage price spiral and a very serious inflation problem that will make the current one look like child's play or

2) The market completely crashes to its free market fundamentals in proportion to the current average salary and the highly leveraged lose a lot of paper wealth built up over the last 10 years.

[desiringonlychild]

5 minutes ago, The Angry Capitalist said:

Wouldn't say there are still many ways left as we are close to the bottom.

If gets worse you will see a flood of people leaving the country at least from the 50k to 100k salary type people who can transfer their skills to another country without issue.

We belong to that group of people. 

 

But the housing crisis is global and at least in London we do have a secure place to live (and not need to compete in the rental beauty pageants)... We did buy here because it was the cheapest English speaking capital city to buy without either of us needing permanent residency. Would have been cheaper to buy government housing in Singapore but my husband would have needed permanent residency..in the UK, they didn't count my full income due to my visa when I was buying but they allowed me to put my name on the mortgage and the deeds..

Edited July 28, 2023 by desiringonlychild

[desiringonlychild]

4 minutes ago, The Angry Capitalist said:

This disaster ends one of two ways:

1) We have a wage price spiral and a very serious inflation problem that will make the current one look like child's play or

2) The market completely crashes to its free market fundamentals in proportion to the current average salary and the highly leveraged lose a lot of paper wealth built up over the last 10 years.

1 is more likely than 2. Cos of supply. 

Moving to another country is expensive. And there are rental crises in other countries too except that as a foreigner, it's even harder for you. People can move out of cities as they did during covid but it's still too many people chasing too few properties as landlords sell up. House prices have been falling in London (zone 2 is 24% down in real terms) but this doesn't affect the rents...

[Insane]

As I have said so many times there is not enough property to house everyone. Yet many people still want more immigration into the UK. 

[Insane]

Just now, desiringonlychild said:

House prices have been falling in London (zone 2 is 24% down in real terms) but this doesn't affect the rents...

When buying goes out of fashion the rental market gets hotter. The demand and need for a roof over the head does not go away. 

[desiringonlychild]

5 minutes ago, Insane said:

As I have said so many times there is not enough property to house everyone. Yet many people still want more immigration into the UK. 

Most of them are healthcare staff and international students. We could recruit fewer immigrants into the NHS if we paid nurses better but apparently there is no money to do so..

It's a doom loop.the average Briton has low earnings for a developed country due to low productivity and hence doesn't contribute enough to the tax coffers

 

Low productivity= low earnings = low tax revenue = cuts in government funding = low business investment and low wages for public sector workers = more immigration..I am an immigrant myself but even I can see that recruiting all the nurses you can find in Ghana/Pakistan/India is not a good long term strategy because sooner or later you will run out of people to recruit. Not everyone can drop everything in favour of a life in the UK!

Edited July 28, 2023 by desiringonlychild

[Insane]

1 minute ago, desiringonlychild said:

Most of them are healthcare staff and international students. We could recruit fewer immigrants into the NHS if we paid nurses better but apparently there is no money to do so..

We need more immigration as we need people to work in the NHS and the Brits won't do it.

That is the number one default sound bite when immigration comes up. The number two sound bite is the crops are rotting in the fields. 

Sorry I don't buy them we have had over 10 million extra people arrive in the UK over the last 20 years and these jobs are still unfilled so " most of them are healthcare staff" does not wash. 

4 minutes ago, desiringonlychild said:

It's a doom loop.the average Briton has low earnings for a developed country due to low productivity and hence doesn't contribute enough to the tax coffers

Meaningless to the conversation which is the shortage of property compared to the population.

But as you mentioned it if the Brit has low earnings and hence doesn't contribute enough to the tax coffers why would a foreigner immigrating to the UK be any different? 

7 minutes ago, desiringonlychild said:

Low productivity= low earnings = low tax revenue = cuts in government funding = low business investment and low wages for public sector workers = more immigration

If you look at the conversation the people who cannot afford a decent roof over the head are earning decent money. They will be paying a decent proportion of tax ( taxes in the UK have risen not fallen) but this is all a distraction from the topic which is an acute shortage of property. 

[MARTINX9]

18 minutes ago, Insane said:

As I have said so many times there is not enough property to house everyone. Yet many people still want more immigration into the UK. 

Surely having 10 million more people in the UK since 2000 has had no impact on the demand for housing?

An acute shortage of property - perhaps an even more acute excess of people? 

[a j]

53 minutes ago, MARTINX9 said:

Surely having 10 million more people in the UK since 2000 has had no impact on the demand for housing?

An acute shortage of property - perhaps an even more acute excess of people? 

There is an unwillingness to say this in public. Would the Guardian publish this comment?

I wonder how much of the unwillingness to build new houses is due to people not understanding how much the population has grown?

[canbuywontbuy]

3 hours ago, a j said:

I wonder how much of the unwillingness to build new houses is due to people not understanding how much the population has grown?

our population is at least 77 million (as of 2007)

Quote

 

It is the statistic that dare not speak its name, though eventually it must. It has huge ramifications for the civil and political life of this country, the health of the equity markets and, most immediately, the residential property market. So don't forget you read it here first: the population of the UK is presently somewhere between 77 and 80 million.

The 2001 census, already hopelessly out of date and easy to avoid for those who find filling in forms a trifle inelegant, numbered us at a little under 59 million. But as statistics go, that one's most definitely a damned lie.

My sources for the above statement are good, but scared of admitting the truth for fear of incurring the wrath of Whitehall. It's like the best way of monitoring illegal drug consumption: forget the pious statements from ministers – the foolproof method is to sample our water and the effluent in it. That's easily the best way of monitoring what the nation has been consuming.

 

 

[debtlessmanc]

6 hours ago, The Angry Capitalist said:

Having come across a Guardian article in another thread it seems appropriate to post some commenter stories from the article as it shows how insane the UK market has become.

Here's a post from a worker in Oxford on a good salary:

 

This hits close to home. I have a PhD, I’m an above average earner, I’m ready to settle and think about kids with my partner, but when I moved to Oxford for work in January, I enquired about 100 apartments and ended up having to live somewhere where my commute is 3 hours a day. To have a 2 bed apartment in Oxford, and not be “rent overburdened” you’d have to earn more than £100k gross pa. And forget about getting a mortgage. The whole situation feels untenable but also hopeless, like it’ll just keep getting worse and worse and there’ll be no end to the basic life experiences that my generation and successive gens will never get to have. FYI: we’re now not going to have kids, even though we want them, we can’t afford to.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/27/twenty-renters-flat-britain-home-landlords-agents-tenants#comment-163725603

 

These are major symptoms of  a very unhealthy economy that is on the verge of some serious cardiac arrest.

I read this and posted it on the other thread. I have two kids 23 and 25 who live in a small house with my ex (she got it mortgage free from on divorce). I what I hear from them about their peer group is the effects of lockdown and a desperation to get a place of their own. My son has finally got a job and instantly wants to move out, which in high peak is still realistic as things have not gone quite that insane price wise yet.

So it’s good old supply and demand, high immigration and a desperate post locked down young generation. What I will say is that my son is working in a large new supermarket and was amazed how still many of the staff are new from the continent. Several of them are people we went back and have returned (with right to remain) as “pay/costs are even worse there”

my daughter on the other hand feels that she would have to get a boyfriend to rent and has this dream of a single girl about town lifestyle.she could never afford.

 

 

Edited July 29, 2023 by debtlessmanc

[desiringonlychild]

6 hours ago, Insane said:

We need more immigration as we need people to work in the NHS and the Brits won't do it.

That is the number one default sound bite when immigration comes up. The number two sound bite is the crops are rotting in the fields. 

Sorry I don't buy them we have had over 10 million extra people arrive in the UK over the last 20 years and these jobs are still unfilled so " most of them are healthcare staff" does not wash. 

Meaningless to the conversation which is the shortage of property compared to the population.

But as you mentioned it if the Brit has low earnings and hence doesn't contribute enough to the tax coffers why would a foreigner immigrating to the UK be any different? 

If you look at the conversation the people who cannot afford a decent roof over the head are earning decent money. They will be paying a decent proportion of tax ( taxes in the UK have risen not fallen) but this is all a distraction from the topic which is an acute shortage of property. 

It's because British doctors and nurses are leaving. It's also because of ageing population so we need more healthcare staff than we have ever needed.. also what is a decent wage in the UK is not a decent wage that is needed to prop up an extensive welfare system including free healthcare for an ageing population. Case in point - we earn £120k combined, are in our early 30s and I consider this to be subpar earnings compared to our counterparts in new York or Hong Kong or even Munich. Yet we are top 5% of the UK. That is ridiculous. People in the UK are underpaid and don't realize it.