House Prices in the South of England
Probably the most boring subject that ever arises whenever two or more are gathered together in the name of mortgage payers is property values.
In the south of England they are rising at a ridiculous rate. Which is good news for those of us who bought our houses some time ago.
But what fuels the continuing rise? An increasing demand.
The root cause is that it is is an artificial market rigged by the planners - without their say-so nothing gets built. Their signature can add millions to the value of a plot of land, but let us leave that there.
But what causes the increasing demand?
Immigration into the country is often blamed - the Optimum Population Trust: say that "Figures released by the Office for National Statistics on 2 November 2006 reveal population growth of more than 300,000 for the second successive year."
(This figure balances inward and outward migration - see http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=950 for more details.)
This would mean an extra 130434 houses are needed if they lived at 2.3 per house.
But is that the main culprit?
In 1971 http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.more.ukpoptable.html gives the population as 55.928 million - who lived at 2.91 people per household ( http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_compendia/GHS04/GHS04_3Househ
oldsfamiliesandpeople.xls which gives 19,219,244 houses.
In 2004 (latest figures I have) the population is 59.835 million, people per house is 2.30 which equals 26,015,217 houses.
If the population had stayed the same the decrease in number living per house would mean 24,316,521 houses would be needed - or an increase of about 5 million houses.
So we can see that the increased population only demands about 2 million extra houses.
And of course there is the internal migration from north to south, so not only does the south have to house all its own spreading families, "its" immigrants and its second-home buyers, it also has all those horny-handed sons of toil coming down from "up north" on their bikes looking for somewhere to live.
So in this case the blame can be pointed at our own selfish ways of kicking granny and the kids out to keep our cramped houses bearable, tolerating the failure of the north so workers have to move south and a smidgen of guilt for wanting those East Europeans in to wait our tables.
So not as simple as you thought!