Friday, October 24, 2014

The housing crisis

The spiralling cost of buying a first home in the UK means that almost half of all renters are not sure they will ever be able to get on the property ladder, a survey has revealed.

Just 56 per cent of those renting in Britain said they had plans to buy their own home at some point in the future, with the biggest factor preventing people from doing so being the vast deposit required – nowhere more so than in London.  A single-car garage off the King’s Road in Chelsea has an asking price of £550,000 – more than double that of the average British home – and has come to epitomise the London property bubble. Last week, the National Housing Federation (NHF) published a report that said only Londoners earning more than £100,000 a year can afford a typical mortgage.

More than one in four of those surveyed said they definitely did not have plans to buy property in the future, while another 19 per cent admitted they were not sure whether they would.

Even among those who did plan to buy, optimism about their chances of ever doing so has fallen.

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