The Housing Bubble

CNBC reports on the UK. “The spotlight on the London property market as a destination for colossal sums of money has intensified after the so-called Panama Papers leak. The documents have led to various reports detailing the foreign ownership of multiple prime London properties, sparking fears that some multimillion-dollar deals are being financed with laundered money. London property is a compelling choice for criminals looking to make dirty money clean, according to law enforcement agencies. The city also has a highly competent and extensive professional services industry to provide all of the financial, advisory and legal support necessary to buy a house. These agents are tasked with raising red flags if they suspect corrupt money is in play but United Nations data show only a minuscule fraction of deals involving laundered money are ever flagged.”

“At the turn of the century, according to Nationwide data, the average first-time buyers’ house price was at a 4.3 multiple of their average salary. Now that figure has billowed out to around 10.1. Another negative side effect is said to be a prioritization in recent years by U.K. developers of building luxury developments instead of desperately needed affordable accommodation. Transparency International cites house price manipulation and the growth of ‘ghost’ areas as concerns. Indeed, an Evening Standard investigation in 2014 revealed £3 billion worth of London mansions sit empty, with the negative knock-on effects for local services and communities.”

London Loves Business. “Asking prices of homes in London are actually falling, according to a report by property agents Propcision. The study found that roughly 40% of properties listed for sale in Earl’s Court have had their price cut since coming to market. While 35% of properties listed for sale in Chelsea and Knightsbridge have seen a price reduction, 29% of properties in Hammersmith and Fulham have seen asking prices falling too.”

“Michelle Ricci, co-founder of Propcision, said: ‘The data suggests that we are seeing resistance in the central London market. To make an analogy, it’s like throwing a ball into the air, at some point the ball will stop moving upward and shift downward. In statistics, we call this a point of resistance…There are particular areas of vulnerability that may start to show demonstrable evidence of a downward trend - most notably new-builds.’”

The Daily Express. “Sales interest from property investors plunged by 27 per cent in March from the same month last year, showed data from Rightmove. The new tax was introduced to make it longer and more it difficult for investors to secure a profit on buy-to-let. More tax measure to reduce landlords profits are to be brought in next year. This appears to have put buyers off investing in property to rent, with a slowdown in investor spurchases, according to the property listing site.”

“Sam Mitchell, Rightmove’s head of lettings, said: ‘This waning of interest definitely seems to predict a slowdown in the buy-to-let market, but what’s not yet clear is if this will only turn out to be a short-term pause.’ The drop in investor interest already appears to be feeding through to house prices in parts of London. Asking prices in some of the most exclusive areas have dropped by more than 10 per cent this year, it was recently revealed. Some critics have predicted new build flat prices could plunge by as much as 20 per cent this year.”

The Independent. “House prices are always interesting and hugely important to the economy, but something is happening in London in recent weeks that gives them a special significance. It is a twist: central London prices are falling, particularly in the so-called super-prime postcodes such as SW1, but outer suburban prices are rising, in some cases sharply.”

“Of course the fall in central areas may not just be fear of Britain become more isolationist, and tax disincentives for foreign purchasers may also be having an effect. In addition, there are a lot of luxury flats hitting the market, especially along the Thames and this may be holding down prices too.”

“At any rate, according to some calculations from Land Registry stats made by Bloomberg, SW1 (that’s Belgravia and Victoria) is down 7.6 per cent year-on-year, and W2 (just north of Hyde Park) is down 12.2 per cent. As for the Crossrail impact, it doesn’t open until 2019 but already there seem to be mini-booms close to its stations. For example, prices to the West in Ealing (in W13) are up nearly 30 per cent, and to the East by Stratford (in E10) are up 28 per cent.”

The Guardian. “There has been a failure in both the media and government to properly diagnose the cause of high house prices. Until the causes – our systems of money and planning – are properly understood, we cannot hope to fix the problem. The standard solution is: ‘we need to build more,’ but this is not a simple supply-and-demand issue. Between 1997 and 2007 the housing stock grew by 10%, but the population only grew by 5%. If house prices were a function of supply and demand, they should have fallen slightly over this period. They didn’t. They rose by more than 300%.”

“The cause of house price rises is the unrestrained supply of something else: money. Mortgage lending over the same period went up by 370%, thinktank Positive Money’s research shows. It was newly created debt that pushed up prices in a decade of extraordinarily loose lending, which gave birth to a national obsession. Houses were no longer places to live, but financial assets. Property owners became immensely wealthy without actually doing anything.”

“When you have runaway inflation such as this, the Bank of England has a responsibility to quash it, usually by putting up interest rates. But – and here is the great sleight of hand – the Bank has seen fit not to include house prices in its measures of inflation. So, throughout the 90s and 00s, they could then ‘prove’ inflation was low or moderate and interest rates meandered lower. Meanwhile, more and more mortgages were issued, and so more and more money was created, and it pushed up prices. The government didn’t mind.”

“The fraud persists today. The Bank of England says inflation is 0.3%. Really? With house prices up by 10% last year?”

“When you make money this cheap, you create bubbles. Combining a money system that requires ever-expanding debt to function with a national policy of ignoring where that money goes is asking for trouble. And trouble is what we have.”