Seattle has a bunch of similar articles about "outsiders" supposedly driving up housing costs. Which is absurd: steel frame construction and elevators are very old technologies that allow humans to build just about as many housing units as can be desired.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with Vancouver but outside of the small downtown core, there isn't much zoning for density. Government policy has created a supply shortage.
Well, correct. There are lots of other expensive things you can buy which don't have any issue with price increases no matter now many people want to buy. Boats, for example. If lots of people start buying boats, then the number of boats being made increases, but the price of boats doesn't really change.
We can build units quickly and relatively cheaply (certainly the cost of building has fallen over time, certainly on a like-for-like quality basis. As you say, steel frame buildings with lift access can create housing units quickly and cheaply.
The issue is restrictions on supply caused by government policies and nimbly-ism, plus a general desire to shelter parts of the community from market forces.
It wouldn't matter how many Chinese investors wanted to buy apartments if supply kept up with demand.
London has had an influx of foreign property investment over the past 20 years. Now you need an income in the region of $120,000 and a $150,000 deposit to buy your first home. Even our members of parliament are struggling to buy anything[1].
Foreign property investment is very bad for the long term prospects of a city.
And yet London's population continues to grow at an astonishing rate, and businesses continue to move into London. Doesn't seem like the high prices are doing any harm to me.
A single bedroom, that when built as the spare room for kids to play in or a visitor, costs £400/month.
Myself and several friends have left London. Perhaps I've been replaced by a 21 year old British graduate, but this seems less likely than 10 years ago.
Well, someone's replaced you, since the population is growing rather than shrinking. I've only been here 7 years (since graduation) but more and more of my similarly-aged friends are coming to London. I think it's young people rather than retirees, graduates rather than not, and I'm not sure I care whether British (though I think most are).
I lived in London for 10½ years, from when I started university.
Most incomers are young people, but not all are graduates — many come from Eastern and Southern Europe and work low-skill jobs. I put "British", but probably meant someone one would expect to live in London for a long time. I got to know a few construction workers from Poland and Romania, and none of them had any intention to stay — they were in London to make money, and several had wives/children 'at home'.
This can make a functioning city, but it's a change from London of 20 years ago, when it would be artists and musicians taking some of these cheap houses and I think fewer people were there to make some money and leave.
A good part of why I left is because it wasn't as interesting as it used to be. I wondered if I was getting old, but then, "of the 430 music venues that traded in London between 2007 and 2015, only 245 are still open" [1]. I certainly noticed that there were fewer gigs I wanted to see, and they'd moved from Friday/Saturday to weekdays.
The other part: I was working for a scientific charity, with charitable pay. I wasn't saving much money, even with living in a shared house, so decided I needed a new job. I wanted to continue writing software for science, so there weren't all that many jobs that interested me in London.
> Most incomers are young people, but not all are graduates — many come from Eastern and Southern Europe and work low-skill jobs. I put "British", but probably meant someone one would expect to live in London for a long time. I got to know a few construction workers from Poland and Romania, and none of them had any intention to stay — they were in London to make money, and several had wives/children 'at home'.
There's always been people coming to London for a few years to make money. Ten years ago maybe it was the Australians coming over here to work in bars and restaurants. I think construction workers would always have been moving around (certainly my dad did); there are probably more of them now than ten years ago but more construction is hardly a bad thing. I certainly don't think there are fewer skilled jobs for graduates than there were: the City has been adding more and more jobs and sprawling down to London Bridge, tech has boomed in Shoreditch, Bloomsbury and elsewhere, there's that huge new medical campus effort around King's Cross. The BBC has sadly been driven away for political reasons, but I don't think there's ever been a better time to be a graduate moving to London.
Where is cheap has changed. Music, indie theatre and groundbreaking art have been pushed further out, to Camden and Highbury and Shoreditch and Hackney and Brixton and Clapham. Soho is halfway to being Knightsbridge. But that's always been the way of these things.
> "of the 430 music venues that traded in London between 2007 and 2015, only 245 are still open"
I have no idea what the real numbers are, but I can tell that's a line designed to mislead, to make you think there has been a decline in the number of music venues without actually giving any evidence for it. How long did those 430 last, on average? What proportion of the music venues that traded between 1999 and 2007 were open in 2007? Indeed, how many music venues were open in 2007? What's the betting it was less than 245?
> The other part: I was working for a scientific charity, with charitable pay. I wasn't saving much money, even with living in a shared house, so decided I needed a new job. I wanted to continue writing software for science, so there weren't all that many jobs that interested me in London.
You pays your money, you takes your choice. Some jobs and some people are surely getting priced out of London. But the city as a whole is doing very well thank you.
Housing cost has very little to do with construction and everything to do with location.
Real estate as an export is .. well, it's a response to circumstances, I suppose, but is it really sustainable? After all, you can't just make more land with the property "within 1km of Central Park".
What happens when the majority of a city is owned by foreign landlords? Do you think that might distort its politics?
"suggesting the typical wealthy foreign family buying Vancouver real estate pays little or no income or capital gains tax"
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/ho...