United Kingdom Property Bubble: An Overview


United Kingdom is the only country among other developed countries and especially among Eurozone nations where homes are costlier than ever. There are some features of the UK bubble that sets it apart from the housing bubbles of other developed countries. The first difference is that the price boom in the real estate market started earlier than other countries. The second point that sets the UK bubble apart from bubbles in other countries is that house process rose ninety percent between 2002 and 2007.

  • The housing bubble started in approximately 1998 and prices soared till 2007 and home equity also increased due to this. However new home buyers could not afford to pay such prices and the housing market was also very difficult to enter. According to some sources, prices rose to 168% in the year 2007 compared to prices in 1998. This essentially meant that more and more people, especially young adults, could not afford to buy dwellings.
  • House prices started to plummet in 2008 as the bubble burst and some experts believe that the prices will contract by almost 50%. However some believe that it may take many years till house prices get back to their peak levels. The problem of affordability has not been limited to London but has spread all over England. It can be safely said that the UK housing bubble is the worst among European countries and may have long term repercussions.
  • Sub-prime mortgage lending practices also worsened the problems faced by the UK housing market. Mortgages were made available to individual with poor credit rating and history. Just as in the United States Housing bubble and collapse where mortgages were aggressively sold and led to the sub-prime crisis. The increase in prices in the UK housing market along with alarming trends in housing supply is also one of the reasons for the prices to shoot up suddenly.
  • According to some experts, the number of houses built in the year 2001 was the lowest since the Second World War. The reasons for the lack of supply of houses in the UK are numerous and one of them is shortage of land supply and reluctance to build new dwellings quickly since it would be risky. Kate Barker who was a member of the Monetary Policy Committee compiled a report which reviewed the housing crisis and put forward some solutions.
  • The solutions that were recommended by the Barker Report are – Government should set out a goal for better market affordability,  further investment to deliver added social housing; a Planning-gain Supplement to make sure that local communities share in the value of development; a Regional Planning Executive to offer counsel on the scale and distribution of housing necessary; allotment of extra land in Local Development Frameworks; a Community Infrastructure Fund to assist in unlocking barriers to development; and local authorities should be allowed to “keep” the council tax receipts from fresh housing developments for a period of time.

If you have any more points or facts to add about this topic, please feel free to leave a comment.

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