The UK housing crisis is certainly causing a stir among its citizens. Some are deriding the crisis as the largest transfer of wealth in recent memory. That may be bad news for the economy of the UK in the future. Net wealth in the UK has actually tripled over time since 1995. But inflation and other factors could spell trouble for the UK’s housing market. Learn a little about how property may be priced in the UK.
Key Takeaways:
- While it may look like the United Kingdom’s citizens are wealthier, in reality most of the increase has been from property values.
- Even though houses and land are worth more, especially land, only those who own them are benefiting from the increase.
- One driver of concentrating wealth has been property owners leveraging existing value to buy more land.
“According to the Resolution Foundation, homeowners born in the 1940s and 1950s gained an unearned windfall of £80,000 between 1993 and 2014 alone. In the early 2000s, house price growth was so great that 17% of working-age adults earned more from their house than from their job.”