The Property Obsession, and why house prices are so expensive in Britain
A recent BBC feature by Ian Pollock has looked behind some of the reasons why house prices in the UK are so high. First of all, the British, unlike many other nations, seem to be obsessed with house prices. There are now ten major house price surveys measuring price movements on a month by month basis.
There is also a lot of public interest in DIY, interior decorating, foreign property investment and property speculation. There are literally dozens of exhibitions and companies specialising in showcasing the properties available for purchase in foreign markets and the British account for a huge proportion of property purchases in the EU by non residents. It seems as if the British value home ownership in a way that few other countries do.
This trend is also set to continue. The population is set to rise by about two million people over the next five years and a further three million in the decade after that. This will mean there is a continuing demand for housing that housebuilders will find it difficult to keep up with. However, even more drastic is the increase in households which is increasing at a phenomenal rate with an extra 2.3 million households in the nation by 2016, an increase of almost 10 percent.
The big driver in this increase in household numbers is that more and more people are choosing to live alone. While in the past, most households consisted of over three people, this figure is now closer to two and it is getting to the stage where almost every adult in the country will require their own home.
However, it appears as if we are not alone in this obsession. Many report that there is nothing unusual or peculiar about the British obsession with homeownership and residents in other countries are just as eager to climb the property ladder.