In countries that didn't have the benefit of the policy of the Blessed Margaret to make us a nation of home-owners:
1. Who does own the properties?
2. How do people pay rent when they retire?
3. Doesn't this perpetuate a have/have-not divide with the property owners buying more homes while the lessees disspate their income on rent without accumulating assets?
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As a slum landlord I don't have the answers. I just popped in to say you have a brilliant username that more people need to recognise.
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You are giving too much credit to Mrs Thatcher. In the 1930s thousands of homes were built out here in zone 5 and elsewhere to get people out of slums and plenty of them were put up for sale and people bought them. I found this which is a bit off topic but talks about the Great Inversion - in the past people lived out in Lydiasville if they could and commuted in to nasty dirty inner London. Now it seems to have reversed which is great news for me as it makes the mansion tax less likely.
Go back to 1900 and I suppose your employer or a private landlord owned the property and go back even further and we never stayed put as we were hunters and gatherers/
[a]https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/sep/10/metroland-100-years-engl…]
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Christ
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1930s houses were not always that well built. If you see pebbledash on them, avoid. Can hide a multitude of building sins.
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And Ivy growing up the walls.
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Thanks, Tecco
It sums me up.
Meanwhile I await proper answers to my questions. Perhaps our resident kraut will give us the benefit.
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i dont know the answer to the OPs question but I do seem to remember that in these European countries where people rent it has not really been much of a property market for investment purposes. So you can rent for decades and be no worse off than mortgage. So people dont bother buying. Although good qu re pensioners.
it was the same in UK for many decades. After the war many properties were needed to rehouse those bombed and yes clear slums and that led to building expolsion but not necc a buying explosion. I think that didnt get off ground until Thatcher decided it would be politicLly astute to create a nation of property owners, social mobility, Con voters etc etc, get rid of council accom and so on.
without that political intervention we may have ended up like France, Germany, renting not buying, and, most importantly, no house price hyperinflation.
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I believe that in Germany there are lots of large institutional investors who own whole blocks. I don't know why more people here don't agree to say three year tenancies with inflation related uplifts as it massively reduces the risk of voids between tenants and paying agents to renew the tenancy every year.
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