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Comment by vixen99 | Hacker News Reader

Do you write anodyne Christmas card mottos as a side project?

With price a consequence of demand, <all> Britons on average salary (about $38K pa) have given up any hope whatsoever of buying their own home thanks to demand exacerbated by an influx of immigrants unprecedented in any of the last two centuries. Indeed even professionals earning around $150K are very hard pushed. Of course planning permission & other factors have played a role in this but unquestionably, Britain is overcrowded and folk-in-the-street looking for jobs and accommodation are suffering thanks largely to a smug rich elite who accumulate moral brownie points opining on the value of immigration. I would have thought that enough is enough.

All this is redolent of vitamins: "If Y mg of vitamin X is good for you then Y*10 mg is ten times as good for you!". Really?

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I must have hallucinated when I bought my 3 bedroom detached house for £145k.

Britain is not "overcrowded". If you don't want to live in expensive London, then move.

I think you'll find that 1) the housing problem is strictly localized to London and surrounding areas, rather than Britain as a whole, and 2) it's mostly due to rich speculators keeping buildings empty, rather than everyday immigrants looking for cheap accomodation.

apart from the very centre of london where there is an unavoidable shortage of space, the main cause is planning restrictions, with the refusal to expand on to "green field" sites the biggest barrier to more affordable housing. rich speculators cannot hold up the price of property all on their own without very strong supply side restrictions...

Immigration has a tiny effect on housing demand. In part that's because immigrants are generally far more willing to share accommodation in order to save money. A far bigger effect is elderly people continuing to live in large family homes after their children have left, even on their own after the death of a partner. This is a much bigger drag on housing availability.

The main reason we need working age immigration is our ageing population. Our retiree population is set to massively inflate over the next few decades. Unless our otherwise shrinking working age population wants to be financially buried under the costs of supporting them, we need to support our working age population size and the only way to do that is through immigration.

I'm 23 and have just bought a house outside of Cambridge. I saved and saved and have managed. If people make the right choices and that is what they want to do, then they can. Outside of London, owning a house isn't a ridiculous idea.

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