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Comment by ChrisLomont | Hacker News Reader

And there was a housing crash in there and decent growth in population over that time.

Next, instead of picking a window wrapping the biggest housing bust in a century, pick various decades and see how normal volatility behaves - and you might find this variability not uncommon.

In fact, from your own source, Figure 1 - the percent of rented properties is, well, nearly constant over the entire window (31% rented in 2007, 37% rented in 2017). And somewhere in there mortgage laws got significantly tighter - no need for pesky investors to be the cause of less mortgages.

So go figure, right? Lots of reasons and complexity in there.

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>"And there was a housing crash in there and decent growth in population over that time."

There was a slight slump in rentals after the financial crisis, not before. So if anything it would depress the subsequent growth. In England the population grew over that period from about 51 million to 55 million. That's a 7% increase. Privately rented households, as per the link I posted above, rose by 63%. Hardly compelling.

>"In fact, from your own source, Figure 1 - the percent of rented properties is, well, nearly constant over the entire window (31% rented in 2007, 37% rented in 2017). And somewhere in there mortgage laws got significantly tighter - no need for pesky investors to be the cause of less mortgages."

Figure 1 shows private rentals increase from 13% in 2007 to 20% in 2017. Social rentals, which you are bizarrely conflating with private rentals, refers to social housing, and is exactly what I think should take the place of landlords. So its decline reinforces my point.

>There was a slight slump in rentals after the financial crisis, not before

And a significant decline in mortgages over that time, likely due to mortgage law changes as a result of the crash. Making it slightly harder to get a mortgage would, over time, move people from mortgages to rentals, which is exactly what the data shows, right?

UK added Basel capital rules, the affordability test, and changed capital ceilings in banks, among other changes. Academic papers list these as being major drives in declines in UK mortgage rates. Those people rent instead.

All with no need for speculators to drive the market up - the laws changed.

>Social rentals, which you are bizarrely conflating with private rentals

Ah, so now we're only taking a subset of renters. Good idea.

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