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Comment by ta1243 | Hacker News Reader

Lot of wealthy 50-somethings that can live off their unearned income from their property portfolios.

Since 2000 house prices (when buy-to-let started to boom and many people now in their 50s and 60s bought in) have increased 283%. Average wages have increased 106%, and rents are far higher as a portion of wages than in 2000.

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I know few family members that retired during pandemic and are now living off on their airbnb incomes in a tourist town. They are able bodies and are in good health, now spend their days skiing and goofing off everyday. "housing crisis" has led to labor shortages in a weird way.

Bingo. UK will never fix the housing crisis because if they do so many retirees will be left with reduced savings.

But now, finally, the disbenefits of rampant house price inflation are starting to be shared by everyone, rather than by only those locked out of the leverage-fueled bonanza. The huge cohort of winners have done so well out of it that it is now actually creating a labour shortage as described, outweighing the "wealth effect" which was supposedly so beneficial to the economy throughout the boom. So now maybe The Government and The Bank will not be quite so inclined to keep pumping it up any more.

I disagree, there is building everywhere you look on the main train lines into London. But the population needs to stabilise, and even then it would still take a while to catch up.

British population is up by just under 10 million this century, that's a lot of new houses, and population density in houses is falling - its a far cry from the working class slum conditions of the 19th century, even in London these days.

Would be interesting to see what proportion of these new flats are being bought as investments to rent-out though.

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