That’s with an established stream of income. Without, the deposit would be almost 50% leaving the homes to be scooped not by immigrants but those with high capital.
No immigrant is buying a home. It’s banks buying them up, landlords, foreign nationals as investments.
The UK housing is a commodity worth investing with no regard to the people who need them. Something has to give.
Without any increase in supply, more people wanting emergency accommodation or council homes increase wait times. The person on the edge of deciding between council housing or private rental will go for the latter. The new renter will have to try and outbid other renters causing rental rates to go up. Ultimately that nudges the person on the edge of deciding between private rental and buying with a mortgage to enter the buying market and try to outbid other buyers - causing an increase in overall prices.
There's suffering at each stage of this process, where high demand forces people to engage in transactions that stretch them financially. Over time many people will just 'drop out' by staying with parents or going abroad.
The only real solution is to build more houses. In the 1960s the UK built >400k new homes per year [1] - enough to comfortably a million new migrants annually whilst also increasing house choice and affordability for people already resident.
[1] https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/12041546940519997... (chart is for England, I've extrapolated a peak of 350k for England to justify a claim of >400k for the wider UK)
Theres no way around it. More people means less supply of housing. Canada has this same problem.
Why not? Immigrants to the UK mostly live in wealthier places, and while it's hard to find figures, either earn very close to what locals do, or more. A software engineer in London usually earns enough to buy in the city, and definitely earns enough to buy in the London suburbs.
Maybe at FAANG salaries and maybe 10 years ago. Definitely not now at normal salaries.
(Source: me, a software engineer in London for the last 25 years)
(just realised I said "the city" in my original comment and realised that could mean the City of London - I meant London itself, sorry if any misunderstanding!)