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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

The UK population would have started to decrease naturally I believe around 2024 without immigration. It so happens that the past few years have also seen record high immigration and population growth...

Obviously the property market would be looking very differently if population was decreasing. The whole economy would.

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> Obviously the property market would be looking very differently if population was decreasing. The whole economy would.

Isn't this exactly what's happening in Japan? Govt practically giving away mostly rural homes, as owners died without heirs.

> It so happens that the UK population would have started to decrease naturally I believe around 2024 without immigration

I think it would've been much earlier than that. Cumulative net migration since 2000 is around 8.5 million people. So the UK's current population would be radically lower today without immigration.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/283287/net-migration-fig... (annoyingly the per year figures need to be summed up manually on both this and ONS reports)

Are you trying to paint a conspiracy here? It seems like people just move around if they can, and one pressure that drives people away is a lack of housing even worse than other places' lack of housing. If there's less of a lack of housing (relative to how bad it is everywhere else), of course a place becomes more attractive to move to.

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