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Comment by sytelus | Hacker News Reader

Given the explosion of interest in real estate from investors, I think situation going to get much much worse. I'm seeing houses going for 20% prices above asking prices, aggressive bidding wars, all cash deals - mostly from buyers who have no intent to actually live in those houses. If you search Zillow you will find tons of houses getting sold in 1 week and then immediately put back in market as rental properties. The rents are usually approximately set at 5% of house prices. This clearly means investors are considering real estate as something that has great returns while being well inflation protected. It's simply much better option that things likes long term CDs or TIPS etc. If this investment efforts are actually successful, most people - even in upper middle class - should expect to be able to only rent.

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This is pretty much the situation in the UK for the last few years, although the rents are closer to 10% the property value. Where I'm from, a nice area but pretty limited job prospects in any industry, a 2 bedroom apartment sells for £150k ($220k) and rents for £800 ($1200) a month.

Which part of the UK are you in? I knew there was a growing housing problem nationwide, but it's always interesting/depressing to hear specifics.

I'm in Aberdeen, and I've noticed the same kind of issue, except here renting a two-bed in a not-crappy part of town is £1,000+ per month. A crappier area, like where I live, is between £700 and £800. A nice area is in the region of £1,500.

Here, the (currently stuttering) oil industry has had a huge intensifying effect on price rises, both by putting more well-paid people into the rental market and by creating a larger than average pool of Buy-to-Let landlords looking to invest their oil earnings in property "for their retirement".

I'm not there anymore, but this is West Dorset. It's a nice place to raise a young family, but the job prospects are few and far between. It's a bit too far to commute to major cities unless you want a 3+ hour drive or train journey each day. Unless you are happy working in Tesco or being an office administrator, all young people will gravitate towards London. The biggest industry is tourism, but that of course is very seasonal.

There is a lot of new development going on (around 60/40 split between green and brown field) most of it being retirement apartments. They are a great idea as they create jobs and relieve housing demand, but at ~£300k they are well out of the price range of most local people.

I've posted this before, but it's germane here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/dlknowles/britains-dysfunctional-pro... . The UK and London in particular has essentially decided to make increasing the supply of housing through building more of it extremely, extremely hard. Econ 101 suggests that holding supply constant as demand increases will raise prices.

The solution is intellectually easy but politically difficult. The UK can, if it so chooses, make housing much less expensive by simply letting markets function.

Never draw long term conclusions from real estate. It is the most cyclical of cyclical markets. Money is historically cheap, when that changes... Boom.

But in what region? The whole point of the post is how much it varies depending on where you live.

Worst yet, this is happening worldwide as investors realizes this is a not heavily regulated investment methods.

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