Quote:
Originally Posted by muppet
I agree with you that the young are completely priced out, but I think the middle classes are too, increasingly. Many of London's middle class who own a home aren't complaining as it's their property prices that are turning huge profits (until they realise their kids won't be able to afford what theyve got), but the middle classes moving in aren't able to - $770,000 for an average house price is not great, with the average deposit alone expected to hit $170,000 within 6 years, for a first time buyer. One needs a yearly salary of around $100K to afford your average first home here.
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And? There are quite a lot of people who earn $100K in London, and that
is a middle class income (presuming you mean $100K and not £100K, and perhaps even if you do mean the latter). That is not shocking nor does it portend a problem for central London. When I say "younger professionals", I'm referring to people who can actually afford to spend $800K on a flat with a mortgage. The problem is when average house prices in a neighborhood are more like £4+ million, and there's no such thing as a deposit because sellers will only take payment in cash. That and the absentee landlords that are turning parts of London into ghost towns... a neighborhood full of super-rich residents is fine as long as it's actually full (though in the case of the Arab rich, I'm not sure it's better when they are there).
Quote:
Originally Posted by muppet
Almost none of the council housing from the nineties or noughties remain in the centre, although each borough provides, they now only do so to their outskirts (although even these places often top $3.4 million in value as seen in the ensuing media scandal that these places are being given out to 'benefit scroungers' with huge families).
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But the council housing is largely a post-war (WWI and especially after WWII) aberration. There was only council housing at the bottom of the King's Road because World's End was bombed badly during the Blitz. The fact that it's now rather expensive private housing again is just bringing things back to the way it was.
Not to mention that most of that council housing is a scar on the fabric of the city, and outside of the most central parts of London (where it cannot be avoided), the nicer places to live are partly defined by its absence. E.g., there's a reason that the area between Clapham Common and Wandsworth Common and around Battersea Rise is one of the nicer areas south of the river. Frankly if London is going to get denser, better it come from very expensive market rate apartment towers than more of the crap that was built in the 1960s.