Reliance of Housing as a Financial Instrument: How Britain Became Hostage to Property
The UK has developed an unhealthy relationship with housing, which has acted as a slow rot to the economy. This fixation on 'Productisation' of housing has had immense negative social costs to previous generations, but its impact has become debilitating, especially to those entering the workforce recently. Other nations do allow for housing ownership (as any good free market should), but the issue lies in the extent to which it has on household wealth. Houses have been lumped as something you sell on instead of what their key focus should be, which is to provide shelter, actively strangling the economy's vitality. Wealth Trapped in the Brick and Mortar We Laid The scale of Britain’s housing obsession is often traced back to the Right to Buy policy introduced under Margaret Thatcher, (yet another push toward privatisation that, while politically popular at the time, had profound long-term consequences for the housing market). Today, property dominates the balance sheets of ...