1. Governance
May 17, 2016

House prices are increasing five times faster than wages, and five other depressing charts about housing

By Jonn Elledge

The Resolution Foundation is a British think tank which focuses its work on the living standards of those on low to middle income. High housing costs mean that those Britons on low to middle incomes are – we may have mentioned this before – stuffed. And so, the Resolution Foundation has been wiling away some happy hours this morning, tweeting out some of the most depressing graphs you have ever seen in your life.

Here’s what we they told us.

House prices are increasing at five times the rate of wages

This, for those who have just joined us, means a mass transfer of money out of the pockets of those who don’t own houses, into the pockets of those who do.

 

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But this is largely a London problem

Honestly, look at the state of this:

 

 

The South East is largely London commuter territory. So is a large chunk of the East England, and so are parts of the South West (Swindon and so forth).

So it’s probably not a coincidence that the more London-y a region is, the bigger the jump in house prices.

In London, wages have actually fallen…

But have house prices fallen too? Have they hell.

 

 

…though even in distant regions, house prices are still increasing much faster than earnings.

Look at Scotland:

 

 

So while London is distorting the national picture, it’s probably not true to say that there’s no housing crisis outside it.

Owner occupation figures are in freefall

Can’t imagine why. But the result is that more households stuck in the private rental sector.

 

 

The people most affected are the young

Which is basically where we came in.

 

 

Anyway, I’m sure all this is fine because the government will be along with its mass building programme to fix all this any day now.

(Spoilers: it won’t.)

Jonn Elledge is the editor of CityMetric. He is on Twitter, far too much, as @jonnelledge.

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