A Particularly Stressful Time of Year

So, who to vote for!

Gosh, it's all terribly exciting with the election and what-not.

For most people working in real estate, Christmas is a deadline rather than a religious festival. And the election makes it even more stressful in some ways, for those of us concerned that nothing is being done to address the crisis of housing provision in the UK and the related ridiculously distorted asset wealth distribution (or lack thereof). The consequences of this problem not being addressed, as I have covered (or rather, ranted about) in depth, are going to be potentially catastrophic.

Less than a quarter of people under the age of 35 are projected to own their own home at all, with the majority of that cohort currently destined to rent in perpetuity. The related questions this raises are of course well voiced (how will this cohort pay for retirement?) but will quickly be superseded: for Something Bad will happen before these longitudinal questions become relevant. And the longer the correction takes to come in the short term, the worse the Bad Thing will be.

There's a poster outside the office of the University that I teach part-time at, promoting general encouragement to seek help for mental health problems (I heartily agree on seeking help if you are experiencing such issues, of course); the poster starts:

"This can be a particularly stressful time of year...".

The poster has actually been up all year now.

But it's right: this is a stressful time of year. And thinking about the above doesn't ease the mind much.

I was going to provide a breakdown of the housing policies of the main parties, as I haven't written a blog post for a while, and I've read all the manifestos now: but then I remembered that at the last election the Tories promised to build 200,000 starter homes - and haven't built a single one. So, the fact that in the current manifesto of the Tory party they promise :""First homes"- discounted properties for purchase with discount maintained in perpetuity" - means almost nothing to me, as they blatantly disregarded previous policies, and didn't even pretend to implement them, so why would they honor this one?

Labour's chances of forming a majority and implementing their own housing policies are, apparently, zero. So there's not much point there, either. Ditto Lib Dems etc...

However, Labour's promise of offering a form of Right to Buy for private tenants - rapidly hidden from public view, and not making it into their manifesto (which is instead replete with promises of housing milk and honey, when the time of angels is upon the earth) - will, I am convinced, return with a vengeance, and probably be all we talk about by 2023.

Whether this, or a form of this policy, is done by stuffing the mouths of landlords with gold, or simply by confiscating all Buy to Let properties, will determine the future of our country for the next decade. It will lie somewhere on this continuum, but I am convinced it will happen, one way or the other. Whether we end up eating zoo animals for food will also depend on how this is handled. The longer we leave starting to at least attempt to help ease the housing crisis, the more chance of the latter occurring, and the more our country's collective Zoo's elephants and penguins should be nervous. Addressed quickly, we could plausibly find a way forward as a country without ending up boiling stones for soup.

Currently, I am not optimistic.

But then, this is a particularly stressful time of year.