Out of kilter with what you believe the average cost of renting to be? I'm looking for a reliable and substantive source. I'd have prefered it had the ONS made this data available, but they don't, so I've had to turn to something else.
I think there's probably been a breakdown here in supply and demand, and in that regard I don't accept we become slaves to the market. I actually think there's a terrific generational danger developing
When they came to power the coalition ripped up the house building targets that were contained in the regional economic strategies across the English regions (despite makign a huff and puff about it in opposition). IIRC within 18 months, about 250,000 new builds were removed from the schedule by local authorities (much easier to remove controversial plans than it is to push them through against voters wishes). They also introduced the new Localism Act (a Greg Clark disaster) which basically handed a lot of power to Nimby's to further block developments. The final break was then applied in the commercial lending industry.
Suffice to say, supply fell as demand rose, and continues to. The result is that people who might have had aspirations (nay expectations) of buying are being increasingly forced into the rental sector, adding furtjer inflationary pressures, and where they're being picked over. Not surprisingly it's most acute amongst young people
It's showing up as an inter generational dynamic. In fact to use a literary reference, this is almost Eloi and Morlock (without the cannibalism). We're sleep walking into situation where those who've climbed a ladder are then kicking it out from the inheritting generation below them. The cosnequences I believe will be far reaching unless something is done to correct this (and I mean something substantive not the odd little policy or scheme here and there)
What I'm trying to establish is how much money a young person in London (and the South East) earns by way of average (proving much harder than I thought it would be) and try and crudely reverse engineer their household budget starting with rental costs of property
So are we prepared to accept £18,966 as being an average indicative rent for London on a bedroom dwelling? Instinctively this feels high to me, but then there is no point even beginning this exercise if I'm going to apply my prejudice to what i think the figure should be! In the absence of the ONS, are Londonpropertywatch.com reliable? I assume that it's one or two people trawling newspaper advertisements?
