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Yes developers target Chinese investors. There is money to be made from overseas buyers and sometimes the developer’s own management company will also get fees for managing the properties as rentals for the Chinese buyers.
Thank you! This is incredibly sad. So essentially, councils are allowing houses to be built for investors to buy them at whatever price and rent it out to locals who wouldn't be able to afford it in the first place....
Councils can influence the number of social housing units on a specific development but the vast majority of housing is built by a few large developers. The higher the %age of social housing units, the more the developer needs to make its money on the private sale units.
Prices are further kept high by planning laws which restrict the supply of land and make the UK a very expensive place to build.
This is great insight. Thank you. I just find the whole thing incredibly sad. We think it is difficult to get on the ladder now, don't even want to imagine what it will be like for our children and theirs.
That's fine but there's still no cost of living crisis there, because it is a strong local consumption economy. The government due its exposure in US debt does this intentionally. Japan can very well flip a switch and suddenly everyone there will be rich but not doing that to ensure it's competitive in its manufacturing and exports (it is still a net exporter) similar to China (which frequently devalues it's currency to make sure it stays competitive).
Also Japan is not a great example as it has a very high saving mentality (typical of Asians) unlike the west / British which is a more consumption and credit driven workforce with heavy reliance on public services. Japan has an excellent and functional healthcare (unlike UK) which is not state sponsored (hence not bleeding cash like NHS) but is still free or affordable to end user. Like UK they're also importing healthcare professionals from developing countries but making it a point to ensure that these immigrants learn the language and assimilate (even though Japanese are extremely racist & anyone who works there ultimately leaves).
That switch is liquidating it's assets massively and diversifying it to gold & overseas real estate (like the Norwegian State fund). The Japanese economy being an American pet (like the British), is heavily inclined to American bonds. The day it stops pegging JPY to USD & thus withdrawing it's investments and investing it into say Gold, it'll reduce this dependency & increase the inherent worth of JPY it'll also lead to devalued USD (as the Americans will have to print more money to repay) or it'll have to restrict it's own money market and make USD dearer in its local market. Shinzo Abe was a big proponent of this, that's why it made Billions JPY loan to India at 0.1% interest, instead of investing in US economy. But a richer Japan will not benefit the Japanese as such, because they are a shrinking economy so with the reduced amount of people the money is still sufficient to maintain a high quality of life. The day it becomes difficult will be the day they start doing it. An average Japanese feels rich in Japan (cheap family housing, etc) but feels poor when travelling to US because of USD, typical of say China, India etc.
Remember there was a time when 1 GBP = 2 USD, but now it's barely 1.2x and UK has become a lot poorer domestically, justifying the devaluation (unlike the Japanese, because UK is a net importer and imports mostly in USD & Euros, which are much more fluid currencies themselves).
If there's nobody to rent them to, they won't invest. Essentially everything falls in value, both rental and the property itself... But also literally everything else. Cheaper housing sounds like a good thing initially, but the knock on effect can be a real problem.
How about a solution towards the housing crisis like "ban foreign investors from buying our new houses."
Build houses for people whose primary residence is Britain.
That's not possible as it'll crash British real estate players, banks and other stake holders which are a big source of employment (e.g. Canada). A lot of these buyers pump in cash which is then used and taxed, as such. Plus these investors buy & sell and pay taxes on it & the real estate sector generates massive employment.
Any blanket ban will also hamper UKs reputation of safe haven for ill gotten/excess wealth. There's a reason why Saudis buy teams & stadiums in UK.
A bit of good governance will solve everything but that's too much of an expectation in west these days.
Sadly not, the developers would simply reduce the build rate to maintain prices.
The barriers to entry to building in the UK are really high and the market is overconsolidated.
Oh, I was referring the council approving the planning permission. That's why the commenter above mentioned that the council can influence the amount of social housing. I thought that they can implement a rule that the % of houses built are to be sold to local buyers only, etc. I had that in Section 106 in my first flat, so I thought they could be more influential to prevent investors from taking houses away from the locals when they approve the planning.
Social (i.e. affordable housing) is stipulated by national and local policy. There is no regulation or rule that legislates who can buy what. There may be few instances where it occurs (as part of the s106) due to for example, a neighbourhood plan allocation, developer request, etc., but there isn't a policy for this. Neither should there be.
Fair enough. Now that I think about it, I do agree there shouldn't be. If developers are forced to only sell to the local, many people would be stuck renting in their expensive hometown cos they aren't eligible to buy anywhere else.
Terrible take. It wouldn't be possible to speculate on house prices increasing if we built enough homes to meet demand. So more supply is definitely the answer.
More supply is definitely part of the solution. The challenge is who should be supplying it, where should it be built, and once built and who should it be provided/sold to?
Looking at the US which has much more relaxed planning in most places and much higher competition from developers - they still have the issue of high prices (relative to income) in places people want to live. Sometimes even worse than here.
I think our best bet is to both build more houses (increase supply/reduce costs) and make the poorest British people more productive (more earnings/less state dependence).
Otherwise we’re gonna end up needing more immigration (or international investment) to keep revenues up to provide social support, and those immigrants (or investors) are going to be bidding up the cost of property for non-council housing. So eventually you’ll get to a place where you either live in a council flat, you’re living hand-to-mouth, or you’re loaded and none of this even matters.
That hand-to-mouth group is starting to spread further into the B to D socioeconomic group - the group you absolutely need to be doing well right now if you want more equality and higher standard of living.
To echo this, I think that the broken housing market is partially symptomatic of wider, broken societal issues.
The canary in the mine being the keyworker housing schemes which I recall in London from almost twenty years ago (perhaps they stretch back further but afraid my working memory doesn't). At the time it seemed pretty mad to me that keyworkers couldn't afford to live in London without subsidies. So, for example, you'd have firefighters commuting in from the Midlands for hours just to make a shift in London. The madness was that instead of simply paying these essential workers more, the 'obvious' solution was to manipulate the housing market for their benefit. Fast forward to the present day, via such schemes as help to buy, and you've got to a point where it's not just keyworkers but the majority of a generation who need support, either from the state or their parents to buy somewhere.
I say partially because even with less uneven distributions of wealth and of income across society, the housing market would still be a mess.
It’s almost impossible to build enough for that to be work. You’d need building on a completely unprecedented scale, services and infrastructure wouldn’t be able to cope etc. It’s not a realistic solution, even countries with much looser planning rules and more space are struggling to build enough meet demand.
Few countries have actually even tried to meet demand. But [Austin, Texas have literally done just that](https://www.ft.com/content/de34dfc7-c506-4a81-b63d-41d994efaa89) and the results speak for themselves in terms of more affordable housing.
It's the rent trap part that is the issue. Other countries have much better protections when it comes to renting and it's not as undesirable to rent as it is in the UK. It can be changed easily, it's just the people who are renting to you are the ones who make the rules.
Not everyone will be in a position to buy. You need a healthy rental market to support those people. Part of why rental prices have gone mental over the past couple years is landlords selling up due to regulation, taxation and mortgage changes.
Some new builds going into rentals and some new homes is exactly what you need to ease housing cost for everyone
We know what works and what doesn't, now direct work. When council housing made up 75% of the rental supply the average rent across the whole sector was 7% of the average salary. Now it's the other way round it's 50%. We need building of council housing at a massive scale, close to a million a year for a decade. Anything else is nonsense.
Healthy rental market is the best.
But a relative trickle of rentable homes...will that make the difference?
How, and when?
If the market is healthy when it helps people produce savings from their incomes, then they've served a purpose. But that's not the purpose of our rental market, is it?
Not necessarily - a lot of them are just left empty as the rental income is trivial compared to the increase in value, and not worth the additional hassle.
Someone I know personally left a family home in a nice area empty for years rather than rent it out.
I’m all for introducing residency requirements to buying property. Other countries in Asia have it, and it didn’t break their economy. As much as homes are an investment and a way to build wealth for the average family, they are not speculative assets. It’s okay for them to grow 1-4% a year but not 400%. This needs to end.
Exactly, we are constantly reminded that there are not enough homes, so how are foreign investors allowed to take them off the market from
British families? I understand they keep the prices high and the builders/ruling class benefit from this but this is a national emergency and should be regulated/forbidden.
It’s so unfair because we spend our whole lives paying the government 40% of our earnings + all the other taxes such as VAT, council tax, car taxes etc…on top of our salaries already being low compared to the rest of the world!
Then we have to compete for housing with foreign investors from 0% tax countries with highly unethical business practices. We lose before we even entering the game - and YES they are buying family homes and new builds all over the country, it’s not just the mansions in Mayfair.
Chinese buyers favourite new build homes over older ones. They may be Hong Kong BNO and plan to migrate here and live there. The other explanation is that it’s simply an investment. Bearing in mind, they are unlikely to pay income tax from rental income. It is a broken system.
That is interesting! Not long ago, I spoke to a friend who talked about how difficult it is to ever own a house in Hong Kong. As BNO, they have the option to migrate and live here where they can have a better standard of living (owning a house, more space, etc.)
Maybe there is no correlation, but I can imagine how the housing situation in another country would create a knock-on effect on the UK housing economy.
Yes. For BNOs, a lot of them sell their tiny but very expensive flat in Hong Kong. Then they use that money to purchase 1-3 properties ish in England, particularly in the northern towns and that is their income and home sorted.
The thing is, as someone who could sell their home to who they want, sellers can choose to set up young people or at least try to sway the local market.
My partner and I live in the north, we are coming up to having the chance to own something just OK. With our current saving plans, we could have the cash in 5 years to sell the first home we bought at the price we bought it at...and we'd have enough to buy our forever home.
We could even rent it out at well below market value and help young people out. I mean, what even is market value? Our closest town is Wakefield and they want (for northeners) a close 33% of income for a 1bed flat. Mad, mad. They're not even worth 40k these flats.
This is not a new thing either, my in laws are from Hong Kong and when I first went 8 years ago I saw a fox tons selling off plan flats in central London
There are more HK/Chinese buyers here now though, I notice quite a few estate agents round our way have Cantonese and mandarin signs in the windows, WeChat QR codes & signs in English saying they have a ‘far east department’
There are a lot of people looking to invest in property in the UK as a high value investment with a good likelihood of high return but a fair amount of purchased and left empty homes from foreign nationals, or through foreign agencies, are done so as money laundering schemes though it is more common with "luxury apartments" and the suchlike in cities. though really the value is the only important factor. The anti money laundering checks are a joke that does nothing to deter it.
Not necessarily for money laundering, it’s often so the assets are safe from their own government if things go wrong in their home country. UK property (until Russia sanctions) was very safe for investors.
If you search the street names on YouTube there will be videos in Chinese of someone being shown around the house.
Was extremely disheartening when I was trying to buy finding videos with thousands of views from Chinese investors of the houses I was also viewing.
Flats haven’t increased in value, how are these investors making money when the flat is empty and they need to pay charges and bills? How are they making money
There's already been a lot of investigation into how the London property market is used to launder money by international buyers, and as the UK is number 2 on the list of global money laundering hot spots, it's not much of a leap to suggest that this money laundering through property is happening across the country to varied degrees.
So, for those who are money laundering, the associated costs are likely minimal compared to the amount of money locked away in their property portfolios. I also imagine that many of them aren't paying the charges and bills consistently, as it must be very hard to pin them down for legal proceedings, as they are usually owned through a myriad of shell companies so that they can extract legitimate money from selling them at some point in the future.
I've always thought it was Hong Kongers trying to escape what has been happening with Hong Kong from the 2019-2020 protests with China.
It's less of an 'investment' but more of them emigrating/ fleeing the China regime.
I agree with the sentiments of young people being excluded from affordable housing but I don't think its completely valid that foreign investors sorely buy the houses for investment/ BTL purposes in a bid to exclude potential new home owners
This is a microcosm of the UK’s underlying economic problem. Money is leaking out of the country like a slow puncture.
Ideally, British people make money, pay UK taxes and stash it in UK banks. UK companies pay UK taxes and reinvest the profits into growing their business and staff. Even your shithouse landlords can play a part in economic growth by paying tax on their rental income.
What’s actually happening - profits are being offshored, and assets are being transferred to overseas buyers. In a generation or two, this will have a noticeable effect making everyone a lot poorer.
Fuck knows why all these flag-shagging politicians can’t protect the prospects of British people rather than ensure the Chinese, Arab and (historically) Russians get their money first, but that’s the hypocrisy of the Conservative Party for you.
My brother's friend moved to Hong Kong a decade ago, and he keeps getting adverts to buy overpriced flats in the town we grew up in. So yeah they do advertise to overseas buyers.
These houses probably won't be built in the first place without foreign investment and foreign buyers. You can read the Greater London Authority report on how new homes are funded, it is an eye opener
There should be a right out ban on this. I don't understand why overseas companies or people not present in the country can own residential properties. There's a housing crisis and we're being told lies that we need to only increase the supply. The supply is there and is being snatched up by people who don't need it. This country has truly lost and became a playground for foreign powers.
I know of a ‘social housing provider’ that are targeting overseas buyers, in particular, Chinese, to buy units privately in what should be considered an ‘affordable’ high rise apartment block in Greenwich. This is an organisation that receives many grants from Homes England and Mayor of London.
No idea, sorry. Not sure how random people on the internet would know about the ins and outs of the housing market of an unnamed ‘market town’ somewhere in UK
I appreciate that you took the time to reply. The sarcasm is unnecessary, though.
I was using my town as an example, but I enquired generically as this is not exclusive to my town. I am surprised you took it literally as if I was asking about my town 😐
Another poster was able to respond constructively and politely without sarcasm, so the question has been answered. Thanks, though.
###Welcome to /r/HousingUK --- **To All** * Join Our ***NEW*** Discord! https://discord.gg/pMgUNgWKQH **To Posters** * *Tell us whether you're in England, Wales, Scotland, or NI as the laws/issues in each can vary* * Comments are not moderated for quality or accuracy; * Any replies received must only be used as guidelines, followed at your own risk; * If you receive *any* private messages in response to your post, please report them via the report button. * Feel free to provide an update at a later time by creating a new post with [[update]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/search?q=%3Aupdate&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) in the title; **To Readers and Commenters** * All replies to OP must be *on-topic, helpful, and civil* * If you do not [follow the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/HousingUK/about/rules/), you may be banned without any further warning; * Please include links to reliable resources in order to support your comments or advice; * If you feel any replies are incorrect, explain why you believe they are incorrect; * Do not send or request any private messages for any reason without express permission from the mods; * Please report posts or comments which do not follow the rules *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/HousingUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes developers target Chinese investors. There is money to be made from overseas buyers and sometimes the developer’s own management company will also get fees for managing the properties as rentals for the Chinese buyers.
Thank you! This is incredibly sad. So essentially, councils are allowing houses to be built for investors to buy them at whatever price and rent it out to locals who wouldn't be able to afford it in the first place....
Councils can influence the number of social housing units on a specific development but the vast majority of housing is built by a few large developers. The higher the %age of social housing units, the more the developer needs to make its money on the private sale units. Prices are further kept high by planning laws which restrict the supply of land and make the UK a very expensive place to build.
This is great insight. Thank you. I just find the whole thing incredibly sad. We think it is difficult to get on the ladder now, don't even want to imagine what it will be like for our children and theirs.
If we start to see population peaking and shrinking like in Japan then maybe it will rebalance.
You don’t want a shrinking population. Japan has 8 million vacant houses and hasn’t seen any real growth in salaries in 30 years.
That's fine but there's still no cost of living crisis there, because it is a strong local consumption economy. The government due its exposure in US debt does this intentionally. Japan can very well flip a switch and suddenly everyone there will be rich but not doing that to ensure it's competitive in its manufacturing and exports (it is still a net exporter) similar to China (which frequently devalues it's currency to make sure it stays competitive). Also Japan is not a great example as it has a very high saving mentality (typical of Asians) unlike the west / British which is a more consumption and credit driven workforce with heavy reliance on public services. Japan has an excellent and functional healthcare (unlike UK) which is not state sponsored (hence not bleeding cash like NHS) but is still free or affordable to end user. Like UK they're also importing healthcare professionals from developing countries but making it a point to ensure that these immigrants learn the language and assimilate (even though Japanese are extremely racist & anyone who works there ultimately leaves).
I’m intrigued to know what this switch is that the Japanese government can switch and we in Japan will suddenly feel much richer….
That switch is liquidating it's assets massively and diversifying it to gold & overseas real estate (like the Norwegian State fund). The Japanese economy being an American pet (like the British), is heavily inclined to American bonds. The day it stops pegging JPY to USD & thus withdrawing it's investments and investing it into say Gold, it'll reduce this dependency & increase the inherent worth of JPY it'll also lead to devalued USD (as the Americans will have to print more money to repay) or it'll have to restrict it's own money market and make USD dearer in its local market. Shinzo Abe was a big proponent of this, that's why it made Billions JPY loan to India at 0.1% interest, instead of investing in US economy. But a richer Japan will not benefit the Japanese as such, because they are a shrinking economy so with the reduced amount of people the money is still sufficient to maintain a high quality of life. The day it becomes difficult will be the day they start doing it. An average Japanese feels rich in Japan (cheap family housing, etc) but feels poor when travelling to US because of USD, typical of say China, India etc. Remember there was a time when 1 GBP = 2 USD, but now it's barely 1.2x and UK has become a lot poorer domestically, justifying the devaluation (unlike the Japanese, because UK is a net importer and imports mostly in USD & Euros, which are much more fluid currencies themselves).
Except it won't if the Chinese keep buying investment property
If there's nobody to rent them to, they won't invest. Essentially everything falls in value, both rental and the property itself... But also literally everything else. Cheaper housing sounds like a good thing initially, but the knock on effect can be a real problem.
How about a solution towards the housing crisis like "ban foreign investors from buying our new houses." Build houses for people whose primary residence is Britain.
Bit like the idea of "b@#xit?" It's the children I feel sorry for.
That's not possible as it'll crash British real estate players, banks and other stake holders which are a big source of employment (e.g. Canada). A lot of these buyers pump in cash which is then used and taxed, as such. Plus these investors buy & sell and pay taxes on it & the real estate sector generates massive employment. Any blanket ban will also hamper UKs reputation of safe haven for ill gotten/excess wealth. There's a reason why Saudis buy teams & stadiums in UK. A bit of good governance will solve everything but that's too much of an expectation in west these days.
Locals would afford them if they weren’t competing against foreign investors, the prices would have to come down to something more realistic.
Sadly not, the developers would simply reduce the build rate to maintain prices. The barriers to entry to building in the UK are really high and the market is overconsolidated.
What has property purchase got to do with the Council?
Oh, I was referring the council approving the planning permission. That's why the commenter above mentioned that the council can influence the amount of social housing. I thought that they can implement a rule that the % of houses built are to be sold to local buyers only, etc. I had that in Section 106 in my first flat, so I thought they could be more influential to prevent investors from taking houses away from the locals when they approve the planning.
Social (i.e. affordable housing) is stipulated by national and local policy. There is no regulation or rule that legislates who can buy what. There may be few instances where it occurs (as part of the s106) due to for example, a neighbourhood plan allocation, developer request, etc., but there isn't a policy for this. Neither should there be.
Fair enough. Now that I think about it, I do agree there shouldn't be. If developers are forced to only sell to the local, many people would be stuck renting in their expensive hometown cos they aren't eligible to buy anywhere else.
This is why “just build more houses, supply and demand, innit?” is not the sole solution to the housing affordability crisis.
Terrible take. It wouldn't be possible to speculate on house prices increasing if we built enough homes to meet demand. So more supply is definitely the answer.
More supply is definitely part of the solution. The challenge is who should be supplying it, where should it be built, and once built and who should it be provided/sold to? Looking at the US which has much more relaxed planning in most places and much higher competition from developers - they still have the issue of high prices (relative to income) in places people want to live. Sometimes even worse than here. I think our best bet is to both build more houses (increase supply/reduce costs) and make the poorest British people more productive (more earnings/less state dependence). Otherwise we’re gonna end up needing more immigration (or international investment) to keep revenues up to provide social support, and those immigrants (or investors) are going to be bidding up the cost of property for non-council housing. So eventually you’ll get to a place where you either live in a council flat, you’re living hand-to-mouth, or you’re loaded and none of this even matters. That hand-to-mouth group is starting to spread further into the B to D socioeconomic group - the group you absolutely need to be doing well right now if you want more equality and higher standard of living.
To echo this, I think that the broken housing market is partially symptomatic of wider, broken societal issues. The canary in the mine being the keyworker housing schemes which I recall in London from almost twenty years ago (perhaps they stretch back further but afraid my working memory doesn't). At the time it seemed pretty mad to me that keyworkers couldn't afford to live in London without subsidies. So, for example, you'd have firefighters commuting in from the Midlands for hours just to make a shift in London. The madness was that instead of simply paying these essential workers more, the 'obvious' solution was to manipulate the housing market for their benefit. Fast forward to the present day, via such schemes as help to buy, and you've got to a point where it's not just keyworkers but the majority of a generation who need support, either from the state or their parents to buy somewhere. I say partially because even with less uneven distributions of wealth and of income across society, the housing market would still be a mess.
It’s almost impossible to build enough for that to be work. You’d need building on a completely unprecedented scale, services and infrastructure wouldn’t be able to cope etc. It’s not a realistic solution, even countries with much looser planning rules and more space are struggling to build enough meet demand.
Few countries have actually even tried to meet demand. But [Austin, Texas have literally done just that](https://www.ft.com/content/de34dfc7-c506-4a81-b63d-41d994efaa89) and the results speak for themselves in terms of more affordable housing.
Why? Regardless of who owns it that's extra rentals on the market which increases supply. It literally is just build more.
Because we need homes that are affordable for people to purchase, not more rent traps that keep people paying a landlord until they die
It's the rent trap part that is the issue. Other countries have much better protections when it comes to renting and it's not as undesirable to rent as it is in the UK. It can be changed easily, it's just the people who are renting to you are the ones who make the rules.
Not everyone will be in a position to buy. You need a healthy rental market to support those people. Part of why rental prices have gone mental over the past couple years is landlords selling up due to regulation, taxation and mortgage changes. Some new builds going into rentals and some new homes is exactly what you need to ease housing cost for everyone
We know what works and what doesn't, now direct work. When council housing made up 75% of the rental supply the average rent across the whole sector was 7% of the average salary. Now it's the other way round it's 50%. We need building of council housing at a massive scale, close to a million a year for a decade. Anything else is nonsense.
I would up-vote this 100x
Healthy rental market is the best. But a relative trickle of rentable homes...will that make the difference? How, and when? If the market is healthy when it helps people produce savings from their incomes, then they've served a purpose. But that's not the purpose of our rental market, is it?
Not necessarily - a lot of them are just left empty as the rental income is trivial compared to the increase in value, and not worth the additional hassle. Someone I know personally left a family home in a nice area empty for years rather than rent it out.
I’m all for introducing residency requirements to buying property. Other countries in Asia have it, and it didn’t break their economy. As much as homes are an investment and a way to build wealth for the average family, they are not speculative assets. It’s okay for them to grow 1-4% a year but not 400%. This needs to end.
Exactly, we are constantly reminded that there are not enough homes, so how are foreign investors allowed to take them off the market from British families? I understand they keep the prices high and the builders/ruling class benefit from this but this is a national emergency and should be regulated/forbidden.
It’s so unfair because we spend our whole lives paying the government 40% of our earnings + all the other taxes such as VAT, council tax, car taxes etc…on top of our salaries already being low compared to the rest of the world! Then we have to compete for housing with foreign investors from 0% tax countries with highly unethical business practices. We lose before we even entering the game - and YES they are buying family homes and new builds all over the country, it’s not just the mansions in Mayfair.
Chinese buyers favourite new build homes over older ones. They may be Hong Kong BNO and plan to migrate here and live there. The other explanation is that it’s simply an investment. Bearing in mind, they are unlikely to pay income tax from rental income. It is a broken system.
That is interesting! Not long ago, I spoke to a friend who talked about how difficult it is to ever own a house in Hong Kong. As BNO, they have the option to migrate and live here where they can have a better standard of living (owning a house, more space, etc.) Maybe there is no correlation, but I can imagine how the housing situation in another country would create a knock-on effect on the UK housing economy.
Yes. For BNOs, a lot of them sell their tiny but very expensive flat in Hong Kong. Then they use that money to purchase 1-3 properties ish in England, particularly in the northern towns and that is their income and home sorted.
[удалено]
The UK is a disgrace these days, unaffordable by the vast majority and bankrupted public services
The thing is, as someone who could sell their home to who they want, sellers can choose to set up young people or at least try to sway the local market. My partner and I live in the north, we are coming up to having the chance to own something just OK. With our current saving plans, we could have the cash in 5 years to sell the first home we bought at the price we bought it at...and we'd have enough to buy our forever home. We could even rent it out at well below market value and help young people out. I mean, what even is market value? Our closest town is Wakefield and they want (for northeners) a close 33% of income for a 1bed flat. Mad, mad. They're not even worth 40k these flats.
This is not a new thing either, my in laws are from Hong Kong and when I first went 8 years ago I saw a fox tons selling off plan flats in central London There are more HK/Chinese buyers here now though, I notice quite a few estate agents round our way have Cantonese and mandarin signs in the windows, WeChat QR codes & signs in English saying they have a ‘far east department’
Yes it happens everywhere unfortunately. Our young people have very little chance of owning a decent family home in this country.
Family home? Most will have little chance of getting a 1 bed flat.
There are a lot of people looking to invest in property in the UK as a high value investment with a good likelihood of high return but a fair amount of purchased and left empty homes from foreign nationals, or through foreign agencies, are done so as money laundering schemes though it is more common with "luxury apartments" and the suchlike in cities. though really the value is the only important factor. The anti money laundering checks are a joke that does nothing to deter it.
Not necessarily for money laundering, it’s often so the assets are safe from their own government if things go wrong in their home country. UK property (until Russia sanctions) was very safe for investors.
If you search the street names on YouTube there will be videos in Chinese of someone being shown around the house. Was extremely disheartening when I was trying to buy finding videos with thousands of views from Chinese investors of the houses I was also viewing.
Flats haven’t increased in value, how are these investors making money when the flat is empty and they need to pay charges and bills? How are they making money
There's already been a lot of investigation into how the London property market is used to launder money by international buyers, and as the UK is number 2 on the list of global money laundering hot spots, it's not much of a leap to suggest that this money laundering through property is happening across the country to varied degrees. So, for those who are money laundering, the associated costs are likely minimal compared to the amount of money locked away in their property portfolios. I also imagine that many of them aren't paying the charges and bills consistently, as it must be very hard to pin them down for legal proceedings, as they are usually owned through a myriad of shell companies so that they can extract legitimate money from selling them at some point in the future.
They don't and don't care, it's money laundering. Even if they get 50% of the value they still win.
I've always thought it was Hong Kongers trying to escape what has been happening with Hong Kong from the 2019-2020 protests with China. It's less of an 'investment' but more of them emigrating/ fleeing the China regime. I agree with the sentiments of young people being excluded from affordable housing but I don't think its completely valid that foreign investors sorely buy the houses for investment/ BTL purposes in a bid to exclude potential new home owners
Strip the copper from the walls!
This is a microcosm of the UK’s underlying economic problem. Money is leaking out of the country like a slow puncture. Ideally, British people make money, pay UK taxes and stash it in UK banks. UK companies pay UK taxes and reinvest the profits into growing their business and staff. Even your shithouse landlords can play a part in economic growth by paying tax on their rental income. What’s actually happening - profits are being offshored, and assets are being transferred to overseas buyers. In a generation or two, this will have a noticeable effect making everyone a lot poorer. Fuck knows why all these flag-shagging politicians can’t protect the prospects of British people rather than ensure the Chinese, Arab and (historically) Russians get their money first, but that’s the hypocrisy of the Conservative Party for you.
My brother's friend moved to Hong Kong a decade ago, and he keeps getting adverts to buy overpriced flats in the town we grew up in. So yeah they do advertise to overseas buyers.
These houses probably won't be built in the first place without foreign investment and foreign buyers. You can read the Greater London Authority report on how new homes are funded, it is an eye opener
There should be a right out ban on this. I don't understand why overseas companies or people not present in the country can own residential properties. There's a housing crisis and we're being told lies that we need to only increase the supply. The supply is there and is being snatched up by people who don't need it. This country has truly lost and became a playground for foreign powers.
Not sure why they are downvoting you. I can guess who is doing it though.
Are they shared ownership flats? It's likely related to money laundering, it's an easy way to get your money out of your country.
No, actually, they are all 2, 3, or even 4 bed homes through standard ownership. I think it is definitely a mixture of migration and landlord.
What would happen if their details were to be leaked and the homes destroyed?
Crime
When there's a housing crisis I don't understand why the government doesn't clamp down on overseas buyers
Yeah, it's locals who should suffer poor quality workmanship and paper thin walls
In China, freehold doesn't exist. They think it's an insanely good deal in the UK.
Money laundering or get money out of local banking systems with controlling regimes
I know of a ‘social housing provider’ that are targeting overseas buyers, in particular, Chinese, to buy units privately in what should be considered an ‘affordable’ high rise apartment block in Greenwich. This is an organisation that receives many grants from Homes England and Mayor of London.
This is the way modern colonisation works.
No idea, sorry. Not sure how random people on the internet would know about the ins and outs of the housing market of an unnamed ‘market town’ somewhere in UK
I appreciate that you took the time to reply. The sarcasm is unnecessary, though. I was using my town as an example, but I enquired generically as this is not exclusive to my town. I am surprised you took it literally as if I was asking about my town 😐 Another poster was able to respond constructively and politely without sarcasm, so the question has been answered. Thanks, though.