Buying a home in Britain should not be an impossible dream (The Guardian)
Sunday 18 January 2015
‘To make the impossible possible. To rise, and rise”. Uttered in a movie-trailer tone, it sounds like the mission statement for a Mars probe – but, set against the backdrop of the twinkling lights of night-time London, it’s actually the voiceover for a particularly obnoxious Redrow ad for flats in one of the capital’s now-ubiquitous glass and steel skyscrapers, launched and hastily withdrawn earlier this month after a furious outburst on social media.
Its sharply suited, go-getting protagonist is whisked through the streets in a cab, reminiscing about all the hours he had to put in (“the mornings … that felt like night”); the calls from mates he was forced to ignore; and the terrible soul-searching he had to endure to succeed (apparently he felt the urge to “be more than individual”). Without encountering another soul, our hero strides into an anonymous lobby and is whisked up to a vast, sparkling eyrie, worthy of a Bond villain’s hideout.
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In many towns and cities, if you’re earning the average wage or thereabouts, you can “aspire” as much as you like, but unless you’ve got a slug of family wealth behind you, you’re never going to get on the property ladder. Research by the Resolution Foundation found that 2.2m working households in Britain with below-median incomes were spending a third or more of disposable income on housing, leaving an average of just £135 a week for other necessities.
Of course, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with renting. But it can be insecure because of the particular nature of the UK rental market, with its short-term tenancies, landlords’ unbridled right to whack up the rent, and eye-watering fees levied by some lettings agents for doing not very much.
cont'd...
Link: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/18/buying-home-britain-impossible-dream-london-uk-housing-crisis
It should not be an "impossible dream" to own a home anywhere. The same thing is happening here in most of the larger Canadian cities - though Alberta's property market may soon be sinking like a stone.