Zoopla boss blames record migration for UK rent crisis

People who question the merits of absurdly high unsustainable levels of legal net migration, don't blame migrants. They blame irresponsible politicians for not setting a cap on numbers necessary to prevent overburden on housing, infrastructure & our environment etc.

Reply to the comment left by Robin Pearce at 10/12/2023 - 14:00
Do you want a decent standard of living? Do you want inflation controlled? Do you want care workers? Do you want nurses? Do you want doctors? Do you want maths teachers? I can go on.
Can our people do those jobs at the margin?

There is 8.4% inflation over the entire year so in real terms RENT HAS NOT INCREASED at all. Can JOURNALISTS PLEASE UNDERSTAND AND MENTION INFLATION. thanks

And can journalists also focus on making noise to BUILD MORE HOUSES and remove ridiculous planning hurdles ? now that will actually solve the real problem ! and bring rents down. I so wish journalists and politicians had a brain...... and understood inflation means there is no rent increase at all .... and would have a look at landlords being taxed on their turnover instead of their net profit..... simple things like that.

We've already got 1.5m unemployed. The more people you import the more you need.
If we import nurses for example because we don't train enough, then we need more builders to build more homes for them.

But then builders need more NHS so we need more nurses & more of every other type of worker = an immigration vicious circle with our population & thus pop'n density endlessly increasing.

Birth rate & death rate are similar in UK.
Any population increase in this overcrowded Island is now due to mass immigration.
I have nothing against legal migration or legal migrants. But the numbers must be in balance. Ideally zero net migration. One in one out. And on min 35k or they're not net contibutors.

BTW migrants get old too, thus increasing the size of our elderly population to more than it would otherwise be.

Legal net migration last year = 745k = 6000 new homes needed/week !
Semi rural towns such as Romsey near me are being ruined. Losing its semi character becoming surrounded with huge estates of 20 per acre habitation boxes.

Urban sprawl is going on all over the country. England's being ruined due to mass immigration.

Reply to the comment left by Robin Pearce at 10/12/2023 - 15:39
Great analysis.
I am not advocating immigration, merely analysing.
The politicians are adopting a solution.
Our own people fail to fill the employment gap.
Remember, I said at the margin.
We should not dehumanise people and use the word "import."
I have no idea but how many people from the USA and the "White" (alas they are becoming black too) Commonwealth Nations are in jobs here.
Everything you have said applies to them also.
In fact, most immigrants are now required to have a decent salary and no recourse to the public funds. They pay in advance for access to the NHS. We want their labour (in the technical sense), but do not want them as people.

Reply to the comment left by Robin Pearce at 10/12/2023 - 14:00
Numbers of legal skilled workers (as distinct from "asylum seekers") are "capped" and discretionary.
What, as a society, are we doing to encourage our own people to fill these jobs?
Nobody praises our PM for saying all children must learn mathematics up to a certain age, and those teachers are awarded a pay rise.
In London, we cannot readily find English workers, and many EU workers have gone back.

Reply to the comment left by SCP at 10/12/2023 - 17:09London's already a tarmac jungle so you're not noticing the destruction of greenbelt outside of London due to mass immigration.

The London mindset.. We must boost GDP & if it means importing a low paid workforce & people outside of London have to suffer green space around them disappearing under new housing estates, then that's not a problem for us Londoners!

Let someone else have their semi rural environment ruined by more urban sprawl !

Yet it means no more GDP/capita. Just more over crowding & more traffic jams !

If employers can't find workers then they need to up their wages then don't they?

"Numbers of legal skilled workers (as distinct from "asylum seekers") are "capped" and discretionary."

Sadly numbers are not capped. For certain jobs paying as low as £20.4k people can qualify for a visa. There is no number cap. Hence legal net 745k last year = a population the size of Leeds in one year !
Tory chums make £billions from population increase. Developers, builders, land bank owners, low wage employers etc. Hence why they're reluctant to reduce immigration.

Of course the adverse impact of mass immigration may not be so apparent to people living outside of large cities.

People may see new housing estates appearing in rural areas near them, but they won't see them filling up with migrants. They'll see them occupied predominantly by English people leaving cities. So they won't connect the dots as to why we need more homes.

Many are pro mass immigration liberal & lefties. Then next thing they're NIMBYs when new housing needed due to mass immigration is proposed near them !

I lived on a busy road in Shirley, Southampton & saw the impact of mass immigration.

Schools having to being rebuilt twice the size at vast expense for children of migrant workers on low wages !
In other words a cheap workforce that we subsidise. So in reality not cheap.

Classrooms with more translators than teachers. Every other person walking past my door not speaking English.
Funny I don't recall ever voting to feel like I don't live in my own country 🥺

Southampton General Hospital expanded almost up to the boundary fence. Where's it supposed to expand to next ?
Hence why I joined UKIP in 2014.

UKs overcrowded. We got enough car washers, delivery drivers & Turkish barbers we don't have enough homes for +1.5m unemployed. Net mig'n needs to be NIL. 1 in 1 out & only best let in with skills we need on min £35k salary or they're not net contributors.

Reply to the comment left by Robin Pearce at 10/12/2023 - 17:52
Good analysis.
Do people understand the choices?
If there is no growth, we cannot have high or higher standard of living.
Growth can come from increase in productivity, immigration, control of colonies and or empire.
Creating a system where commodities are relatively cheap, which we buy from elsewhere. Fomenting trouble for whatever reason between neighbours (artificial boundaries drawn by colonial powers) and then selling them expensive arms. I could go on, but this is a property blog.
Stark choices are never presented to the voter.
Private landlords have to be demonised because we are using property as a pension pot, and not having pensions which would invest on the stock market.

Reply to the comment left by SCP at 11/12/2023 - 12:21
Most of UK tax revenues come from income tax and VAT. It comes from people working, people spending their wages and people spending their pensions in a service economy. It doesn't come from commodities like minerals, oil and gas any more. It doesn't matter whether the people doing the care work or making the coffee are 'immigrants' (look back far enough that's most of us) or whether they are the home-grown UK workforce; both the workforce and our retired population depend upon having somewhere safe to live.

So if you want growth people have to be able to live to work or they have to be able to live on their pensions and still be able to go out and spend money in the service economy. The economy depends upon workers and pensioners being able to afford to live somewhere or move somewhere. Controlling CO2 emissions also depends upon incentivising improvements to our housing stock.

At the moment rents are being hit by high interest rates and lack of available accommodation. Also by taxes that restrict movement. None of the UK governments has got the money to fix that. They are all making the situation worse and the worst offender in an imperfect bunch is the SNP government in Scotland.

If we were able to invest our pensions via SIPPS and SSAS schemes in high energy efficiency residential property then the UK PRS could help to fix all three problems. Apart from an improved EPC system the mechanisms for doing this are even there today.

But as things currently stand, successive governments have treated us all like crack dealers.