Moving about

[tobyaw]

It struck me the other day that many of my friends have moved away from the place where they lived as children and made their own choice of where to live, whereas at work there are a higher number of people who are native to the area. So I thought I’d make a poll.

[Poll #1735055]

Comments

[tokyo-mb.livejournal.com]

Research sponsored by a quango set up by the last government shows that on average only 7% of the increase in average house prices between 1996 and 2007 was down to buy-to-let. Even without buy-to-let average house prices in that period would have increased by 130%.

See http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/507390/pdf/684948.pdf (summary press release) and http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/507390/pdf/684943.pdf (technical econometric report).

I could advance a strong argument that buy-to-let is actually a good thing in that it keeps average rent down, and increases availability of rental stock - which is arguably more important to the economy than the level of average house prices.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

On average, maybe. Oxford is desperately fighting HMO issues (http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/8967560.Oxford_loses_student_housing_court_battle/) - pretty much every resident (including students) believes we have too many rented shared houses.

The rise in Oxford house prices over the last 15 years is way above average, and average rent here is also insanely high. (Plus we have some of the highest retail unit rents outside London, which is killing business here as well.) We actually need more dedicated student housing, but that's currently blocked for all sorts of reasons.

[tokyo-mb.livejournal.com]

Fully understand the report was talking averages.

Surely even in Oxford retail unit rents are subject to supply and demand - if there wasn't demand at those rents, the price would drop, at least over time? Or is it a case of there being too few retail units, and planning issues means supply cannot readily increase?

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Planning issues - a lot of the city centre is owned by the colleges, and there are various reasons for not allowing them to revamp or expand the retail units. A lot of the buildings are listed, which makes them effectively unalterable for disability access etc. This combined with the no-cars ideal (OTS side-effects: very high parking costs, no through-route public transport, poor accessibility for elderly/disabled) is making it very hard for most businesses to thrive. The rents won't drop because "it's Oxford", and there's always another coffee or mobile phone shop willing to move in to take advantage of the student market.

The council's been struggling with this for the last 20 years to my knowledge, and it gets worse rather than better. We have finally got a supermarket in the very centre again, after 12 years - two, in fact, as Tesco and Sainsbury's are 2 doors apart in the same building! - and there was very stiff opposition to those.