Ra-ra-Raab

[Progenitor A]

Raab, the Housing Minister has stated that the price rises of 20% in the last decade or so is largely attributable to mass immigration!

Good heavens, why did I not think of that!

Come to think of it if the population is allowed to increase by 3.3 million in a decade in a land where there is a housing shortage, it is bound to raise prices innit!

Goodness me!

I wonder is the same population expansion is also causing the severe pressures on the NHS, Schools and other public services?

Someone told me that 25% of council housing in London is occupied by foreigners

Perhaps Mr Raab will also comment that mass immigration is acting against the interests of the indigenous population in the Council housing sphere

But for all this, mass immigration is good

Innit?

[fascinating]

According to the Times "Raab says he has been told by civil Servants that immigration had a sizeable effect on house prices, citing figures from the ONS from 1991 to 2016. "Based on the ONS data, the advice to me from the Department is that in the last 25 years we have seen immigration put house prices up by something like 20%" he said."

Nobody seems to know which particular ONS study he is referring to, but the 20% increase caused by immigration seems realistic. Given that house prices went up 350% in that 25-year period, there must be other, more significant, factors which have caused this massive rise.

[alancalverd]

Basic inflation accounts for a 68% rise in prices since 1999. Allow 20% for immigration, and greed accounts for all the rest.

[marchesarosa]

The clear meaning to be extracted from "Based on the ONS data, the advice to me from the Department is that in the last 25 years we have seen immigration put house prices up by something like 20%" is that immigration alone has raised house prices 20% above what they WOULD OTHERWISE HAVE BEEN.

In anyone's book that is a damaging price hike exacerbating the supply and demand situation even if it does not account for all of it. A house that OTHERWISE would have cost £200,000 would , courtesy of population growth down to immigration, now be £240,000. That is a serious problem and it is useful to have it stated so clearly.

[mrsonde]

Apr 10, 2018 14:54:50 GMT 1 alancalverd said:

Basic inflation accounts for a 68% rise in prices since 1999. Allow 20% for immigration, and greed accounts for all the rest.

Hmmm. Not quite, it's very much more complicated and serious than that (though why do you imagine "basic inflation" in the past 20 years comes anywhere near 68%?). The most significant cause for this enormous bubble is QE. I think everyone even remotely qualified to judge acknowledges that fact - pace Fascinating's political prejudice, naturally.

[fascinating]

Inflation has not been 68% in 20 years, it's 25 years. You can't prove that the housing bubble is due to QE.

[mrsonde]

Apr 29, 2018 13:18:04 GMT 1 fascinating said:

Inflation has not been 68% in 20 years, it's 25 years.

You believe house prices have inflated only by 68% in the past 25 years, do you? In the same world where rail tickets cost on average only six quid, I suppose. Sadly, most of us here live in Britain, the country we're talking about, not your quaint little lala land.

You can't prove that the housing bubble is due to QE.

Prove? Yet again you misapply that concept entirely inappropriately - it would seem that indeed you really don't understand what it means. The housing bubble is due to QE - we know it is, because it's fairly simple to follow the money. Not entirely, but in bulk; wherever in the world it's been employed, not just here. If you can find a single economist who disagrees with the long list of respected economic commentators who all agree on this straightforward well-demonstrated causal process, by all means present their peculiar counter-argument.

[fascinating]

"You believe house prices have inflated only by 68% in the past 25 years, do you?" Nope, never said or suggested any such thing.

" Not entirely, but in bulk". How much then? Does "in bulk" mean "most of"?

QE began in 2009.

Attachments:

[mrsonde]

May 2, 2018 8:18:44 GMT 1 fascinating said:

" Not entirely, but in bulk". How much then?

QE began in 2009.

It's generally agreed to be about a third has been kept by the banks to bolster their capital requirements under the expanded Basle rules, or simply deposited back with the central banks, doing absolutely nothing, if you're talking internationally. About another third has gone into asset inflation, the overwhelming majority through buy-to-let loans making Warren Buffet the biggest landlord in the US, for example. About another third has gone into loans for equity purchase, mainly by corporations buying back their own stock as merely one aspect of the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. The remainder, so small it's negligible, hidden in those "abouts", has been lent out in the standard way to genuine stimulation of the real economy - something like 5% by most estimates.

QE began in 2009, and so did the deepest and most prolonged recession since the 30s- deeper, if you also take into account the fact that wages have been stagnant or falling for that decade. And yet despite those conditions what has happened to house prices? For the first time in history?

[fascinating]

Thanks, but I am still not clear as to what proportion of house price rise, in the UK, is down to QE. House prices doubled between 2002-2008 (see graph), from 2009 to 2017 they went up about 50%, but that was after a big drop and they are now less than 20% higher than they were in in 2008.

[mrsonde]

May 2, 2018 9:44:35 GMT 1 fascinating said:

Thanks, but I am still not clear as to what proportion of house price rise, in the UK, is down to QE.

Well, no one is, exactly, obv. You can confidently derive a rough estimate, given the other known factors - population growth, (entirely due to immigration incidentally), housing supply, available income, and the liquidity of mortgage provision. That should tell you there ought to have been, all things being equal. at most a roughly 5% growth overall - an extremely shallow growth, by our average decadal experience. That is, the growth, if any at all, ought to have been down to immigration alone - no other factors stimulating demand growth would have been at play. Maybe you could argue there was a small extra movement into property as a long-term investment due to low interest rates in other traditional areas of return - but, that's also a result of the QE policy.

House prices doubled between 2002-2008 (see graph), from 2009 to 2017 they went up about 50%, but that was after a big drop and they are now less than 20% higher than they were in in 2008.

As usual your figures conceal more than they reveal, especially given this topic - they might be strictly correct, on a nation-wide basis, but that's not how QE has been spent. But I don't want to get bogged down in your usual obfuscating nitpicking about numbers. For the sake of argument, let's accept your 20% inflation overall as though it had anything meaningful to say about the real state of affairs. You say that as though it were something of a surprise, and they ought to have been higher! We've been through a very deep recession, with hardly a 1% growth average for that period, and no countervailing disposable income growth. In any other such periods in history house prices have experienced a slump, usually a drastic one.