On Sun, 27 Sep 2015 14:46:35 +0100, Fredxxx wrote:

Yes, true. If there weren't half a million foreigners coming in every
year house prices would be lower.

When houses are so expensive in terms of multiple of average salary its
quite clear that demand has a profound effect.

But what've "half a million foreigners coming in" got to do with the
price of fish?

Apart from anything else, VERY few recent migrants will be buying
properties.

For those coming from outside the EU - over half of all migrants - they
quite simply can't get mortgages unless they have ILR - which few will
have.

Few EU migrants will be able to easily get a mortgage, especially those
who are coming here from accession countries, quite simply because they
won't have a deposit and won't have a good enough credit rating or track
record in the UK.

If anything, recent migrants are more likely to be living in larger
households, sharing properties.

B'sides over half of all population growth in the UK is from the number
of births outstripping the number of deaths.

Sure, there's a trickle-up effect, but let's not forget that the majority
of migration is in to cities - which is where house prices are rising -
and localised headcount increases don't change whether people are moving
to London for a better job is doing so from Builth Wells or Bratislava or
Benares.

There's plenty of perfectly good property in the UK under £100k still,
and a lot of it's not selling.