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I am considering moving house, within UK, and have started cursorily looking at properties. In some London suburbs, those you would like to live in, a four bedroom house with a bit of garden, relatively close to a tube station, even at the far end of the line, sells for around £2.5Mn. This is whilst the average UK salary remains stubbornly stuck at around £30,000. These houses are worth 80 times the average salary. This is difficult to comprehend, and one has to ask the question, who is buying these properties? It cannot be working people. Or maybe it can. I have been giving this considerable thought, as I am fascinated by the apparently unexplainable. I wonder whether this market is sustained by inheritance, the combined result of smaller families and of older parents owning now expensive property which was acquired cheaply and which, when passed down, is sold to fund upgrading. Living in a desirable property may be becoming a multigenerational project. Bad news if your family is poor...

The general economic malaise resulting from the sharp slowdown caused by coronavirus has one counterbalance, the growth in house prices during this period (UK a prime example, boasting an apparently healthy and frankly absurd 7%). Whilst most other economic activity is precarious, property development is more profitable than ever. A well rehearsed trick. There is an entente cordiale between property owners, the older generations, and governments whose main mantra is to fuel a housing market on which their economic castles in the air are built. Votes for wealth, political power for a license to exploit the young through property values. Buying a rundown property, refurbishing it, decorating it and renting it out to those unfortunate to have been born too late is more profitable than founding a company, employing people, making new goods and services and creating real wealth. Government certified exploitation of the young, built on low interest rates and reckless low deposit mortgages...