UK house prices in first quarterly fall since 2012 - BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39842715

As someone who's stuck in private rental all I can say is good, long may it continue.

Yep 0.1% & 0.2% are huge amounts!

As a new homeowner I'm disgusted by this news, have become more right wing, and I've started reading The Daily Mail...

I think lack of housing is the biggest problem this country will face over the next ten to twenty years.

More like the next 50+

Thousands of flats and houses are built every year. But what is built is investment property for wealthy foreign investors, not family homes. It's outrageous that those properties are left empty when people cram into tiny rented properties

That's certainly true in London and there are good indications that the same sort of issue is spreading to other big cities (like Manchester for example). How much that's the problem in the rest of the country I think is a little less clear.

The whole housing market is borked quite frankly and it will remain so as long as people's feeling of prosperity is tied up with housing. Successive governments have bemoaned the lack of new house building to meet rising demand but they've done precious little about it because they know that really getting to grips with housing demand will mean a massive correction to house prices and they don't want to be saddled with responsibility for putting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in negative equity even if it's the right thing to do in the long run.

Mind you, at the moment I wouldn't necessarily trust the big house builders to deliver a particularly high quality product either. We also need significant reform of building regulations and training so that the houses that are built aren't tissue walled shoe boxes that don't actually meet the needs of the people living in them. The number of new houses that don't actually seem to have much, if any, practical storage for instance or how about building a garage that's actually big enough for a modern car to fit in (assuming it's not being used to substitute as a big cupboard due to the previously mentioned lack of storage space.
In England the whole Leasehold shenanigans needs to be killed with fire quite frankly as well.

I've seen stats that foreign investors account for approximately 7% of the new housing market and they tend to concentrate on apartments at the top end of the market. That's hardly 'family homes'.

If you fancy the read : https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... berry-park
2000 council home estate in tower hamlets being redeveloped, being replaced by 5,500 2-3 beds properties. 55% sold to SE Asian and middle eastern investors. A flat starts at £800,000.
This type of redevelopment is very common in London and other big cities