28 comments

• Comment Link Tuesday, 20 October 2009 14:44 posted by Steven Shaw

  Interesting stuff. You ought to interview more property developers.
  
  I'm wondering if we didn't have the public build the infrastructure would there be any further ethic issue with property investors/speculators skimming the capital gains?
• Comment Link Wednesday, 21 October 2009 03:29 posted by Edward J. Dodson

  Indeed, the current property market crash has created a significant opportunity for renting households with stable employment and some savings to obtain homeownership. How deep this pool of potential homebuyers is in the U.K. is a question worth pursuing. It is also likely that a good portion of these first-time homebuyers are obtaining some level of financial (i.e., gift) support from parents in order to meet down payment requirements and to cover closing costs for the transaction.
• Comment Link Wednesday, 21 October 2009 09:27 posted by Chefdave

  Fair play to him to giving an interview.
  
  I don't blame people like Fergus and his wife for doing what they have. The structure of the UK tax regime means it will always create 'entrepreneurs' like this because there's easy profit to be made from speculating in housing. Don't hate the player as the saying goes.
  
  
  To be honest I think people like the Wilsons are useful for making the case for a land tax. Instead of 900 owner occupiers with a VI in keeping the surpluses accruing in housing you only have one, with 900 households on the receiving end of this perverse economic relationship. If there were only a handful of people in the UK that owned all the land then it would be quite clear where the problems lay. But because we have a cartel consisting of many owners the issue gets confused because people think that there's a free market in land ownership. This dissipates the potential outrage because it sets up one large group against another, making it harder to get the right policies in place.
  
  
  To summarise, lets have a few more Wilsons so the economic drain of land ownership is illuminated for all to see.
• Comment Link Wednesday, 21 October 2009 20:59 posted by Ian Reade

  Of course he's sure house prices are going to go upwards...he's got nine hundred of them to sell before it all goes pop! Hilarious. Goldfinger strikes again.
• Comment Link Thursday, 22 October 2009 18:46 posted by Dan Hill

  That's the most exasperated I've ever seen an interviewer act. Brilliant to watch, especially with the interviewee not paying attention most of the time.
  
  You can't say he's totally in the dark on the mechanics because he is aware of the cycle. 17 years in his words rather than the the 18 that the Renegade Economist goes by, but close enough.
  
  It illustrates the point perfectly well though. The rich landowner has no regrets, sympathy or trouble sleeping with the rules as they are because he does very well out of them.