I wrote a piece for the Saturday (26 January 2018) Guardian. Its been described by many as “counter-intuitive” – because in it I draw on the research of others (notably that of Ian Mulheirn – director of consulting at Oxford Economics) to argue that building more houses will not dampen house prices.
I posed this question: “what has bitcoin mania got in common with house prices, especially in the capital? For starters, both are speculative bubbles. Vast sums of money have been poured into finite supplies of bitcoins and London property. Both have consequently exploded in value, albeit over different time periods. And so both have become financialised assets that deliver capital gains far in excess of people’s ability to earn income from work, or from investment in the real economy. And as with bitcoin, so with London property: speculators are convinced that prices will continue to rise for ever.”
For more, please follow this link to the Guardian’s website.