I moved to England less than a year ago, and out of all the countries where I have rented, this is my worst experience so far.

Ignoring the poor treatment received by letting agencies, the landscape of property ownership is grim for newcomers. My salary puts me comfortably in the top 5% of the country earners, yet I spend about one third of it renting a tiny studio in town. We would need my partner to make above average salary to afford a modest 2 bedroom flat in town, or to be on my same payscale to be able to afford one of those terraced houses that we usually associate with middle class.

Don't get me wrong, I know I'm privileged, for me this data is just a symptom of the economic divide that this country is undergoing. If I can hardly afford to get into the property ladder, what should those in lower brackets expect? Will there be an increasing difference between those that own multiple properties and those who will be forced to rent all their lives?

> people are having to spend far too much of their income on it [rent], which is setting us up for all sorts of societal problems in the future.

I wonder what the long term effects of this will be. When no one has any savings and no house when they retire, and all of a sudden have to live on a very small pension (which if the trends [1] are anything to go by may all collapse) what are people going to do?

[1] https://www.forbes.com/consent/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com...

Exactly. I expect a lot of people will decide to move to a cheaper part of the EU where their meagre pension will go further. Hey wait a minute...

This is happening right now. I don't have any statistics, but I've seen TV reports (i.e., anecdata) about German retirees moving to Romania or Bulgaria. The biggest issue for them is that they only know German, and the locals in their age class only know their own native tongue. Maybe when people from my generation need to do the same in the future, it will be easier for them because English fluency is/will be more widespread by then.

EDIT: Would be interesting to see how this might affect the economy at large when this gets widespread. There already are quite significant transfers of purchase power across borders within the EU, e.g. (IIRC) the main income source in the Republic of Kosovo is family members working in richer parts of the EU and sending money home. Retirees who receive their pensions from the rich countries, but spend it in the poor countries where they relocate to, would serve as another force in the same direction.