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A comment on London: the city that ate itself.

Re:London: the city that ate itself by peteretep on Monday June 29, 2015 @10:16PM (#9802480)
The author went to Eton and then Cambridge, moving to London for the first time after university. In the process, he himself pushed property prices up, and directly contributed to gentrification.

Obviously, when he moved there, that's when London was at its best. Since then, these upstarts and their money, moving there, pricing out the real Londoners... etc.

It has always been thus.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:London: the city that ate itself by laurencerowe on Monday June 29, 2015 @10:57PM (#9802641)
Not really. London shrank until 1988 and only this year passed the previous historical population peak of 1939 as the UK economy has become completely concentrated in the city.

The problem is exacerbated by the UK's lack of building. Thatcher stopped local authorities constructing homes (then half the total) and even private building has declined as its so hard to build. The result has been a huge wealth transfer to those who owned property.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:London: the city that ate itself by crdoconnor on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @01:04AM (#9803052)
>he himself pushed property prices up, and directly contributed to gentrification.

Not nearly as much as those Russian oligarchs and Arab oil barons did.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:London: the city that ate itself by peteretep on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @01:56AM (#9803203)
It's amazing, with the tens of thousands of Russian millionaires coming to London each year, stealing our houses, that the Russians have any left at all!

Much less amazing: the same xenophobia and racism as always towards immigrants.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:London: the city that ate itself by crdoconnor on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @02:44AM (#9803371)
I used to live in one of the most multicultural areas of London before the rents started going through the roof. I loved it.

Now it's slowly turned into a string of soulless Gucci/Prada/Maserati shops, and all the people/immigrants who made it a genuinely nice place to live have been priced out by foreign investors.

But sure, racism or whatever.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:London: the city that ate itself by peteretep on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @04:00AM (#9803654) 

    > most multicultural areas of London
    ...
    > a string of soulless Gucci/Prada/Maserati shops
Where is that? Sounds like some pretty quick gentrification! When did you live there?

    > by foreign investors
2012-2013, 18,000 British people made over £1m. Presumably they put it all in to good, clean, British things, not like those foreigners who bought-up all the houses... [eyeroll]

Just because your prejudice spans a class direction upward doesn't stop it being xenophobic.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:London: the city that ate itself by facepalm on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @03:18AM (#9803502)
How can an investor price somebody out? The investor only makes money if people are willing to pay rent for his property. So it is the willingness of people to pay the high rent that drives the prices up.

Edit: HN doesn't let me write more comments. I still don't understand from those videos how they make money with the vacant houses. Also the articles are a bit weird, as if renting out a few houses in an expensive street would really have a significant impact on the housing issues of London.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:London: the city that ate itself by SideburnsOfDoom on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @04:36AM (#9803769)
> The investor only makes money if people are willing to pay rent for his property.

In most cases, yes. But not in all cases. The thing is, it is not normal to be able to make money on an empty property. So then, the expensive parts of London are not normal.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/31/inside-london...

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/lights-out-london-stre...

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/25/its-like-a-gh...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:London: the city that ate itself by jon-wood on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @04:01AM (#9803659)
The way the housing market is at the moment you can make money even if the property is empty just by waiting long enough.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:London: the city that ate itself by elektromekatron on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @12:48PM (#9806595)
I still don't understand from those videos how they make money with the vacant houses.

In the UK, the main political parities have resisted allowing a house construction boom for two main reasons. Much of middle England has got used to steep house price increases as normal income stream, so to slow it down is considered to be political suicide. And also much of the financial industry and upper classes are very used to it, so it would screw with the banks and the posh people to slow it down as well.

This means that currently London property is just guaranteed to rise (or so folk think), so it is considered an investment just to buy it and wait, and has been for at least 20 years.

This is also why they keep putting off raising interest rates. When they do it will get very messy.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:London: the city that ate itself by 001sky on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @12:04AM (#9802874)
This is an absurd comment. Who do you think the Londers were previously?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:London: the city that ate itself by peteretep on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @12:14AM (#9802915)
People who had moved there a generation or two before.

Unless you've made it rich, each generation gets pushed out at least a tube zone or two, or to commuter suburbs

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:London: the city that ate itself by 001sky on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @01:22PM (#9806903)
The capital has always been home to graduates of top uk schools; the current crop of gentrification has nothing to do with eton or oxbridge. It has to do with petrodollars and securization of the residential mortgage market and with inflationary monetary policy, and globalization of the wealthy upper-middle class. The absolute numbers of elite british students in each class is very small, and london is a very large city. Heck, even the amount of london-based students in the capital is an oder of magnitude larger, and many of them are non-uk or even eu and their rich parents are buying them flats...etc.
[ Parent | on HN ]