The housing charity Shelter claims that there are only 43 truly affordable homes on sale across all of London.
That number would be even lower if it didn't include house boats (selling for up to £165,000) and a mobile home (£125,000) says new research from the charity.
It claims that in 10 per cent of London boroughs there are absolutely no homes for sale that are affordable for families earning a typical wage while across England as a whole more than 80 per cent of properties on sale are unaffordable for first time buying families.
Over 80% of homes on the market are off limits for a typical family, and this is nothing short of a scandal. Decades of failing to deliver the homes we need is leaving millions trapped in expensive and unstable private renting, or in their childhood bedrooms, with barely a hope of saving for a home of their own says Shelter chief executive Campbell Robb.
For the next government, whoever that may be, it's time for the talk to stop and the work to begin. Politicians need to act swiftly to deliver the plan that will build the 250,000 homes a year we need, or millions more people will be forced to kiss their dreams of a stable and affordable place to live goodbye he claims.
Across England only 17 per cent of homes for sale are affordable for families that need at least two bedrooms, and only seven peer cent are affordable for larger families looking for homes with three bedrooms or more, Shelter states.
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Comments
@PeeBee - go on then, tell us why. You can't just say pure, unadulterated rubbish and then not say why. I have two children in their early twenties who still live at home and won't be able to afford to buy for many years. Even saving up for a deposit - both are currently single, so they'd have to do it on their own - will take them absolutely ages. Many of their friends are in similar positions.
Of course, it depends on how you define affordable and maybe Shelter are going a little over the top with their findings. But it's certainly the case that many people can't afford to buy in central London or the surrounding areas unless they have very rich parents who are prepared to put them on the housing ladder or they themselves are very well-off. Very few young people fall into that category.
They're called Generation Rent for a reason. All these Help to Buy, Right to Buy, shared ownership, Rent to Own schemes are gimmicky and ineffective. What we need is much more affordable housing, but with London becoming the playground for billionaires, Boris and his cronies don't what that to happen anytime soon.
I saw the other day that the average house price in Hackney is over 500,000. It's a similar thing in Brixton, Peckham, Shepherd's Bush, etc, previously affordable places that have been sucked in by gentrification and are now out of the price range of most ordinary people.
This is a very real problem and shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand. Shelter might have been guilty of exaggeration, but to say that affordability isn't a major issue in London is nonsense.
Okay... I consider myself to be "the average EAT reader" - so here goes:
Pure b011ocks.
Absolute, unadulterated MDT of the brownest, stickiest variety.
There you go.
This is pretty outrageous yet the average EAT reader doesnt see fit to comment. Well done Shelter for highlighting this dreadful situation