“One in 65 people is now worth seven-figures after surge in the price of property and stock markets” the newspapers have been crowing. “The number of British millionaires has shot up by 40 per cent in the past five years”. We are all being led to believe that a “Surge in property prices and stock markets means there are now 715,000 millionaires in the UK alone”. Not only does this make the other 63,385,000 feel left out of this boom in inequality, it is also inaccurate, misleading and bathed in exaggeration.
The truth is that this is a UK mainstream media campaign instigated by a government with no new policy ideas to get the British economy working hard for everyone. To fill the void, an illusion of greater prosperity is constructed.
Let’s start with housing market. UK house prices may have risen 3% over the last year. The UK-wide rate is utterly meaningless, thanks to an already immense and ever expanding North/South divide. Property prices in The City of London and inside the M25 massively increase the average property price not just in England but the UK more widely. The numbers for these areas also distort the time taken the sell, cash sales, mortgage numbers and general availability.
Contrary to belief the volume of actual sales has crashed by about 35 per cent in just 4 years and 40 per cent in 8 years and that number is quite likely to increase over the next year or two to 50 per cent.
Part of the problem is that the middle-aged have accumulated money in the good times. They are, quite rightly, frightened to death of ‘financial consultants’, banks, ‘advisors’ and years of treasury plundering — all of whom seem to have a licence to steal hard earned, tax-paid money being saved for retirement. This savvy generation have taken matters into their own hands.
15-20 per cent of all property that comes to the market is now bought by buy-to-let landlords. These landlords have an average deposit of nearly £100,000. They are banking on driving down their mortgage debt over a number of years, paid for by rent and then end up with a tidy monthly income to cover the loss from the thieves who would have stolen their pension funds in the first place. The latter part of this ruse is government policy and it helps to drive property prices ever higher.