Stop moaning and give us all your money, you peasants.

From yesterday's City AM:

By Paul Stanworth, managing director of Legal & General Capital, founded in 2013 to help actively invest Legal & General's Group balance sheet.

Renting may be becoming the norm for large swathes of the UK’s population, certainly the under-40s, but a fundamental mindset change still needs to take place away from ingrained assumptions owning a home is preferable to renting it.

For many the idea of lifelong renting is something to strive away from at all costs. But renting should be seen as a positive lifestyle choice rather than a social or economic curse. I believe that the change in attitude will come as the range and standard of rental options available evolve.

Where it was previously a smaller segment of the market serviced by private landlords with sub-scale operations, the significant increase in demand coupled with public sector austerity has meant there is now a need for long term investors to fill the gap.

The good news is that the upswing in renting is coinciding with the development of a professional Build to Rent sector, with institutions looking to provide a new class of large scale, purpose-built rental stock. The strategic case for the sector is compelling. You need only to look at international examples, such as the US multi-family sector, or Dutch or German models, to see that where good quality large volume options exist there has been an overwhelming shift in attitudes towards renting.

Enhancing economic productivity through greater geographical flexibility, as well as providing affordability for those that are unable or choose not to join the owner occupation sector, this is about delivering higher quality, customised space, together with a more professional and flexible standard of tenant service that truly satisfies elective renters needs. It's also about accommodating all age groups and demographics, from retirees and families to time poor young professionals.

I believe there's a real opportunity to deliver well-designed homes in accessible, well-connected urban locations across the UK of a sufficient scale that they can be cost efficient and rental levels can be set at affordable levels.

In other words: this is essentially an opportunity to redefine what renting means in this county. A 24-hour concierge, onsite car-sharing clubs, state-of-the-art cycle facilities, gyms and integrated click-and-collect services are all potential features that we might expect to see carefully incorporated from the earliest design stages.

For us this is about using long term institutional money to support the future looking needs of the UK and working with forward thinking local authorities and best in-class partners to deliver this vision.

"Half your income now goes on rent"

From The Metro:

Young workers unable to afford their own homes are spending almost half their take-home pay on rent, a report reveals. The private tenants typically shell out £704 a month – 43 per cent of their wages...

Landlords put up prices by 8.2 per cent on average last year, the government’s English Housing Survey report shows.

Taking into account wage rises, the percentage of earnings spent on rent rose six per cent. Nearly half of 25- to 34-year-olds – 48 per cent – are now tenants, up from 21 per cent a decade ago.

The proportion of privately renting families has increased from nine per cent to 24 per cent.

It's worse than that.

Nearly half your earned income is taken in tax. The amount of Employer's NIC and VAT is nearly as much again as the PAYE you see deducted from your wages. Of the half that's left, nearly half goes in rent.

So broadly speaking about two-thirds of what you earn goes in publicly and privately collected tax (rent).

YPP meet-up, Friday 17 July

Back at The Brewmaster, tomorrow from about 5.20.

Leicester Square Tube, Exit 1 and turn left and left again into St Martin's Court (an alleyway). We put a yellow YPP leaflet on the table so that you can recognise us. Contact me at gmwadsworth@gmail.com or on 07954 59 07 44 if you need more info.

Topics: The Prospect Party (active in the south west) asked if we wanted to co-operate with them.

Young People's Party meet-up, Friday 10 July, Brewmaster nr Leicester Square Tube station.

The Brewmaster finished its refurb a couple of weeks ago, so we are back where we started, tomorrow from about 5.20.

Leicester Square Tube, exit 1 and turn left and left again into St Martin's Court. We put a yellow YPP leaflet on the table so that you can recognise us. Contact me at gmwadsworth@gmail.com or on 07954 590744 if you need more info.

If you would like to be removed from this list, please advise.

If you have an Android phone, you can download our YPP LVT vs current system comparison app from Google Playstore. It's only had ten downloads since release, which is a bit disappointing :-(

If you have Whatsapp, email your phone number and I will add you to the YPP London meet-up group.

YPP Friday 3 July meet-up: back to The Brewmaster!

The Brewmaster has finished its refurb and our interim haunt Yates's on Leicester Square was shut down by Westminster Council last week (long story) so we are back where we started, tomorrow from about 5.20.

Leicester Square Tube, Exit 1 and turn left into St Martin's Court. We put a yellow YPP leaflet on the table so that you can recognise us. Contact me at gmwadsworth@gmail.com or on 07954 59 07 44 if you need more info.

If you have an Android phone, you can download our YPP tax reform app from the Google Playstore.

Thanks a lot for finally noticing.

From the BBC:

Many young people are being "exiled" from the neighbourhoods they grew up in because of a lack of affordable housing, a cabinet minister is to warn.
Communities Secretary Greg Clark will tell council leaders it is a "defining test" for any government to provide homes to keep the "chain of community".
Harriet Harman will tell the conference the housing shortage is now "chronic".

Although both of these politicians are ignoring the facts.

There is no particular housing shortage as such. All those private tenants are already in 'affordable housing' i.e. if they can afford to pay off their landlord's mortgage they'd be able to pay off the mortgage if they owned it themselves. Which is where Jeremy Corbyn's suggestion comes in…


Where the real problem is is chronic misallocation. For every young household stuck in a flat, there is a widowed pensioner living in a three-bed semi.