So …. everything that the paper said was true, except they were a bit late in publishing the story and they did not mention every single little quibble the FSA is making. And perhaps the OP is right in asserting a collapse in housing prices would not force people out of their homes due to negative equity. Perhaps. Perhaps not.

I don’t really see the story here. The EU is forcing massive changes to the British housing market. The FSA objects. What is wrong with telling people?

Anything that helps get rid of Buy to Let can only be a good thing for potential house buyers who want a home rather than a money making machine exploiting those who cannot afford a mortgage.

“Anything that helps get rid of Buy to Let can only be a good thing for potential house buyers who want a home rather than a money making machine exploiting those who cannot afford a mortgage.”

Yea! In the same way jobs are exploiting all those who can not afford a job free life style!

I’m with SMFS here.

Directive might make BTL non viable.

Sort of thing a newspaper should pick up on isn’t it? The details of what are being planned for us across the Channel?

That the FSA *hopes* to have BTL left out of the Directive isn’t quite the same as it being left out is it?

More means Worstall.

“What is being planned for us across the Channel”. That just about sums up the appeal to the Little Englander paranoid mentality.

The proposal is a proposal. It is no more than a proposal. Tell you what, Mr W, I’ll have a hundred notes [*] with you that BTL will be exempted – by whatever wording or otherwise – for at least the UK.

Your call.

[*] Euro or Sterling, you choose.

“That just about sums up the appeal to the Little Englander paranoid mentality.”

Sometimes people really are out to get even the paranoid.

“The proposal is a proposal. It is no more than a proposal. Tell you what, Mr W, I’ll have a hundred notes [*] with you that BTL will be exempted – by whatever wording or otherwise – for at least the UK.”

Well, quite, now that a national newspaper has pointed us to the danger of it not being exempted it will be, won’t it?

Well done the Express!

You really ought to get your ducks in a line, Mr W.

The exemption has already been indicated *before* the Express article. And the Express is no longer the kind of paper that moves such issues.

And as for that wager:

Frango assado for Worstall! Frango assado for Worstall!!

“The exemption has already been indicated *before* the Express article.”

Not much point in having a bet then really is there if its already been decided.

“Frango assado for Worstall! Frango assado for Worstall!!”

So you do recall that I live in Portugal then. Bit odd to throw “Little Englander” at me really then isn’t it?

“Live in Portugal”, Mr W?

More Albufeira Nascente than Bairro Alto, though. So my comment stands.

SB de Messines…..

“Little Englanders”? Oh yes, that liberal appproved bit of racism.

Strange as its all those filthy Little Englanders who fought and died to stop us being controlled by outside sources and who let in and saved the life’s of countless refugees and immigrants by taking them into their filthy, worthless, little England.

I hate you fuckers so much.

Tim Fenton, I don’t see what’s wrong with the belief that representatives elected by English people should be responsible for making English laws. The French would rightfully resent it if Cameron and co started drawing up regulations for the French banking and housing sectors.

TIM W “So you do recall that I live in Portugal then. Bit odd to throw “Little Englander” at me really then isn’t it?”

Not at all. Europe is full of little Englanders clutching their Telegraph foreign property sections, boasting about how they only ever speak English. Oh , and without any irony moaning about immigration into the Uk.

Sao Bartolomeu de Messines may be inland from the Algarve coast, but only just.

@12, we don’t have an English Parliament.

Closer to the Alentejo than the coast: I know, I’[ve cycled in both directions.

We’re the only non-Portuguese in the village: good enough for you?

Troll …..” , I don’t see what’s wrong with the belief that representatives elected by English people should be responsible for making English laws.”

Neither do I. And if those people want to subsidize, or protect some of their industries they should also be able to do that.

Oh wait, people like you gave that power away by going along with the single European act and giving our sovereignty away to WTO.

[deleted]

Right, so buy-to-let gets a pass, protecting spiralling rental values. We can’t have poorer people being able to live where there are jobs, after all!

(Rent caps, now!)

@8 – It’s a mentality, not a residence.

@12 – Sure, let’s have an English regional parliaments. It’s a good step towards dissolving the temporary relic of history which national governments are. (“Nationalism” for the 99% is historically recent and highly damaging for them)

“Right, so buy-to-let gets a pass, protecting spiralling rental values.”

What? BTL lowers rents.

The more BTL houses and flats there are out there the more houses and flats there are available to rent. Rents therefore fall.

That’s right, as BTL has risen rental prices have…

Wait, they’re rising well above and have for years. Disproved!

Before anybody gets any more over-excited about “Little Englanders” remember the term actually means anti-imperialist:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Englander

PS. 5.20pm comment by toat is a disgrace.

Funny how the tory’s made a big thing about home ownership, and pretended that it did not exist before 1979, and then helped to destroy it with buy to let.

It is now a death spiral of under 35s who can’t buy, and can only rent. Which in turn encourages more landlords to buy more houses, which takes stock out of the market, and forces more people to rent, which encourages more lanlords etc etc.

As usual with the Right we are not moving into the future, but back to the pre 1930s.

I don’t understand the issue some posters have. What’s the problem with buy-to-let apart from those obnoxious shows on Channel 4? Don’t we need a rental sector? If the issue is the cost, how is the rental sector any different from the general cost of housing?

And the Express? I could never fathom it. I read Rupert Bear as a kid, it was strangely weird but crap at the same time. That was Express world then, now it’s just a porno millionaire’s “Becoming Murdoch” fantasy.

Tim

surely you know more about economics that to think markets are as simple as an increase in supply inevitably results in lower prices?

With two such closely related markets as the buy and the let housing markets – influence from one to another is dramatic – especially with what is basically a fixed supply of housing stock. (supply – house building – in the UK proves rather price inellastice because of massive bureaucracy in the form of planning concent and huge local opposition to new homes being built in much of the country)

And as buy to let increases supply of house buying, often with people with no chains, it forces other potential buy-to-live-in out of the market. This group shift to the rented sector, but are relatively more prosperous than those who otherwise make up the rental market – inflating prices and further insetivising people to buy to let.

all of this is somewhat around the margins of the markets being discussed – but don’t offer simplistic and innacurate economic blandisms as a justification of a point of view. economics is more complex and more useful than many of its ideological adherrants ever realise.

@24: an increase in supply, ceteris paribus, does lead to a fall in the market clearing price, yes.

What you’re pointing out is that there is more complexity than ceteris paribus. With which I agree. But that also makes Leon’s comment, that rising rents and rising BTL disproves the thesis, nonsense. Because, you know rising poppulation, rising number of households, ceteris paribus.

“because of massive bureaucracy in the form of planning concent and huge local opposition to new homes being built in much of the country”

That’s the one I point at and have done for ages. The cause of the expense of housing in the UK is the scarcity value of planning permission to build housin. Solve that and everything else is solved.

Sally:

“As usual with the Right we are not moving into the future, but back to the pre 1930s.”

In 1920s England it was simple and easy to rent somewhere. In 1980s England it was damn tough. It wasn’t pricing, it was rent control. There were almost no places that were put up for rent because of the laws about tenancy etc. I know, I was there, as a would be renter (1980s, obviously, not 1920s).

It’s that one change, assured tenancies, which changed this. Seriously, trying to find somewhere to rent in 1981 was horrendous. If you could, it was cheap, yes, but trying to find it was appalling. By 1990 this problem was over.

@25 – Reality > Ideology.

Next.

And that’s why you put a hefty tax on unoccupied property. By 1990, there was already a critical shortage of houses to rent and the above-inflation spiral had started. Pricing people out of being able to live in a house is your “answer”. Great, 1%er.

“In 1920s England it was simple and easy to rent somewhere”

Exactly my point, we are going backwards if, as the Right has championed for the last 30 years, home ownership is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Apparently it is not now. Perhaps they should tell the voters of their new position.

@27 – Come now Sally…it’s perfectly easy. As long as both partners have good jobs.

Want a real attack on the nuclear family? It’s that both parents need to work full-time, leaving them relatively little time with their children, completely debunking the Tory Corporatist line that they’re the party of the family, when they’ve created a system of dual-incomes being not good, but absolutely necessary.

Tim

No no – you have entirely misunderstood economics and ceteris paribus. This is sadly quite common on LC from those of a particular political bent who think stating a basic market equation is the same as understanding something.

CP is applied to a given model of a phenomenon – to explain that within that model, the only thing that changes is what you are examining.

CP is not an absolutism for people to pretend everything is the same – and CP is certainly not a basis on which to mistakenly conclude that an increase in supply results in a fall in price.

While an increase in supply in one model may indeed result in a fall in price – many markets work in different ways. Luxury goods for example, are typically examined as an example of where demand correlates with price rather than experience an inverse correlation. This is not because of a lack of CP – it is within CP. It would actually take some external phenomenon to reverse it. (such as a superior technology like I-phone undermining the status of blackberrys)

With housing – if all else is equal – a rise in buy to let results in an increase in price of renting. This is because displacement is part of the market, not an external and unrelated factor.

you were in fact just completely wrong when you corrected Leon.

“EU Rules To Slash House Prices”

Actually, from the point of view of a young adult hoping to get onto the housing ladder at some point in the next 20 years, that’d be f***ing awesome.

30. Without trying to sound like captain Mainwearing I wondered who would be the first to spot that.

I wonder when the press will wake up to the growing amount of people who would like to see house prices fall?

The Daily Mail and the Daily Express (and to a lesser extent The Daily Telegraph) are scum newspapers for scum middle England wankers….but hey, I wish we had a paper that would defend our rights and our views so vigorously. All we get are boring sell out nonsense from the Guardian or some no hopers from the Indy or Labour Party press news nonsense from The Mirror. Neither three actually offer an alternative for the left wing working class just their own solipsistic bullshit. The Daily Mail should be taken as an example as a newspaper that actually defends their readers rights. Seriously the right has us banged to rights. Why cant the left form a popular press? ….and if we can’t, does that mean the left wing aren’t that popular?

Representatives elected by British people ARE responsible for drafting British laws. In case anyone bothered to read the first page of the document linked in the OP.

“Proposal for a DIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on credit agreements relating to residential property (Text with EEA relevance)”

This means Three (3) things.

1. It is an area of dual competence, which means it must be passed by YOUR elected representatives in the European Parliament. (didn’t vote in the European Elections? You’re an idiot, stop moaning here on LibCon and write to your MEP)

2. It must be agreed by YOUR elected representative at the European Council (In this case I assume either Vince Cable, Grant Shapps or George Osborne).

3. “Text with EEA relevance” as far as I’m aware, means that it would apply to the whole of the EEA, including to countries with ‘association agreements’ like Norway, unless they have agreed some sort of opt-out for rules on mortgages (possible), but that they don’t have a say on how they are drafted.