Thread by @doctorow

London's brutal, overheated property market has been in trouble for a long time, dependent on an every-more-desperate series of heroic government interventions to keep it alive.

1/

It was Brexit what done it, really. The first casualty was luxury builds, which were never really intended to be lived in - they were offshore safe deposit boxes in the sky bought merely as easily flipped assets by global looters. Fuck them.

standard.co.uk/news/london/lo…

2/

Incredibly, "luxury" builders continued to erect ghost towers whose units had little or no chance of selling - proving that the biggest units were the developers all along.

theguardian.com/business/2018/…

3/

Then came the great Estate Agent crisis, which destroyed the livelihood of some of London's worst people (which is really saying something, as I am including the guillotinable denizens of the City of London!):

bbc.com/news/business-…

4/

The contagion spread from luxury flats to the whole London market, working its way inwards from the greenbelt, steamrollering towards Zone 1:

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

5/

And now, Central London is in seriously deep shit.

It was Airbnb what done it.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

6/

There's been a mass sell-off of homes that had been converted to illegal unlicensed hotel rooms - even as vast numbers of Londoners left the city altogether, suppressing demand for rentals.

7/

Year-on-year rental availability is up TWENTY SIX PERCENT in Central London. Rents are down 7.4% - and still falling - another 4.5% in June alone! Also in June: listings up by 14%, people seeking rentals down by 9%.

8/

If I had a groat for every Londoner who boasted that they were Warren Fucking Buffet because they had the incredible foresight to buy a house because they needed somewhere to live in the 70s and were millionaires by Y2K, I'd have a shiny guinea.

9/

"They're not making any more London," these self-made millionaires would declare. "Safe as houses."

10/

Meanwhile, help-to-buy, massive floods of cheap credit, plutocrat speculators, and rock-bottom interest rates were actually driving gains, and all of these were destined to end someday.

That day has arrived.

eof/