Vote for anyone but Starmer, or the housing crisis gets worse.
Labour will not deliver on their promises, because they haven’t acknowledged the problems that have been standing in the way for decades.
A Labour government means likely a decade more housing market deterioriation, whether you’re buying or renting.
Therefore, to have any prospect of achieving change, we need any alternative to the Labour/Tory duopoly that have, together, got us into this mess.
Vote for anyone but Labour (or Tory).
How to vote to save housing.
Getting out of your parents and into your own home has never been harder than it is now.
The housing market as a whole is in disarray, whether you are a buyer, seller, tenant or even landlord. It’s an absolute mess.
This is almost entirely due to failed policies and governments, broken election promises and a lack of enforcement of existing housing laws.
Everyone agrees the housing market is in a mess and change is needed. That’s the good thing.
The bad thing, in my view, is that it looks like we are about to get a Starmer-led Labour government, possibly with a huge majority, and nothing could be worse for the housing market.
To avoid this, everyone should vote for whoever is the strongest challenger to Labour in their constituency.
Why a Starmer PM is the death of hope for housing.
As a twice-former Labour voter, and a politically neutral observer, this is not the anti-Labour stance people automatically think it might be.
I am as happy as everyone else that the Tories are doomed, they have brought that on themselves and it’s fully deserved.
But to assume a Labour government will fix things is woefully mistaken. Why? Because they haven’t even acknowledged let alone identified the obstacles to housing improvements that previous governments have failed to overcome.
What do I know?
I have a grounding in politics, economics and property.
I studied Politics before I was old enough to vote, and quickly realised that being politically neutral, forming an objective view of the parties, manifestos and ministers was the only sensible way to approach elections.
I spent my early career in the City of London as a qualified Derivatives Broker on LIFFE trading every financial instrument you can imagine in the futures and options market.
I bought my first of many investment properties in 1995 in Brighton, living in it, doing it up, renting it out and then selling it to the tenant. By 1998 I decided it wasn’t the business I wanted to be in and got into the property industry as a supplier of software and marketing services to estate agents.
So I have 25 years within the moving industry as a software architect under my belt, with hundreds of estate agency clients to my name, corporate, medium and small. There’s nothing I don’t know about how the housing market operates.
The goal: a home for everyone
It has long seemed strange to me that in such an advanced country, we should have such an unfair housing market, especially the 250,000 homeless families, not including the tens of thousands of rough sleepers.
So I chose to commit my career to finding a better way, not through charity, but through better use of technology, better business and a way of including all stakeholders in housing, in other words, everyone in society.
I started building BestAgent in 2016 with the goal of creating the largest and only independently owned technology platform for the housing market to operate on. The goal is to bring transparency to house prices, thereby increasing transaction volumes, halving transaction times and making it easier to move home.
But what I learned along the way is that it is Politics more than any other one thing that impacts the housing market and how it functions.
Housing policies, government departments, social housing, financial incentives, Bank of England rates, mortgage rates, conveyancing, you name it, they all have an impact on housing.
Why you can’t afford a home.
The reason homes have reached their worst affordability ever is down to 3 failed policies:
- Not enough new homes built in the areas needed and even then they’re unaffordable
- Monetary policy, (money printing), ultra-low mortgage rates and new Buy to Let mortgage products created artificial demand which has pushed prices up rather than allowing them to find their natural level
- Population growth exceeding available housing in most popular areas.
Join my live election debate to change as many minds as we can. Tue 2 July 9pm until polling closes!
Labour’s housing policy:
Liberal Democrat Housing Policy:
Green Party Housing Policy
GB Workers Party Housing Manifesto
https://workerspartybritain.org/manifesto-britain-deserves-better/#housing
Reform UK Housing Manifesto (Page 15)