James O'Brien On The Chronic Unfairness Of Buy-To-Let
James O'Brien lays out how the gradual expansion of 'buy-to-let' mortgages has made Britain more unfair and ruined home ownership for a generation.
It’s become harder than ever, especially in the south-east, for young people to get on the property ladder. During his morning show, James O’Brien laid the blame for this at the feet of the ‘buy-to-let’ mortgage boom.
“Everybody who's got 30, 40 grand to spare is well advised to pile into property, and then you get someone else to move in and pay rent, and they then pay your mortgage and buy the house for you.
“If we'd invented this system now and tried to sell it to the British public they'd have chased us out of the country.”
To illustrate how bleak the situation is for young people, the Office of National Statistics today released a report showing that people in London will not be able to afford to buy their own house until they’re 34.
James pointed out how different it was when he was in his 20s, when buying a house around the age of 30 was fairly common and something that many people could realistically look forward to.
“What is that like? To be, like me, growing up thinking that it [buying a house] is just a natural progression. It’s the next stage on the conveyor belt of adulthood, and that it is something that is well within your reach.
“when you were growing up it was, but now you're grown up and you look in the windows of the estate agents and you look at your payslip at the end of the month and you see no way in which the two can ever meet.”
