The socially acceptable face of avarice

At the end of every month the house sales figures come in, and every month the headlines are the same – house prices rise. Alongside April’s figures though, is the flipside. Reuters are reporting today that levels of personal insolvency are up 25% on last year. More people are now going bankrupt than ever before, at the rate of 330 a day.

The wider social consequences of high house prices are explored in an article in the Guardian today, consequences which include greater class polarisation, social exclusion, and ‘negative mobility’: “more young people have to live at home, face longer commutes, more debt, no pensions, or are being forced to leave areas where their families have lived for generations, with all the social disintegration that entails.” The article goes on to conclude that our house prices are “unravelling the fabric of people’s lives, and trapping them in a status system more intractable than ever before.”

The article also uses the expression I’ve borrowed as a title here, that the middle class obsession with house value is “the socially acceptable face of avarice.” Buying to let, second homes, and renovating and selling on are tempting opportunities, but could be indirectly exploiting others. Although some people will make a fortune, a huge number of people will lock themselves into a lifetime of debt. Property is glamorous at the moment, but the problems we are creating for ourselves are enormous – Experian, the credit-rating agency, warned this week that repossessions will double over the next two years regardless of whether interest rates rise. And if rates do rise, one percent would be enough to see 55,100 homes reclaimed by mortgage lenders.

There will be a huge number of losers in the property game, and we all need think carefully about how ethical our housing ambitions are.

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• Check out the Priced Out campaign to see what you can do.