Comment by robinsonb5

To me the biggest problem is the buy-to-let market, which means anything affordable is snapped up in seconds by people with money to invest, rather than people who just want a home to live in.

I think it's mainly a symptom of the unusualy low interest rates over the last 20 years: people have invested in residential property not because they particularly want to be landlords, but because it's perceived as the easiest way to get a better return on your money than a savings account that pays near zero interest.

I know of more than one person who's now looking to sell their rental property because they found out the hard way that "landlord" is actually a job title, not just the name of their savings account, that properties need to be maintained and that letting agents will find a way to swallow the vast majority of any profits.

I also know more than one person living in rented accommodation with appalling maintenance lapses. One had a shoddy roof repair last year which left the gutter missing. When the next rainstorm caused water to cascade down the outside wall and flow in above the back door, the letting agent had the nerve to shrug and say "old properties do that".

Another had a rotten wooden lintel above a street door scraped out, filled with expanding foam and painted over.