01. Van Gogh’s Mousetrap

 

01.

Van Gogh’s Mousetrap

 

 

Peckham Rye. Zone 2. You arrive on the Overground, catch the bus, and finally reach the house from the advert, number 23. The door is open. “Hello? Hello?” “Come up, first floor”. You enter a tiny room with a single bed, wondering if you can even fit a desk. Within five minutes, another person arrives. “Leave it open, it is non-stop viewings today until someone pays a good price. We expect your ‘best and final offer’ by the end of the day”. Outside, people are still queuing. You know that without a strong offer, you will be left on the street. It feels like an art auction, but it is just a cramped room barely big enough for a single bed and a wardrobe, forcing you to bid like it is a Van Gogh painting before having to choose a bridge to sleep under.

 

To justify this extortion, the property sector constantly repeats the same mantra: it is the law of supply and demand. They argue there simply are not enough houses. It is a perverse excuse.

 

Housing does not work like rice. If the price of rice goes up, you eat noodles until the market regulates itself. But if rent skyrockets, you absorb it, because the alternative is living under a bridge. Demand is inelastic; you cannot decide not to need a roof over your head. International students and migrant workers cannot just return to their parents' homes; they cram into shared flats while prices climb.

 

The real problem is not a lack of bricks, but who hoards them. The market is distorted by the massive influx of vulture funds or speculative landlords under the Build-to-Rent model. Properties exist, but it is more profitable to keep them empty or inflate prices to maximise yields than to offer a stable home.

 

The Government has attempted to calm the waters with the new Renters' Rights Act, which promises to legally ban bidding wars by preventing offers above the advertised price. It is a necessary step, but barely a sticking plaster. Without rent caps, agencies will simply publish adverts with the price already inflated.

 

The true solution demands political courage. It is imperative to establish strict legal caps on rental prices, following the model of the recent "Affordable Rent Act" in the Netherlands, for example. But above all, speculation must be fiscally choked by drastically raising taxes on corporate funds and harshly penalising empty properties. If it ceases to be a lucrative business, properties will be put up for sale; with greater supply, prices will indeed have to fall and can be sold at fair prices (because otherwise, taxes would suffocate the vulture funds). Houses are for living in, not for making a business. And London does not need more "investors"; it needs houses to be for living, and for those who live and work in the city.