United Kingdom
I’ve just quadrupled my net worth—on paper, anyway, said Boris Johnson in the London Daily Telegraph. “I know it is rude to discuss property prices,” but get this: We bought a house in 1995. Four years later we sold it for twice what we paid to buy a new house. Now that house has also doubled in value—for no readily apparent reason. “It is not as if the people of the neighborhood have all struck oil in the basement.” The British housing market has simply gone “quite mad.” Fully 70 percent of adults own their own homes, which means the entire nation has become obsessed with real estate. “Hopelessly addicted to property porn,” we grab at each new circular, scanning for a bigger, better mansion. It would be funny if it weren’t having such dire economic consequences. The housing bubble has skewed the whole economy. Half of our national wealth is tied up in mortgages, and only a quarter in pension funds. When prices fall, our “touching belief” in “bricks and mortar” won’t put food on the table.
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