2024-03-25 18:00:34
This content was published on March 25, 2024 – 8:01 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) Expensive, small and aging housing: the British housing stock “offers the worst value for money of all advanced economies”, says a study by the Resolution Foundation think tank published on Monday.
“The UK’s housing crisis has been decades in the making, with successive governments failing to build enough new homes and modernize existing stock,” summarizes Adam Corlett, economist at the Resolution Foundation, in a statement. .
The study, which is based on OECD data, compares what it would cost households if they all rented their homes. On this economic criterion alone, the British devote 22% of their spending to housing, the second highest level of the countries examined, behind Finland.
At the same time, British homes have, with 38 square meters per person on average, less floor space than many comparable countries, notably the United States (66 square meters), Germany (46), France ( 43) or Japan (40).
British housing also has less floor space per person than in New York (43 m2), where apartments are nevertheless notoriously small, point out the authors of the study.
The data on which the study is based mainly dates from before the pandemic, but in the United Kingdom, tensions in the property market have only increased since then, with very high interest rates in the United Kingdom having hampered real estate transactions and slowed construction.
“The UK’s housing stock is also the oldest of all European countries, with a greater proportion of housing built before 1946 (38%) than anywhere else,” the Resolution Foundation further notes in its press release.
Homes are poorly insulated, which “leads to higher energy bills and a higher risk of damp”, all factors which contribute to putting the UK in last place for value for money in this study.
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