Londoners Losing Out on City’s Property Boom?

An article by Paul    Comments Off on Londoners Losing Out on City’s Property Boom?

You walk around London and you’ll see beautiful tourist attractions surrounded by building sites. Cranes blocking the skyline, whilst in the process of creating new buildings. But who will see the benefits of these new buildings? London is in a property boom right now in the luxury building world, but many people are worried about the effects this will have on the country as a whole.

Almost one in 10 properties in the City of Westminster (9.3%) and 7.3% of properties in Kensington and Chelsea are owned by investors registered in an offshore secrecy jurisdiction. It’s difficult to stuff an old mattress with millions of pounds of stolen cash, but far easier to invest it in bricks and mortar. That the London property market is so attractive to tax dodgers, mystery overseas investors and criminal gangs is no accident, but symptomatic of the very root of the problem of housing in the UK.

(The Guardian