by Alasdair Macleod
Gold Money
Messrs Carney and Osborne are turning out to be a dangerous double-act for UK residential property investors.
They have been using monetary and fiscal policies through a combination of directed bank lending, selectively increasing transaction taxes and by implementing other tax policies with a view to suppressing demand for residential property.
If they think they can fine-tune these markets, history suggests they will eventually fail. There are significant challenges facing the UK residential property investors already, without state intervention. Incidentally, the problems discussed herein have little to do with the current difficulties faced by commercial property funds in the UK, which have had to suspend redemptions because of illiquidity, though their structural failure sends us a timely reminder about this inflexible characteristic of property generally.