UK Property Market - Some graphs and charts

Here are some very telling charts taken from the BBC - http://www.bbc.com/news/business-24387237

Look at the UK housebuilding starts and completions per quarter, from 1978 till 2012.  Can you see that housebuilding completions have dipped from 1978 levels and stayed rather flat throughout 1980 to 2007, but from the credit crisis in 2007 onwards, there was a huge fall.

So, not many UK properties have been completed.  Is there enough property stock in the UK?  There is consensus that housebuilding in UK, especially London, is chronically short, i.e. huge under-supply.  From the 1970s till date, the population of UK has also increased, from about 56Mil in 1975 to 63Mil in 2012.

This chart on first-time buyer mortgages show the effects of the credit crisis and the credit market tightening from 2007.  The number of mortgages has certainly not recovered to 2007 levels.  Of course, you may think that 2007 was too much of a bubble.

Another chart on tenants versus owners.  Many tenants, and tenants-reduced price in the UK.

Conclusion
There is a lot of UK property data and charts from many credible sources all online.  Read them and consider whether there is a shortage of supply.  We have come to the conclusion that supply in the London market is really short, while demand is strong.  Therefore, we think that our investments are fundamentally sound, however, the caveat is that we purchase properties that we think will have widespread potential in the UK resale market, i.e. we want the comfort that we can easily sell our properties to locals.

This has guided our investment philosophy in the UK property market.  This is why we stay out of the very expensive and luxurious new-builds we are seeing now, especially in Central Zone 1 London.