Yep it’s a global issue - money created during financial crisis plus covid flows into assets. Those with money move up, those without money are more stuck - like someone looking at the bottom of the ladder but it’s being pulled away from them. People in their 50s talk about their house being worth say £1m, and will downsize.. where to ?? We tried it and to live in same area the price of the slightly smaller house is £700k - plus stamp duty plus fees plus maybe some updates so people don’t move

We have not consistently built enough of any type of housing for decades, there is no incentive for developers to do so when they can constrain supply to maximise the profit margin and keep hold of their bank of development land that is increasing in value while doing nothing.

All the council house building halted when two things happened. The Tories stop councils borrowing on the future value of housing, which basically stopped them borrowing to build housing. They also introduced right to buy, that forced councils to sell off housing for less than it was worth. Effectively giving away councils built up equity that could have paid for new houses. In a brief space of time the Tories elimated council housing building, we now pive with the consequences of that.