40 year mortgages, a great cheap way to keep the people compliant

[Steve]

Mort, you don't understand the UK market. Planning permission, required to build a house, is carefully regulated and results in sky high property prices. The typical UK house is built on 1/20th of an acre, an acre of farmland costs £7500, the house costs £50k to build, but the house will sell for £250,000 . The piece of paper that grants planning permission has added £200,000 ! This situation exists because the banks hold the deeds for mortgaged houses, if the regulations were relaxed to allow the building of the houses we need then the house prices would crash and the banks would become insolvent.

In the US, you might imagine a $200,000 mortgage would allow you to build a house with nearly $200,000 worth of materials and land in it, this is not the case in the UK.

By the way, I have never lived in a council house, I bought my first house at age 24. Sadly most 24 year olds now cannot do the same.