The property profiteers
The frenzy to speculate on the housing market or own multiple homes has a dangerous downside
The Guardian 4.2.08 by Ros Coward
THe Full Artilce can be read at http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2251796,00.html#article_continue
On the very day we were warned by the Financial Services Authority that Britain may have its own sub-prime problem, Channel 4 announced that it would commission 55 more episodes of its property show A Place in the Sun. So viewers will still get their fix of this most aspirational of property programmes where people, often including young couples who feel they can't get a foot on the UK property ladder, are encouraged to follow their dreams.
In recent months, it has become commonplace to blame irresponsible banks and greedy financial institutions for the plight of the sub-primes. A French rogue trader has provided the media with a useful embodiment of the banking world's sins. But it is not just these institutions that are to blame. Nowhere has the promotion of home ownership and amateur property speculation been more blatant than on television property programmes.
TV channels categorise these programmes as lifestyle or "factual entertainment", putting buying and selling houses on a par with sport or cookery. Certainly, they have been spectacularly popular. Channel 4, which leads the pack in this area of programming, regularly achieves 4 million viewers for Location, Location, Location. But these so-called entertainment values conceal a distinctive and partial economic ideology.
Channel 4's Property Ladder regularly includes desperate young couples who bemoan their fear of "losing out". Their unchallenged assumption is that home ownership is the only guarantee of security, and potentially a route to wealth. In Put Your Money Where Your House Is they are egged on to add value to their homes, anything to make a profit.
In Relocation, Relocation, Kirsty Allsop will jolly along participants to trade one property for two, while Amanda Lamb rushes around trying to secure that Place in the Sun (always pointing out which countries are good for a quick profit). The top of the property ladder is a "property portfolio", the point at which an amateur developer becomes a property professional. And there is no higher calling in the world for these jolly girls and jumped-up estate agents.
Behind the facade of pandering to innocent British pastimes like DIY and home improvement, these programmes deliver clear messages. Only losers don't buy. Property makes you rich.
Its hard to imagine another business being given a free rein to promote its worldview on television like this. Especially one with such important consequences for individual lives. These programmes are made, and presented, by people with a strong vested interest in a particular business. Most have been estate agents or part of property business - or still are, as several offer private services via websites. Sarah Beeny and Lamb receive regular coverage on property pages flaunting their portfolios.
Even if commissioning editors are not old enough to remember the sad repossessions caused the last time prices fell, they surely have a responsibility to be economically prudent. One of the first things you would expect them to know is that since high prices can usually only be paid for with mortgages, any period of increased unemployment would cause many people to lose their homes.
Moreover, the frenzy to become property developers, or own multiple homes, or buy abroad, all have potential effects on availability of housing stock, the need to build over the countryside, and potentially damaging social effects on the regions that are the new hot spots for speculation. I have never forgotten the concluding voiceover in one of the Buying Abroad programmes - "Just remember: today's flower meadow is tomorrow's next development."
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